Off-Road Discipline: Meeting New People

A few of us were chatting the other night about how doing the Mannatech business presents an opportunity for personal growth and development as leaders. I want to continue the discussion with a few thought I came across this morning in Off-Road Disciplines by Earl Creps. The book is about exploring some unusual spiritual disciplines -- the usual ones being things like prayer and Bible reading. (I've only read the introduction, but I'm excited already!)

An experience is a spiritual discipline if it has the potential to form God's heart in me, and if it functions as one because I embrace it as such.

So getting out of our comfort zone, making the effort to meet new people and develop relationships with them (whatever the fruit of those relationships might be eventually) can be seen as a spiritual discipline. And it will function as such -- it will indeed become something that God uses to form compassion, grace, love in us -- if we embrace it. That means accepting the difficulty of it as much as the promise that it will eventually produce good fruit in us.

I'm reminded of what Richard Foster says about spiritual disciplines, something to the effect that the disciplines get us into the ground where God can change our hearts. When you plant a seed, you know you have to wait to see the plant grow and the fruit develop. It's the same with the disciplines: you pursue them and practice them over time, not looking for a quick fix, but with faith that something is developing down there in the hidden places that will become manifest in its own time.

I've been thinking about where my "coffee shop" might be -- as Tom was sharing how he makes it a point to take his computer work to a local cafe on regular basis. Much as I love the idea of taking a laptop to Starbucks and working there, it doesn't quite fit my lifestyle at this point (I don't think I'd get any of my programming work done, for one thing). But I do find myself hanging out a playgrounds with the kids. It's not an easy or automatic thing to really get to know the other Moms (or nannies) there, but it may be something I need to pay attention to and make some effort to pursue. Can I embrace the challenge and see what God might want to do through it? Where are your coffee shops -- the places you might practice the discipline of meeting new people?