home again

Its good to be home and with family again. Its time to catch up with friends and share some experiences and get back to normal. Had coffee with Paul McGillivary this morning and those are becoming addicting. We have had hundreds of these kinds of meetings and they could go on for hours. We just speak on Kingdom issues and things we're thinking about, I guess they are our OCC staff meetings and I would be okay with having one daily. Going to a movie with Glenn Johnson today and it will be good to catch up with him as well. Scheduled a lunch with K-Rains next week and am planning a trek to Indy to see the legendary Bill Bean. A monastic camping retreat is also on the calendar for some solitude, reflection and prayer.

I will be blogging on this more but came home to my autographed copy of Jim Henderson's 1st book, "a.k.a. Lost: Discovering ways to connect with the People Jesus Misses Most." Its a book on doable evangelism and I can't wait to sit down and read it. Jim has been hugely influential in my life as God hooked us up back in 1998 when I was in a real fragile place. He mentored me over the next 3-4 years and his ideas were foundational to what Ordinary Community would become. He helped me be myself in ministry and set me up for a new chapter in my ministry life. We met at 7:30 a.m. at Starbucks every friday morning for about 2 years and I remember when he would share his ideas on doable evangelism when they were raw in his heart and now they are in book form for all to read. His take on "ordinary attempts" have changed the way Nicki and I see God's missing children, I think y'all need to read it :)

I have reflected on many things on my journey and my mind is pretty active on a lot of topics right now. Most acutely is the need for me to put some more energy into what apostolic relational networks could look like and be more intentional. I'm also thinking of how to be more intentional about passing on our values, theology and ways of reproducing Kingdom communities to the next generation. What could their training look like in real life? How can we provide a kind of "life on life" training model where the Kingdom is more caught than taught? I'm also wondering about what kinds of new communities could we start up this year. I'm feeling the urge to take some more land as long as that means people finding Jesus to be the center of their reality.

Its good to be home but no rest for the weary. The War rages on.

peace,