The Relational Mission

For almost 25 year, I've been meditating on a passage found in in Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Spiritual love will prove successful insofar as it commends Christ to the other in all that is says and does. It will not seek to agitate another by exerting all to personal, direct influence or by crudely interfering in one's life. It will not take pleasure in pious, emotional fervor and excitement. Rather, it will encounter the other with the clear word of God and be prepared to leave the other alone with this word for a long time. It will be willing to release others again so that Christ may deal with them. It will respect the other as the boundary that Christ establishes between us; and it will find full community with the other in the Christ who alone binds us together. This spiritual love will thus speak to Christ about the other Christian more than to the other Christian about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Chr...

One of the best things about my work is the fact that I serve churches across a variety of traditions. I find it a great honor to enter into the life, tradition, and culture of different streams of faith to see what God is already doing amongst a local church and help them develop small groups that fit them. Last week, I had the honor or worshiping with, leading training sessions for, and interacting amongst the leaders of Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, TX. I participated in their high church service, their contemporary Uptown service, and their very Anglo-Catholic evensong service. Then I attended the morning service on Monday at 7:30 am. Because I wanted to understand them so as to help them shape small groups that fit them, I needed to pray and worship with them.  Their buildings which are under construction are pictured above. This is a far cry from the low-church experience of most of my life. The picture below is of the church where I worshipped. I must admit, I...