A Few Crazy Weeks

The last few weeks have been crazy in more ways than one. In the midst of all our scheduled celebrations, culminating with Adrienne's high school graduation on Wednesday, we've also been dealing with our friend's decision to leave ministry — a decision that was finally made fully public this morning. Yvonne in particular has had many different emotions over this time, which inevitably spill over onto me.

But in the midst of it all, I've been able to do some very good reading and listening. I didn't realize it when I started, but Mark Strom's Reframing Paul really fit precisely into where we were living as I came to the last three chapters. The way we are accustomed to doing church does indeed look more like the Corinthians' missing of the implications of the gospel than it does Paul's example and admonition — and we really are in danger of devouring one another in the process. But it was particularly helpful to realize that Paul doesn't make being "right" the issue — he acknowledges truth on both sides of the major battle lines, but then urges the parties to accomodate the other's "weakness" because they are both in Christ, and Christ is not divided.

Rod Wilson's course on Dynamics of Pastoral Leadership has also been extremely timely and pertinent — I may have more to say on that later.

The final event of our Focus 3 experience — a four day "High Adventure" camp — is coming up fast. What little detail there is about this camp suggests that it's a bit of an endurance event — last year everyone seemed to return totally exhausted. But there is so much work yet to be done in so few hours, I expect I'll probably be pretty much wiped out before I even get there.