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Needing to kill a couple hours between the end of class and picking up Nick at the airport, I came to the Starbucks (ugh) to avail myself of the free Wifi and a lemonade. The Free Wifi isn’t without several steps of signing your soul away to the green mermaid, including but not limited to agreeing to hand over all sorts of information. I’m sure my computer will explode next time I fire it up at an independent coffee shop.

So now I’m here playing a little online poker and trying to organize the remainder of my week.

Class today was good… normally, I’m exhausted after these classes, but this one was fun because the 2 guys that I had for students were both pretty sharp guys, so they caught on fast and we were able to cover a lot of stuff in 2 days time. That’s the optimal teaching situation… enthusiastic students who are quick studies.

That’s all for now… gotta go, I have pocket 8s and I don’t want to fold this hand…

He who hesitates is a damned fool. – Mae West

Yeah, that’s right, I quoted Mae freakin’ West on my blog. Get over it.

Just to lighten the mood of this post, here’s a beautiful shot of the sunset from the 4th of July, taken by my lovely wife.

So here’s the thing… you’d think by that photo that we live all up on the farm, in some rural hicktown where we have to drive 30 minutes to get to the general store and the air smells of cow-generated methane all day. But it’s not true. When I say we live at the very edge of the suburbs, this is what I mean. Turn 180 degrees from the view of this photo, and it’s matching rooflines and manicured lawns as far as the eye can see. We were on our way to the Broomfield 4th of July extravaganza, and this was the sunset we got to see. I love how the clouds obscure the sun, creating the cool ray patterns at the top, and the mountains that just an hour before were in clear focus – trees, snow and rocky ridgelines all easy to see – are just a dark purple silhouette.

More obsessive thinking about the church plant stuff. Not sure why this has taken over my thoughts lately… but it seems like I’m constantly stirring these things around in my head. There are just so many things to consider, I feel like I’m continually trying to sort them out, even if I’m technically doing something else entirely. Right now, I’m mulling over the multi-site thing… the idea of having a “campus”, or secondary location, of the same church. There are some benefits to it… there are also some benefits to planting and growing a new organic church from the ground up. Here’s the angle I’m thinking about the most right now. Since I believe in a new church benefiting from a wider base of support (many churches, individuals, and organizations collaboratively supporting its growth), is it possible to accomplish that wide base of support with a multi-site church? Or, perhaps more accurately stated, will other churches and organizations be as enthusiastic about supporting a campus? Or, restated one more time with my bias fully included, why would they support something that really seems more like an internal initiative than a reproductive extension? I’m not sure if it’s as big a deal as I’m making it. I will say… this combined with concern that a campus brings too much DNA that is geographic and culture specific into a new geography and new culture is one of my major roadblocks toward understanding the value of the campus.

But that’s all I have for now. I’m thinking of starting a new blog (I know, I know. Another blog?) just to explore this issue… simply because I know there are TONS of other people and churches having this same conversation, and I’d like to benefit from experience on all sides of the issue.

Now, I must head out to pick up a check from a client. Payment is good, it makes our world go around.

It’s official. Summer is here. I was loving spring… but when the 15 day outlook calls for only one day below 90, well… that means it’s summer. And summer here is hot. Not Arizona hot, and not deep South hot… just hot. I think it’s more about the intensity of the blazing sun than the actual heat. A guy can burn awful quick here. But it’s dry, so there’s none of the oppressive humidity of the south. It just hangs out in the 90s with intense sunlight for days and days on end. The short breaks when the thunderclouds roll in are quite welcome.

I always have a weird feeling with the 4th of July. I don’t really care about the fireworks so much… I could take them or leave them. It’s that for some reason, I always get the sense that it’s the middle of summer, and it’s the downhill side to fall after that. That isn’t really true of course, as summer just officially started a couple weeks ago, and in the Northwest, school just got out. I think it comes from childhood, where school ended at the end of May, and started up again somewhere around the 3rd week of August, which does put the 4th pretty close to the middle of summer. But now, I feel like it should just be the beginning. I think part of it is knowing that we’ll hardly blink and it will be September again. It’s also hard to believe we’re navigating our second summer here in Colorado. None of the seasons are new, now… we’ve been through one full cycle and now it’s just life. I’m a much bigger fan of fall and spring around here than summer, anyway.

The photo above unfortunately is not recent, but from an early July trip last year to Estes Park. The Rocky Mountains are something to behold… either in their winter snow blankets, or in their light summer vegetation, as the photo shows.

We spent last night at a neighborhood party/fireworks extravaganza. It wasn’t “our” neighborhood so much, but over in Thornton where all the church folk live. So we dropped in for a few hours of hanging out. For an informal, just come hang with us party, it turned out to what had to be close to 100 people. It was pretty insane – in a good way.

We’ll spend today (hopefully) just hanging out. I do have some more sermon prep to do for Saturday, but I won’t devote the whole day to it. I just need to rewrite a few sections, and start to put together a media presentation. This has been a week where I’ve spent almost all my time on church stuff… it would be so easy to bail on everything else and just focus on this, if not for the income-related issues that go with not doing any other work. Hopefully, that day comes soon.

Enjoy your holiday, don’t get too drunk, and enjoy the sparkly exploding things.