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Engineered, but not Reversed
Our church does this yearly practice in early January called “Reverse Engineering”. Individuals and families are asked to prayerfully assess nearly all aspects of their lives: priorities, habits and patterns, relationships, finances, daily schedules, vacations, emotional and physical health, spiritual development, family life, etc to make the most of the time and resources they have available. The idea is to look at where you see God directing your life – 1,2,5 and 40 years into the future – and begin…
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The Moments That Fill Two Points In Time
Time heals all wounds, time changes us, only time will tell… We give such credence to the power of time over our lives, but I am convinced that it is not the passage of time that changes us, but the moments that fill two points in time. I’ve loved reading my friends reflections of where they were ten years ago. Ten years ago, I celebrated New Years Eve with my high school friends who all returned to Chattanooga for the…
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Thoughts on Friendship
Yesterday morning, my friend Claire and her son Tav came by for a visit. While Claire and I were enjoying good conversation, Scooby and Tav were a little ornery and unsure what to do with themselves, so they alternated between snacks, trucks, fridge magnets and mama begging. About 45 minutes into their visit, Scooby takes Claire by the hand, and leads her through the kitchen and dining room and then stops with her at the front door and looks up…
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Lies About Longing and Wholeness
It terrifies me that as Christian women we often propagate the idea that we are not whole until we are both married and have children. We train single women’s hearts and minds in preparation to some day be good wives and mothers, and we teach mothers how to be better mothers. Often, all other classifications of women (married no kids, widowed, divorced, abandoned, once had children and have suffered their loss, celibate anyone?) slip through the cracks. While I believe…
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The Church Doesn't Need Me Anymore
As Vintage21 Church has grown, one aspect I have struggled with is that the church no longer needs me. When there were only a hundred or so of us, we could see our handiwork in the physical space. We looked at a wall and knew that Scooby spent countless hours on the carpentry. We looked up at the massive burlap tree in the rafters and saw the scratches on our knuckles from stuffing the burlap sacks the day before. We…
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Church Cynicism
When Vintage21 opened the doors to a “what do you look for in a church?” group discussion in 2002, I was there. I moved with the church from a theater in Cary, to a school in Cary, to Harget Street, to Oberlin Street and then back to Harget Street. I’ve been with it as it grew from 40 to 1400 people and now is even larger. Early on, I viewed it as my church, the place for me to settle.…
