"Call it a clan, call it a tribe, call it a network, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one." ~ Jane Howard

"We were created to draw life and nourishment from one another the way roots of an oak tree draw life from the soil. Community - living in vital connectedness with others - is essential to human life." ~ John Ortberg

"Human beings who give themselves to relational greatness - who have friends they laugh with, cry with, learn with, fight with, dance with, live and love and grow old and die with - these are human beings who lead magnificent lives." ~ John Ortberg

* These quotes were stolen (I mean resourced) from Jim Best's blog. They describe how I felt this weekend.

Friday night was family night, a couple DVD's, popcorn, my wife and kids and our new big screen TV (not a member of the family, yet). Just relaxing and doing nothing but cuddling. As a kid from a divorced home and growing up without a Dad, I cherish these times of touch.

Saturday morning is devoted to watching my girls play soccer, Ali is really getting pretty good. Then we had a baby dedication gathering at our home for Maggie Drake. The community moved from our home to a farm for some animals, wagon ride, pumpkin picking and a corn maze. Then back to our home for 3 different kinds of chili, cornbread, cake, hot chocolate, smores and dough-boys (new pastry idea over a fire). Then the kids are playing, conversations are happening inside, football is being watched on our new "ministry" TV and some of us spent about 2-3 hours around the fire outside just chatting about life, church, faith, jobs etc. etc. etc. What a great night! What great community!
Sunday morning we were back at it for our monthly leadership/business meeting for Ordinary Community. With 4 house churches going now and new people joining/hanging around them, intentionality/organization is becoming more of a team project. And God has built that team. We worshipped, commissioned the Bowens and strategized together how to strategically give away more of our income from tithing. We keep about 10% of our income for internal purposes and try to strategically give away 90% of our income as we can find need. This may be the most satisfying thing I have ever done in ministry. Everybody makes a sacrifice and we can tangibly love others with financial gifts. Almost too much fun to be Christianity :)
And then Bob Bowen and I did some hard core business work on the "mayhem" event coming Jan. 9-10. Have I mentioned this before? Oh, yeah, can't talk about it yet. I promise there will be a website launching within days and then you can scramble to register you and your communities for a "coming out" party about missional communities.
God bless you as you build the Kingdom today.

peace,