Second post today . . . WOW!

Let me quickly give an update on the blog site itself. If anyone has followed the blog since its first start at wordpress.com, it's been tricky for me. I wasn't too pleased with my blog at wordpress, not because of the site, but because of me. I felt like my writing was portraying me to be someone I wasn't. That, and I felt like I needed to write to make things sound better than maybe they really were for folks who would read the blog and maybe get introduced to the church. As I kept reading what I was writing, I found that my blog was no longer about me or the church . . . it became an image of what I wanted to be and what I hoped our church would be. I'm no expert, but there is a distinct difference in dreaming about something better and pretending. All that said, I moved to the blogger site and started my new blog to have a fresh start. So, that will continue. You're going to hear a little about the church, because ministry is very much part of my life. You're also going to hear a lot about me, my struggles, my victories, my frustrations, and my triumphs. It is what it is with me.

So for my new start AGAIN, I changed up the title and the header. I've come up with a new slogan for our church. The old one was, "Where every road leads to the cross." I really liked that and still do. For me, it suggested that everything we do at the church leads folks to the cross. But as we've grown and as I've grown, I've come to the realization of something I've known for quite awhile. People can't stay at the cross. Instead, we must pick up our own cross and hit the road. So while everything we do at church certainly leads to the cross, we must have a plan in place to move folks past THE cross and take up THEIR cross. So, I've put together a new motto, using our church name and the moniker for our city; "At the crossroads of Christ and culture." For me it suggests, that our church seeks to take people who live in culture, introduce them to Christ, and help them to become empowered to take Christ into the culture for the purpose of making a change. For too long churches have existed on the polar opposite of culture. Our rationale was that we must remain separate. Indeed, we must, but there is certainly a way to engage our society while still remaining separate in regards to our testimony, personal holiness, and image. Jesus did it and so can we. So that's the new change and that's why.

As for me, I'm trying to find some Disney World tickets . . . . lol