In my morning devotions I have been reading through a book by Dallas Willard and Jan Johnson called Renovating the Heart in Daily Practice. This morning I was confronted with a big idol that I struggle with in my life and I think most of America deals with.

Let me tell you the story.

Dallas was talking about God being in control (not meticulous I might add - Dallas Willard is far form being a card carrying Reformed or TR) and we do not like to submit because that means that we are not in control. Towards the end of the short daily chapter there are exercises to try and the one for today was The Golden Strands a prayer method of Martin Luther's. Willard was giving an example of him praying one day with the ten commandments - he said he thought he he did not need to pray the first two - he had no statues or idols - but he chose to pray it anyway.
Well he was hiking when he did it and he realized that he had a huge idol in front of him..

Great post over at Bob Hyatt's blog about the reading and re-reading of Scripture with a narrative and christological hermeneutic. Great stuff...

I can't believe that fall is here already. It seems like yesterday that we bought this place (No Mistake) and began our work. My wife and I and another couple bought an old plantation home and a little over 100 acres to begin building a retreat/bed and breakfast/ intentional community. We are getting close to being half-way done with the construction. We are building two rental cottages - one that sleeps several (up to 16-20) and one that is smaller as well as the plantation house which is for rent with four bedroom with several in each room. The place has been here for about 170 years. The highlight to me of the construction is the celtic chapel that we are building. It is going to be fine. And we will use it for many things - for our community life, for church and also for weddings and other events (retreats, etc.)

It can be taxing and trying at times. We have two young children - one being a little over 1 ( I can't always remember the "months" - I think that is a women thing) and the other being 4 - plus we are basically building 5 houses and a chapel - and I have always wondered how persons building just one house did it.

But fall is here - our houses - mine and Joe's (my partner in the business) should be done in about a month. Hopefully in time to enjoy raising our windows and enjoying the fall air. I love that!! It is one of my favorite things to do. Fall is going to be awesome and hopefully this spring we will open!!!

I am preparing for a sermon/teaching this weekend on mission and being missional. We have realized that we have used language that our people probably "kinda" understood but we have had no formal training on what it means to be missional and grounding it in a theological formation. We have watched a good set of videos by Reggie McNeal, The Present Future. But even those videos were not basic enough. So I am preparing something using a brief DVD and trying to engage in instruction about the missional/incarnational paradigm.

It promises to be good. I hope that it is.

For years now I been pouring my life into full time ministry and I am finally getting to the point to where I just want to be a "normal" Christian. The church in a Western context is so blah. The consumerism drives me nuts. In the context I am in now (we are a small group of people) majority do not care and the church could close tommorrow and they would just find another church to "consume" from.

There are times when I wish I was in context of ministry where "things" were happening. But the grass is always greener on the other side. I guess.

I have not been posting lately but for the past few weeks I have had the hankering to join the conversation and get back in the blog circuit. For too long I have been voyeuring in on other conversations and it is time that I start participating.

I am hoping to begin to revamp the blog a little - changing some of the test and beginning to post some of my creative writing.

stay tuned to see what all I have in mind...