Relationship Consideration in Decision Making

The word "relationship" surfaces everytime I talk about my ministry.  That's not surprising.  After all the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer explains that the mission of the Church is "to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ."

As Wendano Ministries evolves, it is important that is does so in relational ways:  Americans to Africans,  Anglicans to Anglicans, Christian to Christian, Christian to non-Christian, Wendano resident to fellow Wendano resident, supporter to supporter, Wendano resident to supporter, Wendano Ministries to other ministries.  You get the idea.  It has to be much more than just collecting money and disbursing it for "good causes."

Each heart must be changed, moved, filled with the love of Christ.  The gospel must be the motivating force for all we do. We must be changed by the relationships we enter through this ministry.  This we is a total we.  The Wendano children are participants in this ministry as well.  So if you're planning to get involved, be ready to be changed.

Now I started with all of that to get to the inspiration I had earlier today about decision making.  What if before we made a decision we actually thought about how those decisions would affect our relationships; those with the people closest to us, those related to us on a global scale and all those in between.  It's not a novel idea, but I suspect thinking about relational ramifications would change some of our intitial thoughts about what we wanted to do. 

This is an idea not just for individuals, but for groups, communities, etc.  How would our churches be different if vestries used this type of approach to decision making.  Someday when I'm a rector, I'd like to try it out with my vestry.  I'm recording this idea in my blog in case my memory grows faint in the intervening years!

If you try it out, let me know what difference it makes.