CTA has a long commitment to foster small Christian communities: through programs at every national conference; through the annual Renewing Our Church directory, which lists SCCs by state; and through regional CTAs. CTA staff regional coordinator is Don Wedd. Don attended a recent national convocation of SCCs, and filed this report.

NEW ORLEANS - Small Christian Communities that do not involve themselves in public life are doomed to remain support groups. And social action groups that do not reflect together are heading for burnout and demise. To become a community, a group must feel a dual vocation: being gathered for prayer and support, and being sent into the public arena.

This is the belief of Michael Cowan, one of the presenters at the Joint Convocation of Small Christian Communities in New Orleans, July 31-August 3. Cowan gave a workshop on the public life of SCCs in which he talked about the necessity of developing and integrating an inner and public dimension in small communities. He is involved in a broad-based community organizing coalition in New Orleans that cuts across barriers of ethnicity, religion and class.

Cowan is also involved in a research study of SCCs in the U.S. with Bernard Lee and Bill D'Antonio. They found very few SCCs involved in wider society. Most of the ones which do participate in the public arena are not parish-connected. Many of these are CTA groups.

In their new book, "Conversation, Risk and Conversion: The Inner and Public Life of Small Christian Communities," Cowan and Lee make the judgment that "SCCs in this country will be a blip on the screen of ecclesial history rather than an engaging, strong narrative, if communities do not have proactive conversation with the world beyond their community membership as well as effective mutual conversation with each other."

The New Orleans convocation brought together three networks of SCCs: National Alliance of Parishes Restructuring into Communities, North American Forum for Small Faith Communities, and Buena Vista. As CTA develops more and more local chapters, we are challenged to find ways to continually find a balance between meeting for personal support and working for social change -- in the church and in wider society. While we mostly see ourselves as isolated groups of people trying to meet our own needs, we find ourselves in fact to be part of a much larger movement in the church's life and history. Unlike the base communities in Latin America and the Philippines, our members are middle class, and our self-interest is not so obviously served by working for social justice.