The Relational Discovery

Our board, staff, and small group leaders recently took a journey of self-discovery called Church Intentional Design. The result was amazing clarity about what our church is and maybe more importantly, isn't. What we are is listed below in the Way of The Crossing. But understanding what The Crossing isn't may have been more exciting for me than anything else.

For years, I have focused a lot of energy on making us relevant musically, keeping the messages culturally connected, and making sure outsiders "got it." I am now of the opinion that those efforts, however well intentioned, did not match who we were/are. Now I do not believe in being irrelevant, especially to new people. But our best way to touch them is through relationships not through worship relevance. Anyway, people are looking for friends with whom to take the journey of life. The cool thing is we can do that.

The thing that now drives me is making sure new people are getting connected with others and that those who are not new are growing in the relationships they have. The messages and the music must move us all closer to one another and to God. We analyze each gathering based on its relational value not whether it impresses anyone new or old.

That is why we can have a Sunday like July 6th where the primary focus is on people getting to know each other. Almost all of the spiritual growth that occurred in the New Testament happened in a relational context (in a culture by the way that was much more relationally oriented already.) Being Western, we are much more separated from one another than any NT culture was. In fact, in spite of the "strangeness" of a Sunday like July 6th, (we had food and did some intentional relationship development through games) I think a few more Sundays like it would do us a great deal of good.

Simply put, many of us are just not used to an emphasis on relationships. Getting to know other people better and becoming more connected to each other hardly seems as important as hearing a sermon or singing a worship song. But think of this. In Jesus last prayer to the Father before going to the cross he prayed for one thing primarily...let them (his disciples and all those who come after them) be one! When he could have prayed for anything-spiritual growth, faith, preaching power, you name it-he prayed that they would be relationally strong.

I have begun to believe that something monumental has occurred. I believe we have seen something foundational at The Crossing...we'll call it the Relational Discovery. We will be exploring it and expanding on it a lot over the next several months.