Dear saints,

In the last parish that I served, in San Diego, California, at some point in the 1960s they started a program called "TIO," which stood for "talk it over." The gist of it was that small groups of parishioners would meet in one another's homes, sit in a circle, and tell one another what they really had on their minds about their life together. I suppose it was part of that decade's movement toward liberation on all sorts of fronts.

For a season, the TIO groups became a lens through which people saw the possibility of a new church, a new way of being the Body of Christ freed from the shackles of religious niceties and norms. After some time, and perhaps predictably, things started to fray at the edges as people discovered that at some point all the talk would need to lead somewhere. Eventually, TIO decided to talk it over no more.

Our first home gathering is scheduled for this week, one of ten opportunities for us to "talk it over" with regard to the future of our church and of this city block. We are, of course, a wonderfully diverse community of personalities and learning styles. Some of us are made to talk about things for around ten minutes and then get on with doing something. If that is you, I thank you for your patience. Others of us need a much longer runway before we are ready to commit. There are folks who think out loud, and there are folks who figure out their best thoughts by listening in silence. As a song that Karol Kimmell has taught our children's choirs goes, "All God's creatures got a place in the choir." We will need to take our time, and those among us who love process as much (or maybe more) as the outcome, we will also need to say that the time to talk it over has come to its necessary end.

Whatever your learning style, I invite you to find your place in the mix and join the conversation. It is essential that you do. Without your voice and vision we will truly be missing part of the picture. 

Thanks be to God for our many and varied gifts.