A New Look; A Fresh Start

August 19, 2011 • Personal Reflection • by
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If you have stopped by to visit the blog since the beginning of August you may notice that things look a little different. It’s been over a year since my blog received a major face-lift and that’s about as long as I can go before giving in to the urge to redesign the site.

Besides an update to the layout itself, this blog needed a fresh start. It has been almost four years since I created Common Places and much has changed since that time. What began as an avenue for sharing ideas and resources as part of my theological journey has morphed and diminished into something completely different.

For a short while, I changed the name of the blog to A Planter’s Progress, taking cue from the classic story by John Bunyan. At that time my hope was to chronicle the journey of both myself and my family as we pursued a call to plant a missional church community in Midland, MI. What at first seemed like a good idea proved to be a much more difficult task. The whole of the church planting process was taking much longer than we first anticipated. We also soon discovered that church planting in its infancy stage wasn’t filled with a lot of exciting details to blog about.

Beyond the frustration we were experiencing due to the overall length of the process there were other financial struggles we were facing along with difficulties with family, job loss, three moves, and a lack of formal education and training. None of which met my blogging criterion.

Finally, in the summer of 2010, I changed the blog name back to its original name of Common Places. Since that time, however, I feel as though this blog has lacked in direction and focus. If one were to look through the posts over the past year it would be readily apparent that in addition to lacking any continuity or focus, my posts have been few and far between.

In hindsight, it may have been better to share some of the frustrations and discouragements. I am confident that many church planters experience similar frustrations and set-backs. Perhaps it might even have been beneficial and/or encouraging for someone who was in the midst of a similar situation. For whatever reason, I chose to do what I most often do in a situation like that, internalize my fears, struggles, and insecurities. Whether it is because of pride, or fear of failure, or a combination of both, I found that level of vulnerability to be difficult except with a select few.

Even within these last few months, when things seemed the most bleak and I completely lost all desire to plant a church or serve in vocational ministry, I found it more difficult than ever to express my fears and struggles with others. I believe the cause was due in part to exhaustion, both immediate and residual and my own insecurities and sense of inadequacy.

Now I come to a new chapter. For the moment I have laid aside church planting / pastoral ministry. Needless to say this was a difficult and painful decision to make. Hoping to learn from my past mistakes, I hope to share more about this very personal decision, but that must wait for another time.

In the wake of all that has transpired I do believe that a fresh start is in order. This includes my blog as well. To what end I do not yet know. It is my hope and desire to recapture, to some degree, a bit of the inspiration and creativity that first motivated me to begin writing here four years ago. I also hope to rediscover the joy I once found in writing. Finally, I hope to again find a sense of purpose for Common Places.

From here I hope to begin posting as often as time allows. Sometimes there may be quite a few coming through; other times it will be pretty quiet. As often as I able I hope to actually write something to share. I will also continue to share links and resource along with questions and answers to the Heidelberg Catechism each Lord’s Day.

Please feel free to leave some feedback about the new look. It would be most appreciated. Also, if you would be willing to share any posts that have stuck out to you over the past four years, I would greatly appreciate that as well.

Thank you for following along!

Mission is the Opposite of Self

October 19, 2009 • Personal Reflection • by
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Prefatory note: I started this post way back in September and it unfortunately slipped through the cracks. However, the thoughts that I initially wanted to share have continues to develop over the past month and I still feel that they are worth sharing. Being that I began it over a month ago, some of the information may not be as current. Oh well.

Last month the Leadership Network and Catalyst presented an online conference entitled The Nines which featured 70 speakers from all over the country sharing nine minute segments. Although I wasn’t able to watch as much as I would have liked, I do appreciate both Leadership Network and Catalyst for making this great event available at no charge. One of the speakers I was looking forward to but was unable to see was Ed Stetzer. Thankfully, he has posted his nine minute presentation for those of us who missed it. I have already posted the video once but I will share it again for sake of ease.

Ed Stetzer – The 9s from LifeWay on Vimeo.

As I began to meditate on Stetzer’s simple phrase, “mission is the opposite of self”, I began an exercise of self examination in this area. In doing so, one of the things that I noticed is how preoccupied I am with myself.

I know that sounds awfully vain of me to say but what I had to come to terms with was that, although I could justify all of my activities as good and worth while, the fact was that I was so busy doing what I wanted to do, I left little time for anything or anyone else for that matter.

What became clear to me was that in order to be missional, we must first be intentional. Meaning that, if we are not careful and strategic about the use of our time, we can easily become so preoccupied with our own ambitions that we no longer have room for mission.

This became painfully clear when later on that weekend my wife and I received a call from a family member we have been praying for. They wanted to schedule some time together that day for lunch. Unfortunately, we already had prior engagements and had to decline. In doing so it dawned on me that although we have been praying for this individual for many years, we made no room to share our lives with them.

Now it should be said that our schedule was filled with things that were good in themselves, but the fact that they left no room for anyone outside of ourselves left me to wonder about their true value. Especially measured in light of eternity. Simply said, we were occupied with ourselves.

This is why intentional mission is so important. Why were we passively sitting back and waiting for those opportunities to arise instead of actively trying to engage our family members and sharing our lives with those we love and pray for?

It became all too apparent to me that day that we are so easily preoccupied with self. Mission is the opposite of self and if we are to live on mission we must be both intentional and strategic about how are lives are prioritized, structured, ordered.

Introduction: Tales of a Would-be Church Planter

August 1, 2009 • Uncategorized • by
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It was over three years ago that I initially felt the internal tug to become a church planter. At the time I had been serving as a youth pastor for close to seven years. Prior to this point I had never considered serving in any capacity outside of youth ministry, certainly not as a pastor – let alone a church planter. So I shrugged off the idea and tried to go about my business as usual. However, the idea would never leave. Worse yet, I found myself sitting and dreaming of what it would be like to plant a church. Something drastic was happening.

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