PlantingProject.org

I’m about to head out to day 2 of Evolve, the churchplanters.com conference in Cumming, GA. Yesterday after writing briefly about how keeping a calendar and being disciplined was a spiritual matter I got my back side handed to me by Shawn Lovejoy as he talked about the need for leaders to be healthy, which means being disciplined.

He said that if we want to lead healthy churches that we have to be healthy leaders first. And then he talked about being healthy spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and physically.

God had already been working on my heart about my own discipline, or lack of it, but yesterday really sealed the deal for me. So, this morning I was up at 5am and taking care of myself spiritually, and it was a great feeling (by about 5:15am, the first few minutes were ROUGH).

Today I’m sure that God is going to kick my butt around some more. You might see a mobile blog post or two…

Is God kicking anyone else around on the issue of discipline? I would love for you to share you story with us here…

I confess, I have slacked off on updating this blog. Sorry, I will try to do better.

But, I have created other ways for you to keep up with me and what is going on at Gathering Church. You can now find Gathering Church on Facebook,  keep up with me on twitter, or just read my regular blog at www.askingy.com.

I still plan to blog here, but don’t be expecting daily updates. I will be putting most of my stuff on askingY and the facebook page.

Yesterday Scott England and I met with the owner of Eddies Attic in Decatur. Eddies is a great venue and would be a good place to start having worship times. Also, the place has great local and national name recognition; both John Mayer and Jennifer Nettles (of Sugerland) played there a lot when they were getting their start.

We will be meeting with the owner again in a few weeks. Right now the door is open but the price is not set, so please pray that the details will continue to work out as God directs. It’s exciting stuff.

I have a ton to do, a ton of appointments to make, a ton of books to read, and a ton of strategic planning to think through, write down, and put into place. Planting a church is a rather huge task and I often find myself forgetting to slow down and rest. Obviously this is a problem because rest is important biblically and practically.

This reminds me of Nehemiah when he got to Jerusalem to rebuild. He had a ton of work to do, but when he cruised into town he first chose to take three days to rest.

I think it’s important for me to rest each day (in the morning) and to rest each week in the form of a Sabbath.

I had Church Planting school today and got to hang out with some church planter guys and learn from Michael Lukaszewski and Danny Echols. It was a great morning and was challenging for me. Now more than ever I am realizing how much reading I have ahead of me. Right now my reading list is growing faster than my “already read” list, this is a tide I have to change today.