Bittersweet....

Well, i have put this off long enough... i sort of hinted at a bittersweet visit to Indianapolis (a great town no matter what you hear otherwise) in a recent Twitter update... but i'd like to explain what i meant.
My family and i lived in Indy for a long time as a matter of fact for all of our children, Indianapolis is really our "home". Don't misunderstand me, we absolutely love being back in the Chicago area but outside of this part of the world, the longest we have ever lived in one place (almost 10 years) was Indy...
i guess the bittersweet part was having an opportunity on Saturday afternoon at a wedding reception (congratulations Christiana & Jason!) to visit with a few people from the church where for seven years i served as one of the pastors... As i fell asleep on Sunday night all i could think of were the missed opportunities to impact the area and the lives of families in that part of Indianapolis. i found myself wondering what in the world we were thinking?

We went into that church and pretty much took a bad situation and made it lots and lots worse. i am complicit because instead of standing up and asking "what in the world are we doing"... i just went along with it all and now it all looks like so much carnage... even as i write this entry i struggle with what i am feeling.... really, really saddened by what i saw this past weekend, but thrilled to be serving where i am serving... very surreal, difficult and embarrassing to explain. Maybe the guilt is just now really catching up to me all these years later or maybe just maybe, i am trying to wrap my mind around how the church in the United States can appear to be so fantastically vibrant on one hand but so incredibly anemic on the other...

Whatever the case i think maybe i have gotten this out of my system, i am thrilled to still be making a difference, my hope is that we will have many more years of being able to touch other people's lives right where we are....