What I’d Do Differently (excerpt)

As a side note before sharing this excerpt…among the many, many things that have been happening with (to?) me lately is that last month I was invited to join the board of Communitas Collective, an online community for the disenfranchised, and another place where I contribute blog-wise. CC is also undergoing some exciting changes, the most recent of which is combining the three blogs into one, now called “The Collective Blog.” I encourage you to go check out the site, and continue to check back as more changes take place in the next few weeks. I’m privileged to be part of what is happening at CC.

Meanwhile, I know that this is cheating (kind of), but while I’m still digging out from my move, here’s an excerpt from my recent contribution to CC. We’ll try to get back on track in the next couple of days….

“WHAT I’D DO DIFFERENTLY”

This week, my family and I have made a major move from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Denver, Colorado. It’s a complete life change for us, a place of uncertainty within a season of uncertainty; but we are certain that God is with us, and that He is leading us…and we are seeing the evidence of that almost daily. So it’s cool. 🙂

As a matter of course, the house church we’ve led for nearly 10 years is disbanding. This was an experiment from the start, beginning as an institutional church and morphing into an organic one–a learning experience with no playbook to follow. We’ve been sensing for the past two years that this expression was coming to the natural end of its life cycle. At times like these, especially, I get pretty introspective. Even while I think about the future, I look backward also, to make sure I’ve learned everything I could gain from the experience to take with me into the next season.

I know many of us who are “out here”–meaning away from institutional forms of church, or in an in-between place–are in this place because in some way we saw that what was happening around us wasn’t working well. And each of us has a different perspective on what we’d do “if I knew then what I know now”. But speaking from the perspective of one who has led…if I ever were to plant another church gathering, here are some things I’d do differently…

Read here for the rest…