I clearly have too many thoughts from my past week at the Acts 29 Network church planting bootcamp. They run on different lines, so I'll try to organize them into manageable bite sizes in order to make some sort of sense out of it all.

Bootcamp Reflection #1
I'll start at the end of the trip and work my way backwards. Michelle and I spent a lot of the first leg of our trip home talking about how to handle the inevitable questions that will be asked upon arrival home. In particular we talked about my boss' questions for me. He's in a world of turmoil with the church right now, and he's really trying to figure out whether he's going to stay here or go somewhere else. Knowing where I am with the whole church planting thing, he knows that my future at the church is in serious doubt, and that will greatly impact his own decision about staying or going. That puts some pressure on me that I wish wasn't there, but that might be good for me. I need to make a strong decision, execute it in a humble and loving way, and then just let the chips fall where they may.

So, Michelle and I developed five scenarios for how we could proceed from here. Only one of them involves us staying with our current church, and quite frankly that one scenario is extremely speculative and would have as much of a shot at actually happening as Ricky Martin becoming the lead singer of U2. Even if something so bizarre were possible, it would be a horrible fit.

So reflection number one is that we are feeling comfortable and secure in knowing that our future does involve church planting and that means moving on from where we are. Just knowing that much is a big deal, and the bootcamp helped us get there by holding up to us how inadequate our experience of the body of Christ is. The four realistic scenarios that we developed range would have us leaving sometime between mid-March and mid-November, depending on which scenario you look at.