Church of Our Saviour Visit

Our Journey Group (7 of us that are part of a continuing ed experience at Western Theological Seminary) just wrapped up a 4 day trip to Wellspring - one of the ministries started through The Church of Our Saviour in Washington D.C. On this trip we were able to invite up to 3 people each from each of our faith communities (some house churches, and more typically structured local churches like the one I am a part of).

This was a great experience. I was able to bring my wife, Sandi, along.

The 3 things that this community tries to balance are the inward journey (spiritual formation through spiritual disciplines), the outward journey (missional work, especially among the poor and marginalized), and doing both of these in community.

Another take away was the idea of forming a small group around a call (outward journey), instead of around affinity or the like. It was said that if you develop a small group around some other purpose, and then try to develop a missional focus, it almost never works. And this was our experience with our house church experiment - so I resonated with this idea.

Sandi and I are following up by reading a couple of books by Elizabeth O'Conner that tell the story of The Church of Our Savior in greater detail.

We also got a chance to meet Gordon Cosby and hear some of his heart and vision - very cool.