Story.

We have with us the most powerful story and we are invited to enter it by living out the story.

Taking this journey is not a church fad, or part of a denominational project, or even a social justice cause but a participation in God's big story for humankind. We participate by plugging our stories into God's big story. The salinity of our participation, that is, our effectiveness, involves knowing and entering the story.

It is the story of God who is both missional and relational. For with the fall of humankind in creation, there is the promise of God's sending of victory over evil…with the redemption of humankind, there is the sending of Jesus Christ…with the proclamation of God's redemptive story, there is the sending of the church…and with the restoration of humankind in the new creation, there is the final sending of Christ. God's mission of "sending" shapes our posture as a church.

God's relationality is epitomized through the sending of Christ – the Son of God. That is, divine relationality becoming human relationality. There is no greater way to express God's relationality to humankind than to relate to us as a fellow human. God's relationality contextualized. The divine effort to contextualize goes to the extremity of human incarnation. Today, we journey as a church to carry on the incarnational dimension of Christ of relating through contextualization. Relationality becomes our practice.

We plug into the big story by living our stories to reflect God's mission and relationality.