Today, just as the early Church devoted themselves to the fellowship (Acts 2:42), I too, having weighed the cost (Luke 14:25-33), choose to devote myself to this fellowship. By this statement, I express my covenantal devotion to my siblings in Christ, under our Father in Heaven. For as long as the Lord allows, this is the body with whom I live interdependently and faithfully practice the rhythms of Jesus to carry forth the Kingdom of God into the world—resurrecting and reordering the darkness and decay by His definition of good, as we work to restore Eden (Gen 1:28, 9:1; Matt 28:19; Rev 21-22). Together, as mustard seed revolutionaries, I join you in the work of doing small things with great love: scattering about the seeds of God's subversive Kingdom, cultivating the soil in one another to receive the Word of God (Matt 13:1-23), and reimagining our lives according to the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7). I anticipate that, by doing what only I can do, God will do what only He can do: plant us as trees of righteousness, bearing fruit in us for the display of His splendor (Gal 5:22-23; Isa 61:3).

As a sojourner with citizenship elsewhere (Phil 3:20), I pledge allegiance only to God’s Kingdom—a Kingdom where leadership is revealed through servanthood and loves its way rather than forces its way (Matt 20:26-28). It’s a Kingdom observed most fully through weakness instead of power, foolishness instead of logic, and lowliness instead of fame (1 Cor 1:27). It’s a Kingdom where following Jesus means imitating Him—living as He lived and among those with whom He lived (1 John 2:3-6). Though He was God, He became “like nothing”—a servant to the hurting, dirty, and dying, to those who felt unwanted, unloved, and uncared for (Phil 2:5-7). It was these practices that He used to identify Himself as the Christ, and, by God’s grace, it will be these practices that others will use to identify us as His body (Luke 7:18-23).

Determined to seek first Christ's Kingdom (Matt 6:33), I will seek to order my life by its values and submit to His lordship through this local expression of His body, believing that in doing so, we will together arrive at the full stature of Christ (Eph 4:11-16). Where He calls us to love one another, we shall do so, learning from Him and from each other the art of loving. Where He calls us to hospitality, we will make room at the table for all and without cost, demonstrating the truth of the Gospel—that God in Christ has made room at His table for all and without cost (Luke 14:12-14; Isa 55:1). Where He calls us to redistribution, we will do so, knowing that what God has placed before us may not be for us. Where He calls us to communion, we will collectively abide in Christ the vine, knowing that apart from Him we can do no good thing. Where He urges us to become holy as He is holy, we will abandon false pursuits of the world and will thankfully receive the correction of our sister or brother (Matt 18:15-17; Gal 6:1). Where He calls us to forgiveness, we will do so and accept the pain it causes, giving others the same right to grace that we, who are no less deplorable, have been afforded in Christ (Eph 4:32). Where He calls us onto the hard and narrow path, we will walk it humbly, whether with the many or the promised few (Matt 7:13-14). Where we are able to carry one another’s burdens, we will do so, knowing that in this, we fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:2).

Because of this, and my desire to grow into true servanthood, recognizing that life is discovered only when I willfully lose it (Matt 16:25), I give my life away, no longer living for me but living for you and with you, loving you, shepherding you, and abiding faithfully at your side. Short of a violation of my conscience, I will defer to the voice and gifts of this church as it, and other members of Christ's global body, speak into my life. I trust that you will honor me as part of your family and will not take my offering lightly. Now, then, we are one body, born of one Spirit, and seek our strength from one source. We rejoice in our unity, a gift of our Father through which the world will come to know Jesus as Lord (John 17:21-23). Let us go forth then, together, in His service—partnering with God in the restoration and salvaging of every molecule in the universe.