The Long Trip Home

Fate has brought me here on this fine Sunday evening in downtown Champaign, Illinois. Actually, it wasn't really fate...more a reasonable price at the La Quinta down the street and a good stopping place on our way to Florida.

This morning we left Minneapolis for home. Amber and kids have been there since the week after Memorial Day, and I returned last Wednesday. Our plan was to linger on our way home and stop a few places, but we've chosen for the more direct route. Minneapolis - Champaign - Atlanta - Gainesville. We'll be in Gainesville Tuesday through Friday morning because of Amber's business.

Today was the worst travel day we've had on this vacation by far. That's one of the reasons I'm at this coffee shop...the kids we're driving me insane and I needed to get out of there before I completely lost it. We got stuck in a storm-induced traffic jam in Wisconsin that was literally the worst storm I've ever driven through. To make matters worse, I didn't eat too well over the weekend and my stomach and lower regions have been fighting back all day. Lovely combination.

More about the trip and my three weeks alone at home later. I'm too tired to get into details now. Good stuff is happening though, and for that I'm thankful, even if today sucked.

Anyway, pray for us tomorrow if you get a chance. We'll be touring the heartland in our family truckster. Peace.

I ♥ SoFla

This is why I love calling South Florida home.

I wanted to tell a story.

When Mike and I first were sent to plant a Vineyard church, we really thought we would just plant a smaller version of what we left in Gainesville and continue to plant many smaller churches along the way. We really had no idea that in the process our entire worldview would be radically changed and ourselves too along the way. I understand how other Vineyard pastors in our area would see us as angry (at least in the beginning). We were wrestling with huge shifts in thinking, reading life altering works by, Nouwen, Willard, Peterson, and Foster just to name a few.

After soaking in these wiser, older people writing about life on "the way", we could do nothing else but be respectful to the call that Jesus had for us. We were getting routine calls about how we were doing. Well not really how we were doing as people, but how we were doing as far as numbers went at our meetings, which of course made us feel like crap. What was our plan and how where we working that plan? Other pastors at local meetings actually told Mike "Been there done that!" as if to say, what we were trying to process through was not valuable or needed. Another pastor actually said to Mike "I hear what you are saying, but the consumer church thing is really working for me." He said it tongue and cheek but the implications were clear. All of these things combined kept making us feel more and more alienated from our local Vineyard tribe. Thankfully, our sending pastor has been for us and trusted us without fail to follow Jesus. Through this blog we have made many, many like-minded friends in the Vineyard all over the country, and for that we are thankful. We agonized and prayed hard over our decision to remain a part of the Vineyard. We asked our faith community to pray with us. We asked our extended Elpida family to pray for us. We also sought council from many friends (including our sending pastor) who knew us personally on what we should do. Through some very clear turns of events, God led us out of the Vineyard. I cried...long and hard. I wanted it to be different. I wanted to be accepted and embraced as valid members of that community even though we would probably never grow a huge church, although we would help many, many people follow Jesus more deeply. I am jealous that the Keck’s where warmly embraced by their local RO in the Vineyard and told that the church needs more expressions like ours! (I love you Beth and Eric. ) I secretly thought we should move and go somewhere else. Somewhere that what we are trying to do wasn’t so foreign. But alas, it is foreign everywhere. I am tied to the people in or local context. We currently meet in a home because it is best for all of our young children but we have gathered together to be the church all over the place here in South Florida.

When we first planted I had a vision of a young boy burying a big suit of armor in the sand and running off another direction in a little loincloth. I felt like God said, "Saul in Saul’s armor was one "bad mother" but it doesn’t fit you. Don’t try to make it fit just follow me, I will show you the way." I hang on to the word and vision all of the time. I have learned over the years that anger is actually a secondary emotion. The actual emotion (which is usually hurt or fear) is covered by anger in order to protect oneself. So I am sorry if people hear anger in some bloggers' tone. Some are most likely hurt that so many of God’s people don’t understand what we are doing. They say we are rebellious and not wanting to listen to authority. I can’t speak for anyone other than my close friends but we all really want to follow the authority of Jesus more deeply. We know that there are those that are called to be in the traditional church are doing the best they can in that very hard work. Trust us, we know how hard the work is. We are just wondering if that work is producing the results you want?

I agree that the previous conversation would be a waste of time if we were purely trying to change someone’s mind that may not want to hear us out. I feel like it has been a wise use of time as it continues to sharpen my thinking, and challenge my assumptions. That is what this blog has always been about--our process. I don’t really care if we change anyone’s mind. I only care that Mike and I as people continue to press onward and upward in the call of Christ Jesus for us and that along the way we take many people with us.

Grace and Peace to All in the house!

The Problem With Blogging...

I've been having an interesting conversation today with an anonymous commenter on this post below. You need to go read the entire comment thread to get the whole context, but here is part of my latest response that I think has some interesting application:

"See, this is the problem with blogs, the internet, and the whole “emerging conversation” that I don’t really subscribe to anyway (I also don’t subscribe to much of what is known as the “house church movement” either, although our churches do meet in homes). You can never see what goes on behind the scenes in the lives of these people. When I make any critique about the state of the church, I try to keep it as general and impersonal as possible because of this fact. But generalizations are always imperfect because they never capture the individual stories. So in reality, these critiques (at least from my perspective) are really only good for myself and our community. And by the way, that is the nature of blogging after all. This is our process, our internal struggle with understanding how to follow Jesus in a new world."

I Found My Inner Redneck

Brant and I and a few friends went to see the 2006 Crash-A-Rama at Orlando Speed World. The track is actually located in Bithlo, Florida, the brunt of many a redneck joke in Central Florida. Anyway, Crash-A-Rama did much goodness for my soul. I could tell you about it...but it would be better to show you...



Here's some photos for the heck of it...