Seeds

On Thursday morning, I sat across from my mentor, Tom, in a small café near downtown Littleton. Part of Denver Seminary's curriculum involves a mentoring component, and each semester we write "learning contracts," a self-authored syllabus that focuses on a single character trait and/or skill. This fall I'm supposed to be working on living out an attitude of thanksgiving and doing a better job at managing my finances, but spiritual development rarely fits into nice little boxes. Consequently, our conversations often range across a wide range of topics. It helps that I'm quite a talker, especially after a couple cups of coffee.

This morning was no different. As is pretty customary after a caffeine kickstart, the conversation wandered towards my favorite topic, the Church. It was a pretty fitting topic for a mentoring conversation, since one of the things I've been working out is who I am as a leader and how that fits into my picture of the Church. Some pieces are finally starting to slide in place, and the way I've regarded the church in the last few years is starting to have a real impact on my development as a leader.

Midway through our conversation, Tom stopped me with a question.

"Have you written this down?"

"Well, no."

Bits and pieces of my thoughts have made it into papers, and I'm sure some has snuck out on this blog. But most of my ideas have simply been shared in conversation with friends. The spoken word provides rich soil for ideas to grow, but eventually it's probably a good idea to transplant them into the written word. Different environments allow for different kinds of growth.

So, over the next few days/weeks/unspecified period of time, I'm going to be sharing my ideas on leadership and the Church. But I'm going to start with a story. My story.