(how well do we do this?)

‘What you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well’ (2 Timothy 2:2)

‘What we have heard and known for ourselves must not be withheld from our descendants, but be handed on by us to the next generation’ (Psalm 78: 3-4)

‘One of my major failures [in building communities and raising up elders and leaders] is that I did not ask more of people from the very beginning. If they did not turn outward early, they tended never to turn outward, and their dominant concern became personal self-development, spiritual consumerism, church as “mere attendance” at things, or “deepening my relationship with Jesus” (most of which demands little accountability for what you say that relationship is).’ (Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 106).

Testimony of a middle-aged Christian: ‘I’ve attended church most Sundays all my life, heard thousands of sermons, done most jobs around the church, but did not have a true encounter with the living Christ until a friend took me on a ‘mission-trip’ to an Asian country and I was asked to talk about “my relationship with Jesus”. I realized I didn’t have one’.