Jet streams are currents of air in the upper levels of the atmosphere. They are key to forecasting where weather systems will travel as systems are moved by the current.

In John 17, Jesus prays ‘for those who will believe in me…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me… I in them and you in me… then the world will know that you sent me.’ In Ephesians 1 Paul writes ‘you were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth… when you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.’ By the Triune God’s gift of grace, the Christ-follower is welcomed within the relationship of the Triune God. A Christ-follower is also welcomed into God’s liminal work of the redemption of creation. The Christ-follower is welcomed into the movement of God, both in relationship and in mission.

Perichoresis is a theological term that describes the movement, the choreography of the Triune God as each person of the Trinity experiences co-inherence without commixture. The Trinity is the perfect confluence, and the epitome of Family Systems Theory’s forces of togetherness and individuality. The Trinity is fully together as one and distinctly individual as three.

The singular Christ-follower is certainly intended to be part of this movement. However a focus on the individual will lose the more fulsome picture. Thinking systems we see that the fuller system that is the church is also welcomed into this perichoretic movement. A leader must consider not only movement within the system, but the movement and direction of the system itself. Is the congregational ‘weather system’ being caught by and moved into the ‘jetstream’ that is the relational and missional movement of the Triune God’s grace and love? Or is it caught in the eddy of anxiety, reactivity, and internal focus of a simmering storm?

There is a river near our home and on hot summer days we will tie a number of inner tubes together and travel down river. There is good movement when we are in the current. But sometimes the group of inner tubes drops out of the current, or gets caught in an eddy and movement stops. Just one person paddling with their hands can move the whole system, and one tube caught back into the current brings the others with it. A leader has the capacity to bring a system into the current.

By striving for emotional maturity, in seeking to become well-differentiated, by thinking systems, in being guided by principles and not problems, a leader can move the system toward a place where it begins to get caught up in the perichoretic current of the Trinity. Caught into the greater system of the Triune God, those in a church's system will see themselves incorporated and acclimated into the redemptive, moving, grace, love, and mission of the Triune God.