I'm back...at least for now

First, to those who have faithfully visited my blog, hoping for news about how I was doing on sabbatical, I want to say that I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you more informed and up to date. Actually, it wasn’t due to neglect, but rather because of a purposeful decision not to blog more often, based on two discoveries I made:

1) I found I needed some privacy for the process I was going through. I felt the blog was a much too public place to air my thoughts and feelings in raw, unedited form.

2) I found that the filtering and editing process necessary to post a public blog was simply too much like the responsibilities of my work as a pastor and leader. That kind of decision making and opening myself up to unkind and unfair criticism was the very thing I was trying to escape in order to do some honest self-assessment between just me and God.

So instead of blogging, I wrote pages and pages in a journal. But I’m not feeling shy at all about sharing with you how it went and what I’ve learned. In fact, on January 10, we’ll be starting a new Sunday morning series called "Chip 2.0" where you can learn all about my sabbatical, what God’s been doing in my life during these months, and the changes I think he’s trying to make in my life through this process. I hope that through this series you will not only be able to see how valuable and necessary this sabbatical has been, but it is also my hope that you, too, will be inspired to ask God what changes he might want to make in your life in the coming year.