Glorious Mud

We have the audio up from the Members Meeting last Sunday night where Darrin, Bob, and I cast vision for our campus transitioning into an autonomous local church.  It was a night full of good questions, excitement, and potential.  My previous posts amplified on some of this material. You can listen for yourself here .

I have been reading Darrin's new book, Church Planter, and have really been enjoying it... like a well-timed kick in the butt.  But that is pretty much how Darrin rolls.  He says the hard word in a way that makes it less daunting and challenging in a good way... like a good coach. So - anyway - reading this morning and was hit with this quote from Allender (from Leading with a Limp).  It was what I needed to hear. "Leaders choose daily, but the real weight on their shoulders lies in the need to decide.  And there are no easy decisions.  To decide requires a death, a dying to a thousand options, the putting aside of a legion of possibilities in order to choose just one.  De-cide.  Homo-cide.  Sui-cide.  The root word for decide means "to cut off."  All decisions cut us off; separate us from early infinite options as we select just one single path.  And every decision we make earns us the favor of some and the disfavor of others....

As most of you know, The Journey made some waves last year. One of the many ways our church connects with our local culture is by hosting discussion oriented events at local gathering spots. One of the events, Theology at the Bottleworks (TATB), takes place at Schlafly Bottle Works, a local micro-brewery and restaurant, caught national attention, and generated more than just a little mis-information about us and our ministries. I haven't blogged on this topic up to this point because there was more than enough being written already and I really didn't want to add O2 to the fire. And I guess if I am being honest, I would probably have said a number of things that I might now regret, not because they shouldn't have been said as much as the fact that I probably would have said those things out of pride and anger (aka sin). OK, no "probably" there. I would have. This topic isn't so hot any more and the previous discussions tended to produce more heat than lig...