“Values are the goods we prize and pursue—the things we regard as genuinely worth having, becoming, and giving ourselves to.” —Dallas Willard

We must take the time to ask ourselves: How do the values we profess align with the values of God’s Kingdom?

Core values quietly shape our lives. They influence what captures our attention, how we spend our time, what we celebrate, what we resist, and who we are becoming. They form the culture of our homes, our communities, and our organizations long before they ever appear on a website or in a mission statement.

Values are aspirational. They do not simply describe who we are today; they help orient us toward who we long to become.

Some of our values are explicit. Many are not. Whether we recognize them or not, we are all being formed—every day—by the values our culture rewards, the stories we believe, and the practices we repeat. The invitation is not to shame ourselves for this reality, but to become more awake to it.

In this next episode of the Become Good Soil Foundations Series, we invite you into a conversation that has been unfolding in our own lives for more than two decades. Together, we’ll explore the core values that have gradually emerged as guides for the work of Become Good Soil—and, more importantly, for our own apprenticeship to Jesus.

Living our values is deeply personal. No two lives will embody them in exactly the same way. Sometimes it is surprisingly difficult to trace a straight line between what we do and the values quietly shaping those choices. Unearthing and reorienting those hidden values asks us to slow down, pay attention, and become curious about the formation already taking place within us.

Over the years, we’ve come to recognize roughly a dozen values that we hope increasingly inform everything we do at Become Good Soil. We certainly haven’t mastered them. In many ways, these values continue to expose us, invite us, and call us further up and further in. While each deserves an episode—or perhaps a lifetime of reflection—we are grateful for the opportunity to begin the conversation.

What follows is a two-part introduction to the core values we hope will continue to shape our lives, our work, and, perhaps, offer a companion for your own journey and the life of your community.

It's all been prologue. The best is yet to come.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan & Cherie