The 1992 film A River Runs through It, based on the autobiographical novel of Norman MacLean, chronicles two brothers coming of age in early twentieth-century Missoula, Montana. The boys grow up under the stern tutelage of their minister father, played by Tom Skerritt. This preacher teaches his sons about life, grace, and love through the art of fly-fishing. But as the boys mature and follow very different paths (one straight-and-narrow, the other wild) they find that fishing is the one bond that still draws them together as adults.

Thus the title A River Runs through It was not a description of the land as much as it was a description of a recurring theme in their lives. When all else failed, they could always go back to the river and bond around their love of fly-fishing.

If I had to pick a title for the Christian community experience, it might be "A Cross Runs through It." When all else fails, we can always go back to the cross and bond around our love for the One who died for us there.