I want to be funny.
I want to have an accent that I can turn on and off as I wish.
I want to crave kale instead of pbc’s.
I want to be a minority…just for the jokes.
I want to make more money.
I want to need less sleep.
I want my house to always be clean.
I want to watch the A-team.
I want to cut my hair like Mr. T.
My wife wants direction.
I want my nickname to be either “The Tax” or “Tussin O’Malley”
I want to write better blog posts.

There’s no way to summarize the five days of discovery lab in one quick blog. It was an amazing week, a transformational week. In some ways it was absolutely nothing that I expected and in other ways it was exactly what I anticipated. I laughed more this week than I have in a long time. Seriously, I’ve got more good inside jokes from those five days than I’ve got from the last few years. Everyone just connected on a deep and enjoyable level. And it wasn’t only fun but it was a deeply spiritual and inspirational time.
What can I say? After getting grilled in direct interviews for 7ish hours, after leading the community in worship, after planing and presenting a proposal for a new church plant (that we had to create as a team in 6ish hours), after doing a ropes course, and lots of other things…all the while having the assessors standing behind us taking notes…it came down to our final interview on Thursday morning. Our interview was last, and as we watched each interviewee leave their interview (if they left the room at all!) in a more solemn fashion than we’d seen all week Jess and I began to get quite nervous.
While I can’t really tell you everything from the exit interview, because that would be awkward, I’ll give you the gist of it. They said all sorts of good and great things about us, but when it came down to it here’s the real prognosis (which happened to exactly match what Jessica and I came in thinking they would say): If we planted a church now we’d have, according to them, a moderate chance of success. But if we pursue their suggestions we’ll have a very high probability of success. They said that I’ve got to put myself into more situations where I’m being challenged on a deeper level. More or less they said that I’ve excelled at every level I’ve been at, but the problem is that I need to find situations where I’m not able to easily excel. Their interpretation of what that would look like was a.) more school (being around smart guys) and b.) spend time working at a very successful church that is further down the road than Renovatus (being around successful guys). They also said that my wife is the bomb (they didn’t say “bomb” per se, but they really did stress that Jessica is amazing and talented).
I was relieved and disapointed all at once to not have any surprises in the exit interview. The worst part about the whole process is that while we went in anticipating their exact response, we also anticipated leaving the week with a more clear view of what the next couple of years would look like. As it is the future is more wide open and unplanned right now than it’s been in a very long time.

…pictures to come…and I’m pretty sure that they’ll be good ones.

It’s official! I’ve finally got my bachelors degree! Ok, I actually graduated quite a few years ago, but up until today I had yet to receive my diploma. There was some mix up and my diploma got lost. They said I needed to pay $5 to order a new one. I said that I already paid for my diploma and I didn’t want to pay for another. And so the stalemate has sat…for three years…until today. Today I gathered the cash together and bought my diploma back.
So now, for the first time, I’ve got my diploma in my hand.
Anyone want to throw me a party?

(the great irony is as I’m writing this email I realized that I still haven’t opened the envelope to look at my diploma. For all I know it’s written out to Melvin Buckmeyer or Popeye Straws)

I don’t think I’ve ever heard any parent say “well, jonny’s head, hands, and feet got burnt off, but at least his chest is still in tact.”
THANKS NONFLAMMABLE PAJAMAS!

In my last post Sarah D. Said

Sometimes when I try to really stop and think about what we’re actually supposed to be about as Christ followers it boggles my mind. I literally don’t know what to do with how very different I’m afraid it is from what we have been doing. At this point it’s too big for my brain but I keep coming back to it and maybe one of these times I will have some idea of what to do. Christopher has me reading a book called “Revolution in World Missions” by K.P. Yohannan that has me going even further down the rabbit hole of realizing we’ve got it wrong. What to do?!

I’m not wanting to try to answer any of Sarah’s thoughts or questions, but I thought it was an interesting comment and figured that I’d write my thoughts about it.

What are we to do about the seemingly large dichotomy between what Christ-Followers are supposed to look like and what churches seem to produce. And if we realize that we seem to have gotten thing wrong, what are we supposed to do about it?

The church will never look like it is supposed to really because people are imperfect and the church is filled with imperfect people. Even the early church, which we have tried so hard to emulate, was pretty darn screwed up. The main problem isn’t that the church doesn’t look like it’s supposed to, the problem is that the intentions and purposes of the church often are so far off the priority that we read about in the Bible. If we aren’t even shooting in the right direction, how are we supposed to look even close to the God that we’re following? Luckily we have a gracious God right?
My biggest beef isn’t with the churches that have missed the point (I’m pretty sure Renovatus has missed the point in some way and I hope and pray that if/when we find out what it is we’ll have the humility and faith to make that change) my biggest beef is with the people who know better and choose to reject the church altogether. You know who you are. You’re the ones who say the church is supposed to look like this or that and you get pissed because the church is so far from what you think it should be (which is probably right) but instead of being an agent of change you use that as an excuse to stop being connected to a faith community. You think that because you’ve got a group of friends you hang out with who feel the same way that you don’t need the church. How is the church ever to change if all the people with a bigger vision just quit it?
So what should we do? We’ve got to learn to be missional in our own personal lives. We can’t expect the church to do things that we aren’t willing to do. Start a home community and invite your friends from work. Start taking food to a homeless dude in downtown. Live in intentional community with other people. Think creatively and purposefully. How can we be missional in the current place that we live, that’s the big question.

This post wasn’t everything I hoped it would be…but I just got my balls snipped alright?! Give me a flippin’ break!