Still pushing on.

Surprise me, God!

I am still praying that each morning. I may do so for well after these 30 days.

I was encouraged to continue to write this. I was mildly surprised that Terry was reading this, but he encouraged me to keep putting my thoughts down. I am not sure they will provide any help or encouragement to anyone else, but it does help me process the thoughts that go through my head.

Blogging kind of gives me that Kerouac style, stream of conciousness sort of writing where there are no page breaks. The joy of the blog/journal entry is that my thoughts don't need to be terribly cohesive. So, that said... I am sorry if this doesn't make much sense.

We are in the midst of our annual fundraiser today. Things are going fairly well, but I get caught in the trap of comparing it to past years.

Tonight I had a small group discussion about the direction our church is taking. We tend to focus on three areas. Areas that can be represented by 3 overlapping circles.

1 - Internal/Body Life
2 - Outward/Missional
3 - Upward/Worship

Lately, I have found myself leaning "upward". My faith life tends to be introspective. I am not as outreach oriented as I should be, and I am not as focused on the body as I should be.

Tonight's topic was about the Internal/Body aspects of our ministries. I was beginning to get frustrated with the amount of conversation about social events and the need to build strong relationships.

I have always felt the Body part of the church life was to help us be more effective Worshippers and more effective in outreach. But as I thought it through, and examined all the "one-another" verses, it became clear that there was a lot of focus on the "social" parts of the church life (Help one-another, pray for one another, be at peace with one another).

I had cornered the "Body Life" part of the church into one of support for the other two areas of the church. But it has its own purpose. I am not entirely certain what that is yet. It certainly helps with my worship and my outreach. It is clear that all 3 of these areas are dependent on the others. I should spend more time on the Body area of my Christian Life. That will no doubt bolster the other 2 areas.

Wow. That is hard to follow. But that is no surprise.