We have been trained to fill our lives with various people and priorities, setting us up to see our lives as central and everyone and everything else as components that we choose to add (or not) to our lives. The church, then, becomes another option on the list of priorities; even if it is a high priority, it becomes a piece of the whole in a way of living that has “me” as the whole. The biblical narrative runs the other way, with God and his mission in the world at the center and his people created to be important parts of the whole. That shift in our thinking has everything to do with us seeing and experiencing the Church — and our own lives — as God intends. And that kind of understanding is crucial in the context of a culture that is riddled with anxiety and fear. Knowing that we were created to be part of a Church that doesn’t settled into those patters of fear but steps into them with grace and hope is paramount for God’s people. In the coming weeks, we’ll explore in detail what the Church – universal and local – is and how it lives into its divine purpose in the world.