Name: Emmaus Community

Location: Atlanta, Ga., alternating meetings in homes of the members.

When Started: 1992 as an offshoot from the Emory University Catholic Center, when a group of parishioners there believed the center's new leadership was refusing to maintain its history of openness and inclusivity.

Membership: Some 35 households including singles, married couples with and without children, one religious sister. The community is ecumenical in approach -- about 65 percent Catholic and 35 percent Protestant, with even a few Jewish members. Prominent members include writer Eugene Bianchi and a Methodist theologian from Emory, Roberta Bondi, who represents the Emmaus Community at the World Council of Churches.

Format: Sunday worship every other week at 11 A.M. in homes. The host family leads the liturgy and gives the homily (followed by reflections from the assembly). Central to the liturgy is a music-filled celebration of the "breaking of the bread" similar to but not identical with the Catholic Mass. Afterwards, there's a modest potluck dinner.

Outreach: Members regularly assist at a local St. Vincent De Paul clothing center.

Benefits: Participants (with widely diverse backgrounds in social service, peace and justice, education, ecology, and business and technology) come mainly, according to their own testimony, "to be nourished," to "share the deepest questions of faith," to be "accepting of each other," to experience "the intimacy that comes from a smaller (than the traditional parish) gathering."

Obstacles: Reluctance of diocesan church employees to join because the community is ecumenical and unofficial; also there's a need for more members to cook and help with the music.

Quote: "A lot of us are not Atlanta natives. After moving down here we came to the community searching for a place that accepts us for what we are." This is an especially welcoming place for "liberated men who are willing to share deeply."

Source: Elaine LaLonde: 404 231-5442