TILL HE COMES Blog

As many of you know, I am interested in church planting. I am currently attending a relatively new church plant in Arlington, TX, and hope to be involved in more church planting efforts in the future. Some of my favorite conferences and favorite books are related to church planting.

Many of you who read my blog are also interested in church planting, and so I want to introduce you to a friend of mine, Nathan Laughlin (and his wife Amy), who is heading to Vancouver, BC next year to plant a network of churches called “Open Circle.” What they are doing is so simple anybody can do it, so innovative it is exciting to think about the possibilities, and so missional it could change the face of church planting.  

Go check out out his site at opencirclevillage.org, listen to his podcast, read the blog. Who knows? Maybe you can start an Open Circle in your own neighborhood!

6 Comments »

On my drive home from work tonight, I realized that I am watching my life with great interest. I feel like I am on some sort of great adventure, and I have no idea where things will end up. Earlier today, I saw a bumper sticker that read, “I have no idea where I am going.” I laughed, because that is how I feel.

Some days I feel a bit like God has “benched me.” Other days, I feel like only now, am I finally “in the game.”

If you had told me one year ago that after graduation from seminary, I would be cleaning carpets for 70 hours per week, I would have said you were crazy. If I had made a numbered list of all the possible careers I wanted to do, carpet cleaning would have been dead last. And the crazy thing is that I kind of enjoy it! But that is not the only thing that intrigues me about where God is taking me. Whereas I used to read 3-4 books per week, I am now lucky to read 3-4 pages per week. Whereas I used to spend hours every day on in-depth research and study of Scripture, I now barely get time to simply read it. I used to preach three times per week. So far, I haven’t preached in over two months.

But guess what? I now personally talk about Jesus with way more people per week than I did per year when I was doing all that reading and studying and preaching (which doesn’t really count).

So I’m watching my life. I don’t have a 10-step plan of how to get where I want to see myself go. I’m just trying to listen to God and follow His leading. And right now, He wants me to clean carpets. I’m not fully sure why. But I like what He is doing, and how He is answering my prayer to bend His will ”to break, blow, burn, and make me new” (see previous post on “My Life Prayer“).

4 Comments »

My family and I spent the day at the lake recently (It’s been about 100 degrees for over a month now!), and as part of the day’s events, we built a sand castle. Allow me to brag about my construction skills. The sand castle was amazing, complete with walls, turrets, gates, flags, a moat, and even a cannon with little cannon balls.

When we were nearly done, Selah asked “Can we come back and play with this castle next week?”

“No,” I replied. “Someone will probably come along and knock it down.”

“Why?” she asked.

My wife chimed in, “Because that’s the nature of sand castles. We build them to enjoy building them, and then leave them for others to look at before they knock them down.” 

Selah, not at all upset by this information, said, “Well, we better build a good one then, so that they enjoy looking at it before they knock it down.” 

That, I think, is my new philosophy to life and mission. Everything I do in life will probably be knocked down once I am gone. In fact, it seems that some people are trying to knock me down before I even get the first wall built. So the best I can do is build in such a way to (1) enjoy the process of building, and (2) build so that someone enjoys looking at what I build before it is destroyed.

I figure that if God wants my life work to outlast me, that’s up to Him. Attempting to build something for myself when God is not behind it is like trying to protect sand castles against the tide.

6 Comments »