Hello, all. Been a few weeks since I’ve had a chance to really give an update, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to do that today, as well as to dole out a little pastoral “wisdom.”

I’ve been a senior pastor for 2 1/2 months now. There isn’t really a handbook for how to handle every situation you come across and I think it’s okay to be honest about something: there isn’t a great solution for every problem you’ll face. So sometimes you just prayerfully do the best you can.

Get comfortable with the fact that you won’t always know the perfect course of action to pursue in any given situation. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s difficult to know all the repercussions of any single decision that you’ll be forced to make.

I say all this (vaguely, I realize) to encourage other pastors and church leaders. You will face some difficult decisions over time and you will face opposition from people both in your church and outside of it. The best advice I can give you is simply this: follow after Jesus Christ with all of your heart in everything you do and every decision you make. Filter everything through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you do that, if you honestly try to follow hard after Him in everything, then you can irreproachably sit back and let the chips fall where they may.

As a church leader, your integrity is everything. Don’t compromise it.

Even when it’s hard; even when it may cost you your job.

For the last 2 1/2 months I have faced challenges that are completely unique to my church. Without going into details, I’ll just say that there was a lot to do when I started here and a lot of very difficult decisions to make. I feel that we’re through the worst of it, however, and we’re now in a place where we can simply move forward and minister to our community and our world without the distractions of the past. This is more than a “positive” step forward; this is the beginning of a new era and a fresh start for our church.

In the last month we’ve gained a new name, a new facility, and a new website. We’ve left the problems of the past exactly where they belong: in the past. We’ve started fresh and I’m so excited to see what God has for us moving forward. It’s truly an exciting time.

Last week I spent countless hours (countless because I was half asleep for many of them) working on our new website, and I’m happy to announce that it’s now up and running. We’ll be adding new content to it over the coming weeks and months, but it’s now officially open to the public. Check out the new website if you’d like, and let me know what you think about it. You can view it at this link.

I’ll try and post a little more later this week about the series we’ve been doing and how it’s affecting our thought process going forward. In the meantime, I hope everyone had a happy Labor Day.

Be blessed and be a blessing.

Two years ago I wrote a song; it was a ballad about a woman named Lady Lou. When I was young boy, Lady Lou chose to show me kindness. She fed me when I was hungry, clothed me when I was naked, taught me when I was clueless. She held me and pampered me and told me she loved me.

But when I got older, she turned on me. Her warm smile disappeared and the light in her eyes grew dim as she pushed me away time and time again. She stabbed me in the back, she rejected me for petty differences, and she withheld the love and the comfort that she had lavished on me as a child.

Lady Lou, Lady Lou, all I want to do
Is Just sit and be held by you

Lady Lou, Lady Lou, no matter what I do
You turn away, you walk away from me

So I try and I fail, 'cause I don't know, I can't tell
What you want, my dear Lady Lou

But I'm starting to know, 'cause it's starting to show
You're not the dear I thought you to be

Lady Lou was the most hurtful person in my life because it's brutally painful to have someone you love turn against you.

Lady Lou was my metaphor for the church.

Through my employment on three different church staffs I saw how ugly the church can be. I witnessed the political maneuvering and the backbiting. I observed people who were more willing to shout charges of heresy than to sit down with their perceived enemies to discuss their differences. I saw pastors turn on staff, congregants turn on one another, and cliques fighting other cliques over the most ridiculously shallow things you can imagine.

I saw others targeted and I was targeted myself. And throughout all of this, I began to grow more calloused toward the church. The church that I revered, loved, and had committed to serve for the rest of my life seemed as if it were trying to push me away. "Unwanted." That's how I felt. There are deep scars from all of this conflict.

For the last two years I have struggled through all of these issues. At times I've thought about it too much, to the point that it was unhealthy. And then God began to pierce through my calloused heart and heal me from the inside out.

I'll write more about that journey in Part 2.