A Sojourner's Quest

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lives and hearts to the Lord. The Church Year allowed them to put all things in their passing days in the perspective of the Christ event. Living the Christ life in the cycle of the Christian Year can do the same for us today! The Benefits of Spiritual Formation through the Church Year TUMI National seeks to center its faith and mission on the person of Jesus Christ, to the glory of God, under the leading of the Holy Spirit. For many years now, we have linked our own community’s devotion to the life and ministry of Christ as written in the Scriptures and recounted in the cycle of the Christian Year. It has shared a wealth of benefits for our own spiritual formation, and by experience we have proven that an evangelical appropriation of the Church Year can connect us more intimately to Christ and to Scripture, strengthening us and tying us to the spiritual journeys of countless individuals, families, and congregations who, like us, follow Christ as Lord through the Church calendar. To begin with, using the Christian calendar to shape our spiritual discipline and devotion enables us to “track with” the thoughts and sermons of tens of thousands of other congregations who share in reflecting on Jesus’ life and work through the Christian Year. All over the globe, major traditions of the Church of Jesus Christ echo back in their own lives and service the ancient story of hope and love covered in the major events of Christ’s life: his promised coming, birth, rev- elation to the world, his humility and service, his passion and death, resurrection, ascension, session and return. The rhythm of this Story is the substance of our faith, and we seek here at TUMI National to train every leader to be a disciple of Jesus, i.e., a follower, a disciple, and an expert in the life and ministry of Christ. Furthermore, walking in community through the Church Year has helped us avoid the sad and scattered emphases known in many evan- gelical quarters today. Our key ambition must always be to “keep the main thing the main thing,” to avoid arbitrary and incidental matters in order to remain anchored in the once-for-all faith of the saints. As those whose worship and practice of the disciplines is linked to the life of Christ told through the Church Year, we integrate our individual walks into this great Story. In all our reading, study, and meditation,