Well, the time has come. Michelle and I are leaving tommorrow for the Acts 29 Network bootcamp at sea. We'll be staying a couple of night in Miami, and then jumping on the cruise ship for the next few days. At first I can honestly say that I didn't care much that the bootcamp was on a cruise ship, but the closer I'm getting, the more I'm kinda looking forward to that. We've never been on a cruise before.

At our home group meeting last night, Michelle and I finally shared where we'll be next week. Because the whole church planting thing isn't really jiving with where our current church is headed, we have had to keep to ourselves about it. It was good to finally talk about things and where we've been headed over the past couple of years. Our church is in a huge amount of turmoil right now, so the timing of the bootcamp is a little weird. If most people knew we were going to it, they'd probably think that I'm just looking for a way out of all the mess. Fortunately, our home group is full of some really great people who love us fully and know our hearts.

I'm really concerned right now for the long-term health of this church. For a long time I've resisted the thought that this situation was a church split. Now I'm almost certain of it. It sucks. I've spent more than one-third of my life here, and it really seems like things are falling apart. It's going to take a long, long time to heal. In one sense, I could just say, "Aw, screw it. I wasn't really planning to be here much longer anyway." But I'm not willing to just callously wash my hands of them and move on to the next thing. There are some really bewildered people who are hurting big time. And the fact that they've bought into a consumeristic system of doing church somehow doesn't diminish my compassion for them. It gets another step or two harder for me when I realize that I'm really not in a position to help most of them. If I began spouting off about the consumerism, pastor-worship, greed, irrelevance, and lack of love that has been at the heart of much of this, they would glaze over in about two seconds flat.

I am excited about where I am in life and ministry vision, but I don't want to cause further damage to this body of believers by just leaving them hanging. I gotta trust God for the right timing, and when it's time to go, it's time to go.