being jake wood

My totally awesome wife took me to dinner and a movie tonight. It was a perfect evening, despite the fact that she feels nothing went smoothly. I’ve grown to adore that special thing in our relationship that seems to allow things to go from organized to messy. It’s not that we don’t plan, in fact many times we over plan things. It just seems to always happen.

It rains when we plan a picnic.

We can’t find a scalper till about half time.

The restaurant was closed.

Someone’s not feeling good, or hungry…

But it’s out of these unplanned moments that we find ourselves smack in the middle of life. We can no longer put on cruise control, but actually engage each other. And these are my favorite moments. Moments that wouldn’t even fill up a page in a journal, yet make up so much of what we have today.
In many ways, it’s like my walk with Jesus. Messy. Unpredictable. Unconventional. Intimate and even awkward at times. Yet when I take in all of these moments, they make up the man I am today. And even though I’m far from where I want to be, I still wouldn’t trade these brief moments of awkward and awestruck for anything. It always seems to be the messy things that end up shaping the whole of our lives. And we’re always asking God to take away the bad times. How awkward is that?

I’m going through statistics that supposedly tell me why some pastors are successful leaders and why some aren’t. We are such a western culture. We loom over stats and study the how’s and why’s before we jump in. And if we do jump in and fail, there is always a reason why. You didn’t study hard enough, you weren’t a good enough leader, you didn’t train up. And the list goes on and on. And then, when the successful pastors are doing well, we’re standing in line to buy the book on how he did it.

The problem is, I don’t think it’s supposed to be that way. When did we get so formula oriented? Do this and do that, and you will have a church of 5,000. And when did that turn into our goal? Every time I read the New Testament, church was about many communities having man