Jesus, don't leave home without Him

Last Sunday morning I preached for 30-40 minutes, casting a vision and laying out a strategy for accomplishing our congregational mission. Tomorrow we begin our fall sermon series.

Today, I'm stoked and here's why:

1. In the past two weeks, it has felt like we've left our church moorings and set sail. There is a tangible buzz happening across the congregation.

2. We've developed the sermon series in house. Everything from the weekly titles to the life group curriculum has been made in Hanover. Every creative idea (including our take it home credit cards pictured above) has come from the minds of our staff and our congregation.

3. This may sound selfish but it contributes to my excitement: I'm getting a lot of opportunities to preach, lead and cast vision. In the absence of a lead pastor, I'm getting to handle lead pastorish affairs and I'm lovin' it.

Only one question remains: are we sailing an ocean liner or a yellow submarine?

Outside the Box

My family spent our labour day in Owen Sound hanging out with longtime friends.

While we were waiting to eat, I chatted with someone who was part of the Owen Sound church I pastored.

After some informal chit-chat, she made a bold statement.

She said, "You were way ahead of your time. You saw things and you thought things that were years away from where we were and where we needed to be as a church."

That's how I feel, most of the time. I wonder if it's my lot in life to fight against ecclesiastical policies and practices that were one day "cutting edge" but have since become ineffective.

As a visionary, I find this to be one of my toughest challenges: confronting ingrained ideologies carried by people who, in the past, risked everything to implement them. These people are often prepared to die on the hill for a fifteen-year-old system.

Without change, the very thing that once functioned as a conduit of life can become that which casts aside new ideas, models, impulses, and people.

Someone please hit me if I ever dig in my heels to prevent the next generation of church leaders from leading me outside of my 2015 box!

Learning @ Home

For those who don't follow my wife's blog, you may not know our big news: we've decided to homeschool.

In typical 'Jason & Erika style', we made a snap decision last week. It came after years of conversation about whether the public system was an ideal learning environment for our children. Last week, we knew the time had come.

The actual curriculum will arrive next week but we've already changed our routine. I had today off from church work so I helped Shawna learn the names of the Provinces, Territories and their capital cities. At the same time, I toiled with Elijah to correctly order cards with numbers on them, from smallest to largest.

But that's not all; we went beyond normal school work into the world of domestic responsibilities:

Shawna learned how to work the washing machine and hang laundry on the line. And Elijah? He learned how to handle weeds.