In the beginning...

Ok, so this may not be as tremendous as the account of the creation of everything in Genesis, but getting me to blog and on a regular basis is pretty miraculous. So why attempt the seemingly impossible, what’s the point? It could be that I feel my writing and insights are so valuable that it needs to be shared as widely as possible? Unfortunately many people approach their writing with this attitude, which is why there is garbage upon garbage of writing out there. My writing is not that stellar, and my insights are anything but ground breaking. It could be that I am trying to fit into the "evangelical" mold. I am a young white male, drive a conservative gas sipping Yaris, have a goatee, and my book shelves are littered with emerging church literature; I do seem to be one blog away from perfecting the stereotype. However, I do not consider myself an 'evangelical' mostly because I am not quite sure what it means, and I know those outside of church culture at best have a vague misunderstanding of the term. I could be writing to fill my time and give me a sense of purpose, which is why many people find themselves writing. But once again my life is anything but slow. As senior pastor of an urban Indianapolis Church looking to grow and be effective, my days, nights, and weekends are packed full of trying to share the word faithfully to the Lynhurst Baptist congregation and the entire community. Not to mention consuming joy to read, and my beautiful wife. I am filled with an idea of purpose, a purpose that serves a God and a world that is much bigger than me.

So back to the original question, why am I blogging? If nothing else our life and the Christian faith is entrenched in community. Not that this blog is supposed to take place of real authentic community, but it is more about how we do approach our community that we are in. Let us just get down to it; I do not have all the answers. Sure if you ask me a deeply ‘religious’ question I can come up with a pat sound answer. But if the Christian life truly is all that it is supposed to be, it goes beyond the best answers that I or even any one theologian, pastor, evangelist, or author can respond to. So this blog is not about answers, though there may be some on the way, but it is really about questions, and asking the questions together. Life is difficult whether you believe or not, Jesus did not come to make our life easy, or even completely understandable (don’t believe me?...look at the disciples). It’s a struggle, with many questions and uncertainties. Let us then stop pretending that we have it all figured out, or that everything is simple all the time. This believing in Jesus thing is so big, it is so important, it carries so much weight we need each other along the way. We do not get the luxury of having all the answers, we just get one big answer, and that is Jesus, and that’s good news. The rest is trusting in Him, and working with each other. In short this blog is about what we run into. Since I am writing it there will be a lot of dialogue on my part, but join in. I do not expect thousands to read regularly, but that if just a few in the church (locally and universally) and those in the community (locally and universally) join in together for mutual questioning we will be on our way to mutual sharpening.