The Dexter House is a community of juniors and seniors at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts committed to intentionally living together. After taking a course together that gave them a venue to explore work and vocation and God's call on their lives, they each spent a good part of their summers on internships that fit each of their interests specifically. Upon returning to Gordon in the fall, the students moved into the Dexter House where they were committed to weekly activities such as common meals, community time and business meetings.
The following responses are of current members of the Dexter community:
Gordon College's Dexter House
Community members valuing friendship.
Getting ready for an event
The following responses are of current members of the Dexter community:
1. What is community?
a. "Community is when a group of people decides to acknowledge the purposes or objectives or hopes that we have in common to build a live together around those commonalities."
b. "Community has many different shapes but at its core, it’s what develops when people with common interests or threads make a commitment to support and grow together."
c. "Is a sense of belonging to a group and that involves emotional, social, and in a Christian context, spiritual connection with the members of that group."
2. What makes this community intentional and what it the value of intentionality?
a. "I think that we’ve learned that intentional equals “scheduled” a lot of the time. Having weekly house fellowship and dinners provides a structure that reminds and reinforces our intentions.
With little forethought and reflection, as human beings we can tend to float around. We and our relationships really benefit from more mindfulness."
b. "It’s intentional in that we applied and got accepted, we have guidelines of how we want to interact, we have a covenant, and structured time together—house fellowship and dinners. The value is that it gives us a time and a space to grow together and also evaluate how we are doing; being able to give and take, construct and deconstruct."
c. "The structure makes it intentional. The fact that we have planned activities every week means that we are intentionally taking time together, and this is not to say that we don’t have activities outside the planed things. It’s the whole freedom within a framework concept that if we keep consistent and have a structure, we are able to have a starting baseline to grow."
3. What is the purpose of community?
a. "First, the purpose of the Dexter community is to help one another better see ourselves; to learn about ourselves. Also, it is seeing not only what is but also what could be and to dream with and for each other about possible places that we can each plug into and get back to the world.
In general, I feel like this is more a question for God than for me; what was God's purpose in hardwiring us to want to belong to community? What was His purpose in making us want to be social beings?
Goethe says if you know just one, you know none. Our world is very relativistic in that we can’t know one thing without comparing or contrasting it with other things."
b. "In general, community can’t happen for community’s sake. It must have a purpose that is realized, whether it’s social or religious. The purpose of our community is supposed to be work and vocation, but I feel like we are more of a community for community’s sake. Also, in general, community is an important part of human nature, God made us as social beings. It’s important to know what it means to be in communion with God by being with people who are made in the image of god."
c. "Dexter is specifically for the purpose of exploring vocation and what it means to live out the will of God, or that’s what it should be. The purpose of community should ultimately be an outward thing. The purpose would be that the people who are participating could grow and be better suited to live in the world. If your community is a service-based community, also so the community can collectively serve, it gives it a group on which to collaborative."
4. What have been your experiences with community before becoming a member of this one? Did they contribute to your desire to join this community? What attracted you to living in this community?
a. "I think that prior to participating in the Elijah project, my communities would have been my family, my elementary school, athletic teams, my church community. The latest are the academic programs at Gordon; JAF and Gordon in Lynn.
Yea, they were influential. I think they really wet my appetite as far as wanting to live in close proximity to people who share a lot of the same desires, if not beliefs.
Positive past experiences, I also hoped to have a new experience. Honestly, I think it was the other people who were going to be involved, and the Carmers."
b. "I was a church member; it’s hard to think of community outside the context of living together. I was really active in missions; the relationship between two different groups of people.
In some ways they did, I began to learn the value of knowing people different from me on more than a surface level.
I had just transferred to Gordon, I had just broken up with someone; I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. The Elijah project had a focus on work and vocation and that aligned with my desire to be with other people who were also searching for what we should be doing in life."
c. "I’ve never lived in an intentional community before, but I grew up with around community. My parents moved far from home when they got married so they had to find a new family. They joined a small group with 2 other families. I’d say that was intentional community, there was no outline but I think through that I learned some of what it is to be intentional.
I think I had pretty idealist expectations. I thought it sounded like a lot of fun to live in a community. It sounded like a lot of fun to have consistent times to be with friends, so you don’t fall out of times with them. Even though that wasn’t the original purpose of Dexter, that’s why I joined."
5. How does one maintain their sense of individuality while living in a community? Is this necessary?
a. "It’s so important to maintain a sense of individuality even in community because I think that we are most attractive to each other when we allow ourselves to be ourselves. Dr. Carmer says that that is a life giving trait, and I agree with him."
b. "I think a big aspect of community that can get ignored is the need for retreat. It’s important to maintain relationships outside the community to be fed in other ways.
Yes, authenticity. To be authentic to who are. You might have similarities but it’s important to see differences as well."
c. "At least in Dexter, there’s enough time for me so I definitely have my own life apart from activities and members of the community. I do feel like I've sacrificed a fair amount of time though. I think it is necessary just so you can continue to find your own direction in life."
6. Is it difficult to be a close-knit community while not excluding those who are not members? How does your community handle this tension?
a. "We tend to claim that we knew. We’ve learned a lot of how to be gracious and inclusive and hospitable to people who are not a part of our community. If we didn’t see it ourselves, it took other people voicing their observations to bring it to our attention. Our creation of club Dexter was our intention to include people who are not a part of our community. It hasn’t always felt natural or easy, but it’s felt right."
b. "Yes, community has a natural tendency to be exclusive, which isn’t necessarily bad but not being aware of that is. We have difficulty handling this, especially because it’s a program you have to apply to and we’ve all taken a class together and have a certain language because we’ve lived and studied together. And when people who aren’t familiar come into our house, they can feel very overwhelmed. This semester, we’ve made more of an effort to host campus wide events but its very easy to fall into what’s comfortable. There’s a boundary between our house as personal space and as community."
c. "This semester, we’ve been trying to have more outreach activities, more not exclusive, more inclusive activities. The other way has been by discussing how we need to be friendly to other’s guests. We need to be welcoming so we don’t become too self-focused."
7. What does your community do to strengthen each other as a group and individually?
a. "We could always improve in that aspect, through structured times we’ve created a culture of accountability and challenge and forthrightness. Whether that’s through face-to-face exhortations or written ones."
b. "We have three times of voluntary prayer a week, we do family dating, every week we are assigned someone to spend time with, to catch up with so we all have someone we know we can talk to. We have house fellowship and dinner. We plan activities to help gage were at. We give space and opportunity to receive support when needed."
c. "House fellowship every week, we have character building events in which we challenge and encourage each other. A lot of those times is taken setting up different structures to do this. We have jars were you can leave anonymous encouragements and challenges."
8. From your definition of intentional community, must a community be intentional to be authentic?
a. "Yes, because they can emerge naturally, they are more authentic in the sense that people that are a part of them generally want to be together. While we chose to be a part of the Elijah project we didn’t choose who the other members would be."
b. "Yes and no, I think every action has an intention behind it. Close-knit friend groups could be seen an authentic; they might not have the intention of being a community, but they might still have aspects of community."
c. "I don’t know if they can. I wouldn’t call all the communities I've been in intentional, but we are intentional. Like with my friends, we don’t talk about intentionality but we do makes efforts to do things regularly. In high school I had community with my theater department; we met regularly. Now they are just old friends. You need intentionality."
9. How has your definition of community changed since becoming a member of this community?
a. "I’ve learned that in community, there’s always work for each one of us to do. Coming in, I saw myself as a pretty easy person to live with and one that was compatible. I’ve learned that living in community ought to mean that there would be conflict. If we are being true to ourselves, we are going to step on each other’s toes here and there and that’s okay."
b. "My perspective has changed, in that community can’t be forced. You can have people picking a community for you and expecting it to always work. It happens very naturally because of our nature to relate to people. Its inauthentic to expect a community to be successful if the community can’t decide what it is and who they are."
c. "I don’t think it has."
Community members appreciating each other.
