A new direction

Did you know it's hard to blog when you're depressed? Well, sometimes when your mood and thoughts are dark, it just doesn't feel like a good thing to broadcast all that junk out there into the inter-webs. It takes a lot of mental energy to think and write. Thus, for a long time now, there has been silence on this blog. But NOW it's time for a new direction.

I am happy to say I am about 2 months off my anti-depressant, and all signs point to full recovery! My sleeping and eating are normal, my moods seem good, as do my interactions with people. I'm getting things done, and not napping my days away. Tasks large and small no longer seem daunting or overwhelming. I am back!

Over the next few posts I might try to articulate the stuff that is behind. But really, I'm more focused right now on what's ahead! See, something very exciting is happening in my life right now.

For two years, I've been leading a ministry team at church called Adopt-A-Block, patterned after the original ministry at the Los Angeles International Church (aka The Dream Center). Our group of roughly 30 volunteers has been serving an area of 8-10 blocks close to our church, doing mowing, painting, cleaning, leaf raking, etc, and visiting the people who live in those homes. But we want to do MORE. We have a vision to cover the WHOLE Grant Beach Neighborhood. That's roughly 100 blocks from Chestnut Expressway to Commercial Street and from Booneville Ave to Kansas Expressway. (The picture to the left shows the area the church sits on in blue, the area we are active in in yellow, and the black line shows the borders of the area we want to cover.)

At our last Adopt a Block, our new pastor visited and experienced the ministry. In God's amazing timing, that happened to be the weekend Pastor Jeff had planned to preach about being missional and reaching out into the community. Pastor shared our larger vision with the congregation and this time people CAUGHT IT.

What I mean by "this time" is it's not like this was the first time Adopt a Block had been talked about. It's been featured many times, in various ways over the last couple years. And usually we get a couple people who come out to try out the ministry from it, but there hasn't been much growth.

But this time it was different. People are responding like I've not seen before. We have no idea what the actual turn out will be, but the response has been really.... Overwhelming... Amazing... FUN!!!

And thus, I spend a lot of my "free time" working on, thinking about, and planning for AAB. So, you can expect a lot of posts about that, and about my thoughts on outreach in general in the near future.

But of course there will be random doses of news, pop culture and life stories, too, cause that's just how I roll.