Church planting is a difficult journey. Here are a couple of things I am learning…

1. Comfort and convenience are not guaranteed when carrying out God’s plan for your life. People who tell you that they are should be considered uninformed at best and tools of the enemy at worst. It wasn’t comfortable or convenient for Stephen to be stoned to death or Jesus to be crucified. Let’s get over ourselves and pursue Him anyway - even when it is inconvenient.

2. Leadership is not easy! People who think leadership is easy have never had to make the tough calls. What color carpet to put in your building is not a tough call. A tough call is ending a business relationship with one of your best friends for the long term health of the individual and the organization.

3. It is possible for well meaning people to lead you in the wrong direction. Job (the person - not the place where you are reading this blog) found this out the hard way. We all have several “voices” that are speaking into our lives. That is important, but even more important is to follow the voice of God.

Do what God tells you to do no matter how ridiculous and invonvenient it may be. Don’t doubt in the dark what God has shown you in the light!

I love church planting! I love the journey! I love to learn! Apparantly, I have a LOT to learn.

Great day today hanging out with Jim Perdue (I would link to him, but he blogs about as often as the Bulldogs win the SEC) and a friend of mine from Kennesaw State University.

Jim is the new pastor at our former church in Millington. He is a great guy and we had a lot of fun NOT drinking coffee at Starbucks. Looking forward to getting to know him better. Jim, start blogging again, now all the Cpointe people will be expecting it!

We also had a blast hanging out with Nate from KSU. He is a crazy frat guy that makes me laugh non stop! He is going to be a HUGE help on that campus. Can’t wait to see what is going to happen through that dude.

Couple of thoughts

1. The internet at my house has been down for two days…Bellsouth (AT&T as they like to be called) is driving me insane.

2. Spoke at both services yesterday at Southcrest Church. I loved it! It was great to reconnect with Jeff and his incredible family!

3. Todd and I are meeting with Jim Perdue today. He planted a church in Cumming, GA and will now transition to the Lead Pastor at our former church. He will do a great job!

4. Here are some of the strange searches that people have done and accidentally ran across my blog…weird boobs, sea doo blog, “I feel dirty theme by studio ST”, perks of love.

5. Jason needs to quit school and immediately move back to Acworth! So does David, and Eric, and ……………..

6. Launch team meeting went great last night. I am excited about the things that God has in store!

7. Todd and I are being interviewed on a radio station in South Carolina this Friday. I think that is funny.

I am a HUGE Miami Hurricanes fan. I lived there for three years when I was little and they won 2 national titles while I was there. I don’t usually run my mouth all that much because we have been terrible for the past 4 years (25-12, not bad for most, but terrible for us), but…..

Since Gary talked about his Bulldogs and how they are so much better than Perry’s Tigers, Tadd’s Heels (sick), and Jay’s Gamecocks - I thought I would just mention that my Canes have FALLEN to the 8th best team of the past decade.

Not too bad.

We have had several off years lately and we are still in the top 10!

I am pumped about the opportunity to speak Sunday at Southcrest Church in Newnan, GA for my former Student Pastor, Jeff Chandler. Jeff planted Southcrest several years ago - and things are going great!

I haven’t seen Jeff in forever and I am really looking forward to seeing their family, and their new building, etc.

I can’t wait!

The person who hit my car and took off - did $1,200 worth of damage.

I guess I will pray that they get a temporary case of scabies - Just long enough for them to go to the doctor and meet a cool person who will introduce them to Jesus

For the first time in a very long time, I will not be leading a group of teenagers to the beach for camp during the month of July (I am speaking at a student even for a week in August One of the highlights of student ministry was doing camp every year for 150-180 teenagers from our church. I loved it!

Do I ever miss Student Ministry? The answer to that question is a HUGE yes! I love hanging out with teenagers! I love their passion and I love seeing God do incredible things in their lives.

To all the H2O people from Crosspointe and/or Riverside - I miss yall like crazy!

I guess at some point while I was typing my last post someone decided to add to the car drama for the day.

When I walked outside, I realized someone had ran into my car and driven away. My front bumper and fender are jacked!

I had to call the insurance company and the police to file a report and now I wait….. The 94 Mittsubishi Diamante is about to officially be retired I am pretty sure.

When I was younger I lived in Canton, GA. Across the street from my house was a Marble Quarry that you could get to through the woods. It was huge and was a lot of fun to hang out around because of the fact that at any moment, you could fall off of it and die…. Fast forward several years and it is no longer there because they have built a huge neighborhood on the property.

This makes me sad for the simple reason that Todd and I no longer have something to drive our cars off of without getting caught. Our cars have been ridiculous for quite a while, but I can’t take it anymore. My car will now stall the instant that my foot comes off the gas pedal. That makes it pretty interesting at stop signs! Just starting the car is a pain as I have to rev the engine with my foot on the brake so I can put the thing in gear.

Gotta love that. I am officially in the market for something, anything, that does not turn off when I take my foot off the gas.

There are tons of tough calls in life. Things are not so black and white that the correct decision is always an easy one.

I am starting to realize that being “sure” about a decision means that you might be about 85% positive you are doing the right thing. The other 15% is telling you that you are crazy! At least this is true in my life.

For me, this is difficult. I prefer clarity. I would much rather have something written in the sky so that people could plainly see that the right decision was made. Reality is - that this is not reality.

As a result, I am learning to pray for trust. Not so much that others would trust me, but that I would really continue learning to trust God. Instead of clinging to clarity and the security it offers, I want to cling to the fact that God is trustworthy and will lead me in the direction He wants me to go. I am learning to walk in trust… Even when the decisions are hard - especially when the decisions are hard.