i know about next to nothing about planting a church. i am not an expert nor am i the son of an expert. the idea of planting a church scares me, even though pam and i am sure that is the next step on our journey with GOD. i figure pam and i aren’t the first people to have no idea of how to do this and therefore for the sake of helping out all the future ignoramuses like us, i’m going to record as much as possible along the way.
for organizational purposes i thought it would be great to setup a blog category for putting all posts relating to the subject in. the problem is that the obvious category of “church planting” doesn’t really work for me. as of right now i don’t really know what i’m doing and therefore it seems a little egotistical to mark these as posts on “church planting.” i also think it would be nice to have all these posts within the history of the church once we actually do have a church. of course i have no idea what the name of the church will be – naming the church seems to me to be something that the church does, rather than one person – so i don’t have a church name to use as a category for these posts. i know it’s not a big deal, but to me it’s a big deal.
when pam was pregnant with our boys we gave them “fetal names.” since we refused to learn what sex our kids were before they were born these names gave us a way of talking about our baby with out reducing the child to an “it” (calling a baby an “it” drives me nuts – just because you don’t know if the fetus is a “boy” or a “girl” doesn’t mean the child is an “it”). we picked gender-neutral names that could be either sex – like “pat” and “joe.” the fetal name was useful for reminding us that our child was a human and not an “it” but the amorphous name left the mystery alive that came from not knowing.
since we are in the early initial stage of the birth of a future church i am reducing myself down to using a fetal name for the church. that way i can talked about that church that i am getting excited about with out trying to define or limit anything by naming it. once we have a community of believers together we’ll come up with the real name. for now i’m going to use a name that i often answer the phone with. if you call my cell phone and i’m in the right mood i’ll answer the phone with various made up businesses. the most consistent one is “joe’s auto repair.” i’m not sure why but i like the sound of it (i also like “harry’s house of jalapeños”). so starting with this post all blog posts dealing with our future church family will be under the category “jar.”
i know this is a long post for such a stupid thing but it has helped me work out all my mental issues.
SIDE NOTE – i don’t like my “about me” photo (i think it looks pretentious) but several people said my previous one was kind of scary. so i have to take another one (one that’s fun but not scary). i haven’t had the chance or an idea for accomplishing this so it will probably be a few more days before it happens. if you have a brilliant idea please pass it on. i can most assuredly use it.
