I was in Palo Alto, California, to make a series of presentations on Progressive Adventism. I enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of conversations about geochronology and the shape of mature Adventism. During the worship service I preached one of my favorite sermons about the Friends of St.Thomas: people whose spiritual lives are characterized by both intense questioning and tenacious loyalty. In the afternoon, we had a wide-ranging Q-and-A session.

I thought I was doing pretty good at fielding the questions until a young woman in her 20s seated near the front spoke up. "What about our personal relationship with Christ?", she asked. "It seems I never hear anything about that in the churches I've attended over the years. But isn't that the most important thing?"

I was silenced. What use is church if it doesn't connect its children with God? We could streamline our corporate structure, rework and simplify our doctrinal statements and develop workable solutions to the questions at the interface of religion and science, but if we are not helping each other cultivate deeply satisfying and life-forming relationships with God, what use is church?

What does a personal relationship with Jesus Christ look like? For some it is a deep, unshakable assurance that they have been forgiven. Like Paul, they see themselves as egregious sinners inexplicably chosen by God for salvation. For some of my friends, it means expecting frequent miracles of guidance or provision. For others, relationship means a sense of participation with Jesus as they engage in service. They see Jesus in the faces of people with needs. Then there are the Jobs and Habakkuks of the world whose interaction with God is characterized by perplexity and agonized questions about the justice of God in the face of human suffering. Some most sharply experience God through art: performing or listening to music, painting or photographing, or gazing in rapt wonder at pictures or outdoor scenes of exquisite loveliness. C. S. Lewis remarked on the sweetness and spiritual satisfaction that he found on occasion when ?he was wrestling with some passage of formal, highly theoretical theological discourse.

On the human level a relationship with God will take different forms, but Jesus pictures himself seeking a personal connection with each human individual. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone will open the door, I will come in and we will share dinner together" (Rev 3:20). Trying to work out the logistics of this picture will either get you bogged down in the impossibility of a personal God actually interacting in real time with billions of human individuals or caught up in spinning highly speculative solutions. We will make the most sense of this picture by paying attention to our romantic, artistic sensibilities.

At Adventist Today we value human intellect. We believe that God created us to think, to question, to probe, to analyze, to reason. We reject the notion that genuine Christianity contradicts reason. But this editor is equally convinced that reason is not adequate for a fully orbed response to reality. Aesthetics, music, visual arts, pottery, interior and landscape designs provide a valid, alternative way of responding to the world and to God. And romance, crazy, illogical, tempestuous, exhilarating, energizing romance, teaches us truth we can learn no other way. And then there are our spiritual sensibilities.

The Adventist church needs careful analysis and vigorous debate. We must correct systemic injustice and the woeful inefficiency of our current bureaucracy. We must be honest about our history and our failures. But if we are going to address the spiritual needs of our members and our friends, we must certainly attend to their first spiritual need: a personal connection with God.

The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come. And let everyone who hears, Come!"