Ten years ago, three nights of the week, you could find me in a duplex on Greene Street in Chapel Hill, sitting around the table and eating family dinner with my seven JSC housemates. We had five bedrooms, shared an $800 food allowance, each worked a different social justice non-profit job four days a week, attended Servant Leadership Training on Fridays, worshipped at our respective faith communities on Sundays (and other days), and got up to a variety of shenanigans and high-jinks in between. We cried, we laughed, we grieved, we groused, we danced, and we sang, loudly — and, ten years later (including a Master of Divinity, marriage, ordination as an Episcopal priest, parenthood, and an international move), it remains one of the most formative experiences of my life.
I wrote about some of those experiences a few years ago, so rather than rehashing them: a shameless plug from an alum. If you know a young person who is in discernment — not just for ordination but for anything, about anything — or in a moment of transition, I cannot recommend JSC enough. JSC prepared me for all kinds of things: marriage, parenthood, work in an office, how to breathe. It also prepared me to look at a world increasingly, alarmingly marked by blatant injustice and oppression of the most vulnerable among us and seek a different way to live, a way marked by service, kindness, and love. The world has changed a lot in ten years, but that kind of preparation is more and more crucial everyday.
There are many ways to discern next steps in life or figure out where you’re headed. There are many ways to learn how to lead through service. But there is something special and something different about learning to do them together, in community. Through our constant proximity, my housemates and I wore each other down, smoothed rough edges and polished each other’s gifts. It was messy and rarely perfect; we, I, made plenty of mistakes. But through it I learned new ways of being and doing from them that I never would have had we not been so connected to one another in an intentional community, and those are the lessons that remain. So share this special thing with someone else, someone who could use a community to learn and grow in, someone who is longing to seek justice, do mercy, or walk humbly with God, someone who isn’t quite sure what is next. Invite them to learn and grow and prepare for whatever it is with others — it just might change their life.
— The Rev. Rebecca Ogus
The Rev. Rebecca Ogus was a JSC corps member from 2014-2015