Categories: My Story, Rantings, what I did today
Cyberspace is once again available to me, and I’m enjoying my first morning as a Denver resident at a nearby coffee shop before hitting my looong list of things to do to get settled. But here, for your amazement amusement, is the story of our trip.
CHAPTER 1: The Turbulent Take-off
Categories: My Story, Things that are too good to keep
So if you’ve been following along, you now know that we are leaving Tulsa and moving to Denver in less than three weeks. (If you haven’t been following, read part 1, part 2 and part 3 to catch up.)
It might seem a bit sudden–and definitely the move date itself is coming up more quickly than we had anticipated–but honestly, we’ve been pondering this move for awhile. We didn’t say much to very many people, simply because we didn’t have details about how, when, where, and “We’re gonna leave sometime in the not-too-distant future” just seemed too vague. 🙂 We’ve spent most of this season not knowing how we could do this–and this last trip to Denver, enough pieces of the puzzle came together to prompt a commitment from us.
Categories: My Story, Things that are too good to keep
If you’re just arriving, I urge you to read part 1 and part 2 before reading this.
So after all the teasing and buildup about BIG change coming, I’ve taken two posts so far to drag it on as long as I can take the time to explain what we’re dreaming of, and why.
I’ve shared about wanting to see a creative community be born, one that doesn’t look like “church” or “ministry” as we’ve understood it before, one in which the arts can be genuinely encouraged and nurtured, and one in which the love of Christ can be freely expressed in a natural manner, without agenda. And I’ve shared our conviction that it needs to happen organically, not by “starting” something, but by embedding ourselves in a community and doing what we do.
Categories: food for thought, moments of truth, My Story
Have you ever heard this riddle?
Categories: changing mindsets, food for thought, My Story
Categories: changing mindsets, food for thought, My Story
For a combination of reasons I still don’t quite comprehend, probably going all the way back to the womb…I grew up with a “promise child” mentality. I have had an inflated sense of responsibility for as long as I can remember. I was a perpetual overachiever, was always considered the smartest kid in the class, had an acute sense of conscience bordering on torment, and showed an interest in spiritual things beyond my years. Also, my gift for music blossomed at an early age, which garnered me even more attention. And being an only child (read: my parents’ only shot at successful offspring) couldn’t have done anything but intensified the sense of expectation I felt. It seemed nearly every adult I connected with saw me as “special”, someone destined for some sort of greatness.
Categories: food for thought, My Story
Categories: food for thought, My Story
(Part 1 here.)
As I mentioned in my previous post, my propensity for being legalistic and judgmental formed in my youth–a toxic cocktail consisting of equal parts overactive conscience, inflated sense of responsibility, overachiever mentality, impossible self-imposed expectations, and incredible guilt for failing to meet said expectations.
Categories: food for thought, My Story
Geesh, do I gotta? After reading that title back, I’m not really sure I want to write this post after all…
…
Oh…all right. 🙂
One thing I’ve grappled with for most of my life, and especially as a youngster, is an overactive sense of conscience. I’m a lot better than I used to be, but there was a time when I couldn’t do anything without second-guessing my own motives and assuming the worst of myself. The only explanation I can come up with as to why I was this way is that as a kid growing up in a broken home, I developed a warped sense of responsibility and became an overachiever. At any rate–I had high standards for myself, and I beat myself up with guilt when I failed to meet those standards. I had a deep desire to be “good” (which isn’t a bad thing), but I tormented myself when I wasn’t.
Categories: food for thought, My Story
Pastoring people has been an interesting journey for me. Not only have I learned some things about people in general–I’ve learned a lot about myself, including some stuff that was very hard to look at.
For a good part of my earlier years as a pastor, I felt personally responsible to fix people who were broken. I thought it was my job, and I thought I’d be failing as a pastor somehow if I didn’t. In my sincere efforts to fix people, I’d stick my nose into places where it didn’t belong, speak the “truth” to people when they were not ready to hear it–or my perception of the “truth”–and all sorts of other things like that, justifying my actions by saying it was my job. In fact, one of my favorite things to say in these moments was, “I wouldn’t be doing a good job as a pastor if I didn’t say this to you.”
