What Can Happen When You Stay With One Person (even when you keep leaving)
By Theodore X.
I don't like moving around constantly from person to person - going here, there, and then home again. Some people are built for that. They can cover ground, connect with many, keep a lot of plates spinning.
I'm not one of them. I like to stay with one person.
Not stay put - I'm rarely in the same place for long. I mean I keep coming back to the same person, the same couple, the same village, year after year, instead of moving on to the next.
It sounds lazy. Honestly, I sometimes wondered if it was. But in retrospect, I see that this is actually the pattern. A biblical pattern. And what it produces is something I could never have organised or manufactured on my own.
A Week In A Village
In 2005, a door opened to a closed country in the region. I went to stay with a couple — a husband and wife who had just come alive in God. They were part of an underground church. And because of who they were and where they lived, I couldn’t ‘do’ very much - I was the wrong colour for a village in that nation.
I couldn't go outside. So I just stayed with them.
We read the Word together. I introduced them a bit more to the work of the Holy Spirit. We talked and prayed and sat together in their home.
And at some point during that week, something came up that nobody had planned for: the Lord exposed an area of brokenness in their marriage. They were on fire for God — genuinely — but the marriage wasn't going well. So we addressed it. Quietly, in the simplicity of their home.
Then I left.
Every three or four months, I'd come back. We'd have coffee. I'd meet one or two of their friends. I didn't have a program, a training schedule, nothing like that. I just turned up, sat with them, and then left again.
What I Didn't Do
I cannot take credit for any part of what happened next. I want to say that plainly.
As they experienced healing and growth in their marriage, they began to go out.
They started speaking to other village leaders and pastors about marriage and family life — because that was where they had experienced healing. The pastors they shared with began to change how they ran their homes and ministries. And the couple received more training in this area, developed their own approach, found their own lane.
I didn't tell them to do any of that. I gave them the Word and the Holy Spirit, and I got out of the way.
About five years after that first week in their home we had a gathering in a remote part of the country — away from where the officials could see. About 25 pastors and their wives, all gathered for a marriage seminar. The couple had organized it. They were leading it. I was there more as a guest than anything else.
Not long after that, they called with some unexpected news. They had been invited to appear on national television — three seasons, speaking about family life. You can't preach the gospel openly, but you can quote Scripture.
So there it was: Scripture, being quoted over three seasons on national TV.
From one couple in one village.
And the ball started rolling when someone stayed in one place for a week.
The Thing That Surprised Me Most
I keep saying this because I need to: I didn't do very much. Really.
I ministered to an area of brokenness in the greatest simplicity, in their rooms. I introduced them a bit more to the work of the Holy Spirit. And I moved out of the way.
What they did from there — that was all God, working through them.
I think sometimes we underestimate what happens when someone gets genuinely connected with the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.
We assume they'll need more training, more input, more guidance from us. And maybe sometimes they do.
But in my experience, more often they need to be released. They need someone to believe that the same God who worked in you can work in them. They need to discover that they carry everything required to do whatever God is asking them to do.
I'm not sure I even saw what was happening at the time. I was just visiting them, drinking coffee, meeting their friends. It didn't feel like ‘ministry’ in any way I could describe or report back on. But God was doing something in that couple that I could not have designed and could not have replicated by working harder or running more sessions or bringing in more people.
That couple didn't need me to stay. They needed me to go, and trust them to God.
What This Means For How You Show Up
If you're in urban spaces, meeting people in the margins of ordinary life — the ones who won't come to a church service, who work irregular hours, who are quietly carrying brokenness they don't know can be addressed — what they need from you is presence.
Sit with them. Open the Word. Pray. Create space for the Holy Spirit to surface what needs to surface. And when it does, address it simply - in their language, in their world.
Then go. Come back when you can. Drink coffee with them. Meet their friends. Don't try to manage what God is doing.
What grows from that — if it grows — will be more than you organized. It will go places you can't go. It will reach people you'll never meet. It will quote scripture on platforms you didn't build and never imagined.
All because you stayed with one person.
Getting Practical
A Scripture — Luke 10:5-7
"Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house.”
As you think about God's vision for your city and/or affinity group:
1) Jesus told the seventy-two to find "a son of peace" in each town and remain in that one household rather than moving from house to house. Who is the person of peace God may already have placed in front of you — someone you've met but haven't yet stayed with?
2) The couple in the village didn't need more training. They needed someone to remain with them long enough for the Holy Spirit to surface what needed to surface. Is there someone you're currently "visiting" who might actually need you to stay?
3) What would it look like this week to resist the pull to cover more ground, and instead return - again - to the one household or the one person you've already begun with?
Born and bred in Southeast Asia, T. Xavier has thirty years of living as Kingdom worker in Europe and Asia - sometimes ‘full time’, sometimes tentmaking. He is currently serving with an urban Disciple Making Movement Team in his city.
© 2026 Theodore X. All rights reserved.
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