Flying Solo?

During this month, our Home Team began more earnestly to prepare ourselves through prayer. Some of us paired up with members of the Mission Team so that we could lift up our concerns and praises in prayer. As we gather together in pairs and in groups, we are called to reflect on the blessings of praying in community.

"Christians who fly solo usually crash. They set off to storm the heavenly places by themselves by usually come spiraling down, burned by the sun and by their own spiritual pride. Christianity has always known that we need each other for this long and perilous journey, and that we need to be accountable to each other. So from the earliest times, Christians have gathered together in communities, first in the deserts of North Africa, then in the monasteries founded under the inspiration of St. Benedict, then later in various spin-off communities such as the Cistercians and Franciscans, and in our own day in new communities exploring a contemporary expression of community life, such as at Iona and Taize.

And of course the most common form of Christian community, covering every part of the globe, is the local church -- that place where the values of the kingdom of God are tested daily. This si where we can learn the importance of prayer, and the first rule of the spiritual journey -- that we travel together.

Do you think of yourself as an individual believer who sometimes joins other individual believers, or as a member of a family of believers, sometimes operating alone?"

- taken from How to Pray, by John Pritchard