OUR REALITY

Our vocation can easily consume all our time and relational energy, giving us the illusion that our identity comes entirely from our work.

Instead of individualism and isolation, we practice real presence with others who are not part of our daily work.

BASELINE PRACTICE

As a baseline, we commit to regular participation in a worshipping community; including another person (our spouse, if we are married) in evaluating and adjusting our time commitments on a regular basis, especially travel that takes us away from home; and pursuing diversity across ethnicity and class in our friendships and mentoring relationships.

REACH PRACTICES

As reach practices, many of us aspire to:

1. Ongoing accountability groups with friends who have no stake in the outcome of our work, who can hear the full stories of our lives and speak God’s truth into our stories.

2. Committing to a consistent, ordinary opportunity to serve others that does not accrue any status or significance for ourselves.

3. Consistently have people from a different socioeconomic, ethnic, or cultural background among our ten most recent phone or messaging contacts.

CREATIVE APPROACHES

We seek creative approaches to being deeply known, such as carefully tracking our time with our family and closest friends, or creating a personal advisory board; to creating ways for our coworkers and members of our households to encounter one another as whole persons; and to reducing the conflict between paid work and our responsibilities to children, aging parents, and others dependent on our care.

HOPE FOR ABUNDANCE

We hope for abundance in the form of being deeply known for who we are rather than only what we do, redemptive encounters with people very different from us, and relationships that are lifelong and extend blessing even beyond our own lives.