A wave of contented sighs and slight smiles swept and crept across the faces of those sitting with me at Park Avenue United Methodist Church. "One hour" had been the promise. "One hour each week. Maybe less, never more."

Mention of Manhattan conjures many images in our minds: rivers of yellow cabs all blaring their horns, people bustling down the sidewalks, cold urban valleys of gray and black. Such notions, even if informed by years of watching NYPD Blue, tell only part of the story. The variety of people, buildings, attitudes, languages – in effect, the variety in basically everything – seldom gets seen by nonresidents. While serving as a pastor on the Upper East Side last year, I stumbled upon one of the few universals of the Manhattan experience. Like nowhere else I have encountered, Manhattan seems to push its residents into living constantly in overdrive, filling personal schedules to the brim with work and play (and everything in between), and doing all of it at a frenetic pace. Our images of rivers of taxis and crowded, hurried sidewalks have a lot of truth to them: folks in Manhattan are a people on the go, and usually they're trying to get there as fast as they can so as to work or play at a similar pace.

Thus the promise of "one hour" elicited sighs and smiles of satisfaction from those who had gathered to form a Covenant Discipleship Group at Park Avenue United Methodist Church. Each came with a desire to cultivate a deeper relationship with Christ and a life lived more like him. Each came with a schedule already spilling over with other commitments, few if any of them negotiable. The commitment to "one hour" provided, in a manageable block of time, an opportunity for spiritual growth. However, those of us who grew up spending a lot of time doing "church stuff" throughout the week might question how useful a one-hour "program" could be. Yet in our spiritual lives, as in all things, the value lies not only in the time committed, but also in how that time gets spent.

In a culture that teaches us to move rapidly in our busy schedule from one task to the next (and, in particular, in the city known as the most hurried of hurried places), participation in a Covenant Discipleship group affords a supreme opportunity. As my driver's ed teacher taught us about railroad crossings, Covenant Discipleship groups allow us to "Stop, Look, and Listen." During one hour together, we pull back briefly from our constant movement in order to view our lives in a different way.

Such a pause, I found, provided enormous insight to us in that group at Park Avenue UMC. When we focus only on the immediate present and the tasks at hand, when life becomes increasingly full of things to do and places to go, we often fail to look beyond our next meeting or our current assignment. The Covenant Discipleship group affords us a chance to examine our lives and ask ourselves "How have I responded to the grace of God this week?" and "In what ways am I reflecting the light of Christ to others?" Through the lens of covenant and time together, we see the movements of grace in our lives and the appropriateness of our response.

Too often, it seems, our failure to pause and reflect on our lives parallels our failure to "Stop, Look, and Listen" to others. As we bustle down the sidewalk toward work (or down the parkway toward soccer practice), we also bustle past people. In our hurry to accomplish tasks, we neglect the task of forming and maintaining relationships with those with whom we interact. The greatest transformation I saw in participants in Park Avenue's Covenant Discipleship groups took place in areas of our lives where we covenanted to pause for others: truly listening when others speak with us; expressing genuine gratitude in a way that is felt by both parties; slowing down and offering a moment of assistance.

As each of us became more aware of our interactions with others throughout the week, we began to notice people more; and we began to notice the opportunities to be as Christ to others. New York, I learned, can make one feel very isolated from others, teaching us to ignore people as they ignore you. In and through participation in Covenant Discipleship groups, we learn to "Stop, Look, and Listen" to our lives and to others. We must also remember to listen to those with whom we make the spiritual journey. Gathering together and taking on the yoke of accountability serves as a reminder that we do not journey alone. We walk with sisters and brothers in Christ, and we move with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew Lawrence Pierce is a first-year student at The Divinity School at Duke University, where he has formed a Covenant Discipleship group with fellow students. In June 2003 he completed two years of service in New York City: first as a volunteer teacher with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, then as Pastoral Intern at Park Avenue United Methodist Church.