Hmm, interesting week.

Thankfully God measures time for us in weeks. We can leave one week behind and imagine a fresh hopefully better week is ahead.

Preached to a near empty church today where I was almost the oldest one in the room. What a greatly different experience - much less formal and much more welcoming the human, relational side of preaching where the younger folks hope that you will share some of your vulnerabilty - what is your journey about? Not prepared for that angle and my presentation was not good - the message was good but maybe not what they needed to hear and like I said my confidence in this new setting wasn't fully there. I like to preach without my notes and I just wasn't at that point today - I'm so much more passionate when I can put away the manuscript.

But I may be asked back. Which is nice thought as now I can say that I have a fuller appreciation for the context of this church and what they are used to.

Incredible worship and one song in particular was so good that I was going to check it out on Google. After talking to the worship leader turns out that his brother wrote it!

But the weirdest time was yesterday. I'm in this preaching group which contains people from my church. I was scheduled to preach to half of the group. The other half has a few elders from my church and I was thankful that I did not have to preach to them given my decision not to return to my church.

As a matter of fact, I would have skipped this last class altogether because I got to bed very late. But from a pastoral point of view I did not want those who were involved in the disasterous meeting of Monday to read anything into my absence as if I am bitter or snubbing them.

I'm met in the parking lot by the leader who wants to know if I would be willing to share my sermon with the whole group as the 2nd group has a change of plans and could sit in. My first reaction is to refuse. I explained that there was a conflict. Especially considering that the sermon to be preached was the same one that has caused so much problems back in December. I had no idea that anyone who was aware of this issue would be there - I had been promised the freedom to preach without the burden of having these people ready to critique. A little part of me was also worried that this was a set up.

I was urged to go ahead. I explained that I did not want anyone to think that I had purposefully come with the offending sermon to hold everyone captive to hear it - as if to thumb my nose.

I went ahead. Not sure of myself and barely able to look anyone in the face because I was so uncomfortable - I'm sure this will be read as further "un Christ-like behaviour" rather than acute embarassment on my part.

I may never know, but I can' t help but suspect that preaching this sermon in front of the elder that had nothing nice to say about it was a bad idea. But the alternative was to come intending to preach and then refusing. I shouldn't have been put into this position to begin with.

Not sure that I will go back for any services in my old church. Don't really see the point - I like the church family of course but I'm one of those "let's rip the bandaid off" kinda people. I'm not staying so whether I go back for one last service or not doesn't seem important to me. Its not like I'm going to walk around and tell people that I have decided to leave so my last service to them is just another day. I guess this will sort itself out somehow. People who notice that I'm not around can call or ask C where I am. I just don't think anyone is really going to care that much.