We met again last Saturday. This time Mark and Ida joined us. Ida had expressed interest in the group before and Mark, Ida's friend, came along. Like always there was food. I decided to make my famous tacos, Dave and Kokoy brought beers, and Ida and Mark brought salads from Mark's family business, Goolai (which means vegetable).

Since we had some newcomers we weren't quite sure how to follow up on our first meeting. They knew it was a religious group yet I sensed that we could spend some time developing the relationship before we delved a bit deeper. However up until the end I was tempted to say, "hey guys, can we share about what's going on in our lives before we go?"

This morning I asked Shiloah whether or not I should have asked the group to share. She said something that I won't forget. She said that if I really wanted to know what was going on with someone, I should ask them and that this organic way of developing relationships prevents people from spewing default answers like: "work is hard," "God's good but I need to read the bible more." What I realized was that although I speak of an ideal community which is organic and fully surrendered to the Holy Spirit, I yearn for structure and control. I wanted to push my agenda so that I could say we had done something spiritual. I was so concerned with the progression of the group that I forgot what it was all about: relationships.