Dwelling In The Word

Church Innovations has the habit of text dwelling. That is, whenever we meet, as a staff, as a work team, as a training group, we spend the first 20-30 minutes, sometimes more, dwelling within a particular scriptural passage. For us, most of the time, the text is Luke 10:1-12. It is a text of mission, of being sent out with the most basic of instructions, dependent upon our receivers’ hospitality.

It is so important a practice that we have decided to offer Dwelling in the Word learning events in as many places as we can during 2012 and early 2013, all leading up to a major Dwelling in the Word international gathering/conference in the summer of 2013. Please click here to learn more about these events.

Please click here to download a one-page sheet
outlining the steps for Dwelling in the Word.

As we consider our decisions and actions in congregations and church bodies, in hiring, selling our books, and creating partnerships, this text speaks to us, sometimes moving us forward, sometimes making us think differently about what is happening to us and how we should respond.

You can have this habit, too.

• Choose a passage - perhaps a lectionary text for this coming week, perhaps a passage already meaningful to your group, and read it aloud.
• Sit together with the passage, in silence, or in conversation, sharing with one another where your imagination was caught or where a memory was triggered. Let the passage draw you together as a group.
• Bring the passage up when you're trying to make a decision. See what it says to you then.
• Close with the passage and prayer.
• Bring up the passage again during the next meeting, in the same manner.
• Live in the passage for several months. It will bring more and more to you as you revisit it (at Church Innovations we have been living in Luke 10 for over ten years now).

Let us know how this works for you. We love feedback, and we love collecting stories and insights. Send us an e-mail at dwelling@churchinnovations.org.

Click here for others’ stories about Dwelling in the Word.