pat loughery

A flash of inspiration hits me today like a bolt of lightning.

This morning I was surfing through my bloglines list and read Karen Ward’s quick post, pointing to a wealth of emerging church commentary at The Portico.

The writer, Roger Sellers, is spending the summer travelling around the country in a camper and visiting emerging churches to get a sense of their flavor, feel and form. He then synthesizes what he experiences and writes a trip diary. His end goal is to propose an emerging church development project with the Presbyterian church.

I was enjoying myself as I read through several of the reviews, comparing what I see Mt Si as, and then I ran into Roger’s experience with Doug Pagitt‘s community, Solomon’s porch.

Reading this entry, I was hit like a ton of bricks with this question: Am I too much at the center of Mt. Si Vineyard? Generally I initiate projects and events. I create the calendar. I have placed myself too much at the hub of this church.

Our core leadership team has experienced major turnover in our lifespan. > 60% of our initial core team is gone, and I have strong leaders staring me in the face. They’re almost all focused on Sunday morning tasks. I plead guilty to using racehorses in a petting zoo.

Unfortunately I think I’ve gotten stuck (as I often do) seeing the trees, and not understanding the forest.

++ Lord, show me! Derail me, and retrack You. Strip, clean, scrub, brush me and – more importantly – us. ++