We Can't Come Down

Life is beginning to speed up again. A dip in both my attitude and my real-time schedule gave me a bit of a break for about three weeks - but things are amping up, and I find myself waking up each day with a long list of stuff on my mind. Most of it is work related - we are close to moving our church services into our first permanent facility, and with that comes many changes and decisions. At the same time, we plan to launch a second site - to reproduce ourselves - just a few weeks after The Big Move. It sounds insane - and it feels insane - but it's truly what we feel called to do.

If it was easy, I'd be worried. It's not easy. It's challenging and confusing and overwhelming. We - our staff - finding ourselves freaking out at various times during the day. With just cause.

It's challenging because it's new and fresh, unlike anything we've ever done. Everything in our future as an organization seems discombobulated - service schedules, office locations, signage, set-up, service length, leadership teams. We have no idea how to do church at a movie theater, which is where our second location will be.

Everything seems discombobulated, with more unanswered questions than any of us are comfortable with.

And yet....it's in wrestling with the questions that we find answers, and discover more about ourselves, and - most importantly - redefine just why in the world we are in the middle of such a chaotic and challenging mess.

We know why we do this.

We are called. Our church is a living organism that breathes the truth of this one thing: God loves people. Many people are very far from him. We want to help. And this mission - this holy discontent - drives us to our knees begging for guidance, and draws us up to the challenge of - again, again and again - doing whatever it takes.

So - crazy times for us. We can't even decide what to call the church(es) in their new, separate locations. As my coworker Susan said today, we are having a bit of an identity crisis.

But it's only regarding the external. We know who we are. We know why we're here.

We're doing a good work. We can't come down.

We're getting 'er done.