It is important to remember that we, as the Church, are like a vine and not like a flower pot. Charles Simpson wrote a powerful book about this reality: Ants, Vines, and Churches. We are called to be a vine but we choose to live like a flower pot, putting the walls of pews around us. Jesus is the Vine and we are the branches. It’s so important to rediscover who we are called to be and how we are called to relate and communicate with one another. It seems as if corporations are leaving the “Organizational” format and moving towards the “Relational” format, while the Church is leaving the “Relational” format and moving into the “Organizational” format. Considering this very paradigm, Margaret Heffernan discusses a revealing discovery in the simple observation in a recent Ted Talk of chickens and how we can learn from them when applying these observations to our relationships.
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