This past Saturday was a hard day. It was painful and hopeful all at once. Michelle and I had a pretty intense discussion about where we are in life, in ministry, in money, in emotional health, in anything else that matters. It was painful because we each admitted that a lot of stuff just doesn't make sense to us right now. We're tired, frustrated, and very uncertain about what to make of it. Michelle is working her butt off in a very stressful environment these days, and when she comes home she looks in the checkbook to find dwindling numbers. I've been fumbling around trying to figure out what planting a church looks like, and after seven months I have almost nothing to show for it . . . except for a near-minimum-wage job and a dwindling checkbook. We have found ourselves at a breaking point.

However, for some reason (a masochistic one, no doubt), I still feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing. We talked through this a good bit, and basically decided to stay in the game. So as of yesterday, with a geographically shifted focus, I'm a church planter in Ramona, CA. We've actually lived here for almost three years, but our focus has always been "down the hill" from here in some other San Diego suburbs. But now, since we're not going to be moving away (as was the plan), we know we need to be the church with others in our own community.

In one way it's a hopeful thing, because I've been sitting on the fence too long about this, and I finally feel like I've got a good direction. I still don't know what this thing will look like, or whether I'll need to get a regular job in order to make this thing sustainable, but that's o.k. too.

My prayer is that God will direct me into the conversations I need to be having with the people I need to be having them with. I want to be a part of a the Kingdom dynamic here in Ramona. It's gonna be a different sort of thing than most Ramona folks have seen before . . . but that's a good thing too.