Calix is one work of new non-profit called 5 Cups Inc, which was founded to promote a new vision of community for the post-Christendom era. What are these five "cups" and what do they have to do with a paradigm shift in the Church?
The 5 Cups are five phases, modes of engagement, or seasons in the process of someone making the journey from complete stranger, or even an adversary, to being in full communion with the Church, primarily through the context of missional hospitality. This pattern has been culled from decades of experience of working with all types of people, including the deeply unchurched and post-faith, in hospitality spaces with a missional heart. We noticed that when it worked, this was how it worked. So, we began to apply this pattern intentionally and share it. The pattern is as follows.
Contact
This first aspect includes everything leading up to and including to the person's first experience of your project, including your location, architecture, branding, design, offerings, and promises of shared goods. It also includes your reputation and the shared experience of their community with your project over time. It culminates in the first experience of your community and hinges on whether the promises made are kept, whether they feel welcome and received, and whether gratitude, wonder, and curiosity evoke a connection that will draw them back again.
Connection
During this phase, the guest begins to visit your project increasingly frequently for the sake of something offered or promised and constantly delivered. You could call this being a customer or even a regular. Aristotle would call this a Friendship of Utility. It is a real and true connection and a perfectly noble form of relationship. They give you real goods in the form of money, effort, and attention and you give them great coffee, farm to table salads, etc. You become their place....for good coffee or farm to table salads. During this season more and more goods are offered and delivered, in an environment of real reception and welcome. The chief good this offers is an offer of relationship in community. If this process is done authentically and well, the guest will be drawn more and more into a connection with your space and begin to enter into real relationship with the staff and other guests.
Community
A natural and organic progression of the previous phase is a deepening invitation of relationship in community, anchored in an increasingly broad base of shared goods to anchor it. At some point, your guest moves from a mere customer, even a regular customer, to a "regular"- a member of the community that dwells in that space. They take their place in the interconnected web of relationships that connect the community, cross over into the staff, and go outside of the space and the hours of operation. They "belong"- that is they say to themselves "This is my place and these are my people".This belonging must precede any shifting in belief or behavior and is the proper context for any evangelization or discipleship. That process is described in what follows.
Conversion
In this context, the context of belonging, of being in relationship in community, desire can be awakened and real longing for the fullness of reality, including the infinite, can begin to emerge. This desire, as it emerges in and is awakened by relationship, solidifies and forms into real questions. In this context, in answer to these questions, fueled by real desire, answers can be given and experiences shared. A vision of what it might look like to enter relationship with the divine and what that might look like can be modeled, can slowly build and, in the safety of community, a risk can be taken and a response can be received. This process, as it unfolds organically, can lead to real conversion and new relationship with God- a relationship that needs guidance and a home. This season is the period on which some of the tools and movements in the Church can really be used successfully. Answers can be given and understood, which may have been unintelligible before, as desire is the hermeneutic to understand these answers.
Communion
In this final season, a person, with a freshly awakened desire and burgeoning relationship with God looks for a home- a context for this journey to continue more deeply. After a period of reading, media, and conversation, a real felt need to experience that same felt belonging and a desire for deeper answers and experience leads the person to choose a spiritual home. This may lead to a season of exploring different types of spiritual communities or churches. But in the end, it usually ends in a longer term trial of a new church, group, or community. For the post-faith, it will often be a return to a rejected faith, along with a healing of a rupture with that community and sometimes family and friends there. Ultimately, we believe the Catholic faith in one of its myriad diverse forms is the fullness of what is longed for, but that may not be the first stop. It is imperative that the Church begin to create on-ramps and interfaces to welcome and receive these new seekers, as many of the old parochial models will be off-putting and ineffective.
This five-fold pattern was culled from real experience, mostly in communities based in missional hospitality, but once identified illuminate a pattern for a large range of applications. This method has been applied to campus ministry, to parish outreach, and to educational strategy. 5 Cups Inc was formed to help the Church apply this insight in new innovative ways for "such a time as this".