Vision

Core Ideas

As *culture is not optional has matured, something has become clear: learning happens in a unique way when it is face-to-face, experiential, filled to the brim with storytelling and community, shared meals and collaborative dreaming. Our online and print publications have been lifting up and inspiring incarnational living for over six years. Alongside *cino's publishing, our camping trips, conferences and workshops have reinforced the benefits of being in a place with other people who inspire and encourage us toward holistic lives of faithfulness to God's Kingdom, in all things large and small.

For a generation that's actively seeking what God is doing both within and outside of the Church, we endeavor to create new opportunities for developing skills and vision for service in the world. These opportunities will be rooted in imagination, friendship, place and vibrant ritual within a physical community of students, visitors, neighbors and permanent residents.

The Imagining Space campaign is an effort to raise money for a building in which *cino can pursue ideas that approach the vision laid out here. The campaign is also an effort to gather resources and energy behind a collection of related ideas, feeling our way forward with the input of partners and supporters and the guidance of the Spirit.

Objectives

• Embody a vibrant Kingdom vision for a local community and for out-of-town supporters of *cino's work.
• Serve the local community with imagination, food, hospitality, storytelling and art.
• Create space for service, reconciliation and the practical application of scholarship and theology.
• Serve as a regional point of connection for good work and partner with existing community organizations to support and enhance one another's efforts.
• Engage college-age students and post-college learners in the study of historic and contemporary Christian disciplines and home economics.

Possibilities

• An off-campus program for college students that would integrate study with service and community development, possibly exploring the potential of a communal "rule of life" combined with community engagement.
• *cino conferences and workshops on various topics.
• Housing units for a combination of permanent and temporary residents, along with common gathering spaces like a dining room and library.
• Space for vocational retreats for artists, educators and others, as well as room to host groups from churches and other institutions for discipleship training, leadership retreats, service-learning projects and more.
• Arts education and other creative and vocational programs for at-risk youth and low-income neighbors, modeled on the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in Pittsburgh.
• Space for education on growing food in urban and suburban contexts, which could serve the local community as well as out-of-town visitors with practical workshops and research.
• A Mennonite Voluntary Service corps with volunteers living together in community and serving local community organizations.