At some point in the past couple of weeks, I passed the seven year mark since I started this blog.  As it turns out, I’m pretty sure that this post breaks my longest streak ever for time away from the blog.  I didn’t stop intentionally.  No good, spiritual, profound reason.  Life just got a bit intense for me, and eiter I didn’t have any words or the words I did have weren’t ready to be shared. I’m writing this post from a hotel room, just outside of Portland, where I’ve spent the past couple of days.  It’s been a very good trip for me – I’ve gotten to celebrate the official part of my completion of a Doctor of Ministry program through George Fox Seminary.  I’ve spent time with the friends who I’ve worked with for the past few years, and the school faculty and staff, who have been so [...]

When I woke up this morning, and sat down with Americano #1, I looked out my home office window to see a beautiful orange and pink and purple sunrise sky.  It’s a nice way to greet the day.  But now, just a few hours later, I’m looking out at the trees blowing in the wind in front of a dark grey, ominous canopyh, and watching the rain fall.  The speed of change in the weather reminds me of my emotional state lately – I’ve been a moody roller coaster. But that’s not what this blog post is about.  I mentioned a few days ago that I spent time at some denominational meetings last week, where some significant changes were being decided upon.  I’ve had several questions about what that means, so I’ll try to describe that briefly – anything more than brief will be boring for you and probably frustrating [...]

As I mentioned in yesterday’s non-post, I was away for almost a week, so I wasn’t able to do my usual write-up on our latest inter::mission teach-in.  I usually write these things on a Friday morning, so conveniently enough, here I am . . . Last Thursday, The Purple Door was pleased to host Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, his wife Ricci Kilmer, and their two children for dinner and our teach-in.  It was soup night – we made some vegetable and some corn chowder.  They showed up early and hung out in the kitchen as we were finishing preparations. Eliacin and Ricci live in community at the Mustard Seed House, along with two other couples, and work together with Mustard Seed Associates.  Last year, the inter::mission gang was able to make a visit there to enjoy a meal, so several of our folks had already met them.  They spoke with us about [...]

Normally I like to wait until after an inter::mission teach-in before bragging about how good it was.  But, since I’ll be quite occupied tomorrow and Saturday at the Born Again Church Tour, I won’t have time to blog it.  So I’ll just make an assumption that tonight’s teach-in will be a great experience, and I’ll go ahead and brag ahead of time. We are very excited to welcome our first guest speaker of the year this evening – none other than Mr. Todd Hunter.  Todd is the former President of the National Association of Vineyard Churches and Alpha USA and has been involved in church planting and leadership development for 25 years.  I met Todd at a church planter’s round-table think tank thingy about six and a half years ago.  He was generous enough with his time to give me some church plant coaching when I was in that phase [...]

I’m feeling really out of touch right about now.  With the start of the new school year at UW only a week away (which means move-in for inter::mission only two days away), I’ve been sprinting to get lots of last minute projects and details done.  Good meetings with students and staff, heaving furniture up The Purple Door’s tight and winding staircases, getting keys cut, and plotting out our fall series of teach-ins.  While all that’s going on, my parents flew in for a quick visit over the weekend.  It was the most time Michelle and I have had with them in a long, long time, so we enjoyed it.  Oh, and I’m still buried in my dissertation these days. All that has added up to me almost completely ignoring the fact that the world is moving along rapidly without me.  Other than seeing Twitter updates from people who lost power, [...]

While the first week of August means that a lot of  universities are gearing up for students coming back to their campuses, in the University of Washington community, we’ve still got some time.  School doesn’t kick off here until September 24.  So, our days are still a bit slower-paced than normal, which in my case means a couple of things: one, I get to go home and see my wife almost every evening, rather than stay in the U-District  late into the evening; two, I get to work on my doctoral dissertation.  Oi – not so sure that second one is a better alternative to hanging out with college students! Anyway, lately, my days have been filled with the fun of building maintenance projects at The Purple Door.  Plumbing, furnishing, carpeting, window repair, cleaning out the refrigerators and freezers.  This is the stuff nobody tells you about in seminary.  It’s [...]

While we do still have a week to go with the UW school year, last night was slated to be our final teach-in for the year, and in a sense, the closing of inter::mission.  Our culture project in India is definitely a part of the inter::mission process, but it’s also a somewhat separate thing. As it turns out, multiple schedules were colliding in multiple ways.  At our community meal last night, we had three “new” people with us, and we were missing five of our regulars.  So while we had great conversation well into the evening, it was a bit of a different vibe for us.  I had scheduled myself in as the teach-in guide for the evening, and had prepared a year end wrap-up session.  A little on the sentimental side, a little on the fun side, a little on the reflective side.  But with so many regulars missing, [...]

The days are blowing by me sooooo fast around here. It seems like just a couple days ago, the inter::mission gang was over at The Mustard Seed house. Alas, that was two weeks ago, which means that last night was time for the next teach-in. As we move toward the end of the school year, this was our last time having an outside guest come in to share with us. My good buddy, Jeff Greer came to hang out with us last night. Jeff’s a church planting, kilt wearing, bartending, U2 loving, singer-songwriter who I met a couple years back. Good man, with a good, honest heart. He did some of his songs, so it was part music-in, part teach-in. He didn’t sing pretty songs, though. Not that I don’t like Jeff’s voice or guitar work . . . but as he shared with us, the past couple of years [...]

Sorry for the quiet blog of late.  It seems that multiple things are converging on me at once, which does happen.  Lately I’ve been hunkering down on some school stuff that I just plain need to get out of the way before I plunge headlong into my dissertation writing this summer.  I’m reading hundreds of pages per week for school, and adding some “work” stuff on the pile for good measure.  I love reading and learning, but I do occasionally hit points where the eyes glaze over and I need a break – otherwise, a large chunk of what I’ve read just goes away, for lack of processing. Over the past weekend, a few of us did some physical training for our upcoming trip to India.  One of the potential activities we’ll be doing in Maharashtra is a 100K solidarity march with the farmers (that’s 62 miles).  Saturday, we walked [...]

I’ve mentioned a few times over the past couple of months that a small group of us from The Purple Door will be traveling to India in June, as part of our inter::mission project. While the details of visas, travel insurance, plane tickets, immunizations, and fundraising have occupied a good bit of our time lately, it’s important that we not lose focus on why we’re going. One of the big reasons is that we place a high value on global connectivity, and are trying to take ownership of how our local lives and choices impact people and cultures around the world that we don’t even know about. We’re going to learn, to hear stories, to pray, to offer hope where we can. India is in dire need of hope. While the popular media in the West (especially in the U.S.) gives a lot of focus to the rapidly growing economy [...]