Be Less Intentional

by Catrin Harland-Davies.

From ‘intentional community’ to ‘intentional presence’, the idea of ‘being intentional’ about something has become key to Christian mission in the last decade or so. It often carries an important emphasis on the kind of witness which remains consciously aware of God’s presence and of God’s love for all creation, though I suspect that, as with all such words, it has rather too often become just a piece of jargon, sounding ‘right’, but without meaning anything very specific.

So, in an attempt to reclaim its significance for myself, I have found myself reflecting on what it means to do something intentionally, but also wondering whether there might be an equal and opposite emphasis that is every bit as important? What does ‘accidental mission’ look like? Or, for that matter, ‘accidental presence’ or ‘accidental community’?

To state the obvious for a moment, if I act intentionally, it distinguishes that action from something I didn’t mean to do. It’s not an inadvertent benefit of a main action, nor is it something that I would have chosen to avoid but failed to anticipate. I might intentionally engage in conversation with someone, which is very different from getting buttonholed as I’m trying to sneak past!

The related nouns – intention and intent – are subtly and interestingly different, I think. Intention speaks perhaps of hope or expectation – it is my intention to visit my parents next week, or to get more exercise. It implies planning and expectation, but stops just a little short of the more definite “I will visit my parents.” Intent, on the other hand, feels more to do with the motive behind specific actions. In law, hurting someone with intent to do so is distinguished from the same hurt caused by carelessness or accident. A ‘ministry of presence’ is often (slightly tongue-in-cheek) referred to as ‘loitering with intent’. It is, in other words, intentional presence. There is a purpose behind my loitering; I am not just short of things to fill my time. The intent may be to be available for conversation if needed, or it may be explicitly to share the Gospel. It is not the actual action, but it’s the reason for it.

All of this is good and important. But I am very acutely aware that some of the most important and profound encounters that I have had, which have been transformative and God-filled, have not been done with intent. It’s often when I’m off-guard, off-duty, loitering with no intent at all, that God creeps into my interactions. For that matter, some of the best expressions of community that I have met with have been entirely unplanned and unintentional. When I worked in a university, students would spend Freshers’ Week going to various events to meet like-minded friends, but the deep and lasting friendships were just as often formed in the registration queue, or trying to operate the driers in the laundry.

And, for that matter, those of us who preach will know that some of the most important things that are heard in a sermon, which give most comfort or challenge to someone who needs it, are precisely not what we have planned on saying, or even thought we had said. Because sometimes, God doesn’t work through our careful plans or our intent, but in the unexpected and unintended. Sometimes, God may actually work through us despite our intent.

Or just look at the ministry of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, or that of his earliest followers, in the book of Acts. Sometimes, there is a very clear intent to be available, to minister, to teach, to offer time. At other times, things just happen. A woman touches Jesus’ cloak, while he’s hurrying to a dying child; people hunt him out while he’s praying; his disciples wake him up from a well-earned nap to ask for help in a storm. The richness of Jesus’ ministry comes, in part, from the mixture of his divinely intentional presence in the world and his availability to those who surprise him.

And similarly with his followers. We read in Acts how Saul, on his way to Damascus, found that his own intention might not be the key driver of events, and Peter, summoned by Cornelius, allowed his best intentions to be overridden by the prompting of the Spirit. But we also read how, much later in his ministry, Saul / Paul went to Jerusalem, knowing that it would likely lead to his arrest, in an act of quite intentional witness – as, of course, had Jesus done when his ‘time had come’.

Sometimes, our intent matters. But what matters more is God’s intent. We should be seeking to witness intentionally, and intentionally to live as disciples of Jesus, but our own intentions must not and cannot direct the intent of God for us and for all creation. We need to be open to surprises – to the overthrowing of our best intentions. I would like to suggest that, in the midst of our intentional following of Jesus, we need to ensure that – just sometimes – we are a little less intentional.