I am marking this week the beginning of the seventh year since being totally surprised by an awakening that has forever altered my life. The last six years have been the most formative, insightful and enlightening of my entire life and are the basis and fund out of which my current work is being done. I think it is probably time to chronicle some of the journey because it is the impetus and foundation for the last three books I have written and probably more importantly the ttTribe-Manifesto we released a couple weeks ago. The Five Invitations manifesto is the culmination of this six year trek which issues forth in a sixth invitation to join me for the next leg of the journey I am on. So I thought i might be smart to give you a glimpse of that journey. For those of you frequenting this blog I am going to alternate the bible posts we are working on now with some autobiography. My hope is you will be able to better understand and frame the transformational trek I am on and why the tribe that is currently forming is starting a quiet revolution (currently in six countries)
Six years ago last week I preached my last message as a founding pastor of a local church. The run for the previous 17.5 years was nothing short of incredible. It was particularly so because I never had any intention of being a local church pastor. Some of you know that story. The short version is I planned on being an academic. A phone call from people in my home town to plant a church from a bible study I had started my junior year of high school led to just that, an unexpected, in my mind, church plant. I have written before about the incredible run, creativity, the ridiculously gifted people I got to work with. I will be honest in the years since leaving I have found few staffs with the alchemical mix and creativity anywhere. I knew we were blessed then, I shake my head in disbelief even more now.
That story is relatively well known and I tell it often. Most people in conference settings have heard me talk about the incredible song writer and worship leader Taryn and her equally though differently gifted systems thinking husband Scott. Most people have heard me tell stories about Amy, our experience designer or Mitzi our creative teams person. Many people have heard me tell about Sarah, now a well known and gifted author in her own right, and a molding force in my life. But the story I need to tell here isn’t about church systems, structures, home run service designs or the great people I was honored to work with. This is about my personal awakening, about the painful realization I was asleep. This is about the moment of my enlightenment (Paul says it more mystically than that when he uses a triple metaphor the “eyes of my heart were enlightened.”) This is what has changed me forever, how I see, who God is, how the bible functions (see the alternating posts here on the blog or my Zondervan released book a couple months ago The Bible as Improv) and how transformation occurs. It is this backstory that motivates my quest to try and make some dinky contribution toward that end.
Hope you will join me.
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