I know I said yesterday that my venting was done, but I'm fiding that hardly the case. Last night however was a dose of good medicine for my mental/emotional health. Had a BBQ with McGillivary, Canipe and Johnson. We must have spent an hour conjuring up 80's Christian music artists and our memories of them, breaking out into lyrics when the moment caught us. Around the fire a little later on, my daughters quizzed the trio of pastors with questions of God, the devil and the purpose of creation. It was pretty funny. At one point when McGillivary was explaining to Ali why God made us, Ali turned to him and said, "now what does that mean in English?" ha ha.
Leaving this afternoon with the McGillivary's to the annual conference for the Mideast Baptist Conference where Ordinary Community Church will be taken off "church plant" status and officially affiliated as an established "church". This is kind of a marker moment for me. I began this journey over 4 years ago in complete pain and desperation, believing that if this didn't work, I was out of church for life. Well, this experiment has changed my entire life and reality. I have tasted of the Kingdom of God so deeply and so profoundly. Its nothing very exciting, it truly is quite ordinary and that's the beauty. And we're not alone. So many of you are out there in communities and are a part of the larger Story that we find ourselves in. This weekend will be fun just to drive and hangout with the McGillivary's, do some dreaming of the future of OCC and I will be teaching a seminar on "living out an old faith in a new world". We'll see how that goes. Hopefully I'll politely rustle some feathers.

Stop and notice the Kingdom around you today.

peace,