The Simple Way Fire

As I have stated before, I recently finished reading Shane Claiborne's book, The Irresistible Revolution. In his book, he talks about what it looks like to live as a disciple of Christ in our present age and society. He helped establish a community called "The Simple Way" in an extremely poor part of Philadelphia. The Simple way provides housing, education, food, and support for those living in the community. It is a hippy-ish community of Christians trying to learn what it looks like to live like Christ. The singer for mewithoutYou, who is from Philly, lived there for a while as well.

Last night around midnight a 7-alarm fire destroyed The Simple Way and much of the surrounding neighborhood. The fire started in an abandoned factory warehouse and spread to the neighboring houses. It took over 200 firefighters to extinguish the blaze. No one was hurt in the fire, however, The Simple Way was a beacon of hope and a place of refuge in an extremely impoverished place and the effects of this fire will be long lasting.

This is extremely weird timing, having just finished the book last month and having just seen mewithoutYou. There were a lot of really great things going on in that neighborhood (and some tragic things as well) and it will be interesting to see how the recovery process goes. God will work through all of this and more than likely, The Simple Way and the Christians in that community will grow stronger because of it.

For more information about the fire and The Simple Way, check out their website. Pray for the members of The Simple Way community and those that lost their homes in the fire.