Friday, May 16, 2003
My head's still crunching away, agitated at this meeting I had the other day with a local pastor, who had planted a church eleven or twelve years ago in one of the 188 or so suburbs of San Diego. The meeting was not my idea, but I'm always willing to listen to some advice and get pointers from people who have been where I'm going. I'm beginning to rethink that openness. I almost feel guilty about having met with this guy - mainly because he's very busy, and it was an almost total waste of time for me, and I'm sure he'd say the same. We spoke different languages. His advice to me was along the lines of how big I'm going to have to grow my church in order to have enough programs for people. At one point, he started talking about the consumer culture that's all around us, and I thought we might be coming to a place where we could agree on something . . . but then he said, "Because it's such a consumer culture, we have to give people what they're expecting - programs." Somehow I think I kept my eyeballs from rolling back into my head, but it was hard. His church is getting ready to spend three million dollars . . . on a parking structure.
