Glorious Mud

I knew when I announced that The Journey: Metro East would transition toward becoming an independent, autonomous church that I was in for a lot of conversations.  I was prepared to work hard to cast vision clearly, honestly, and compellingly.  So, I haven't be surprised by the need to cast vision - and then to do it again in short time.  It isn't surprising - we are getting ready to do something that just isn't done very often.  Healthy hives are rare enough, but the transition of a video venue to an autonomous church is as rare as finding a snipe on a snipe hunt. I have come to see that church splits are actually quite easy at least in the beginning.  All you have to do is rally people around a "common enemy."  Just gather people together by what you all don't like or are angry about - and that gives momentum to the vision.  (This can only last for awhile, though.  Eventually all that sinful negativity will sap all the energy out of the church ...

You read that right - the Journey Metro East, a video venue of The Journey in St. Louis, MO, is hiving off into a church plant. Last night at our Campus Meeting, Darrin Patrick, Bob Bickford, and I cast vision for what is coming for the Journey Metro East: we are going to become an autonomous church plant.  The executive elders and I have been working toward this actively behind the scenes for the last year - and our campus leadership team and I have been at it hyper-actively for the last two months.  So it was great to be able to make it public to our people. Last night was an incredible flood of emotions for me.  Several people told me that I looked "giddy."  And, I think, that is an accurate description of how I felt.  God has made his will clear to me and the other elders and I am incredibly excited as I look forward to the continued unleashing of blessing as we make much of Jesus. But there were other emotions in there too.  I am a little sad and...