I’m in a hotel in Oak Ridge, Tennessee — a nice little town a few miles outside of Knoxville, one of my favorite places in the US. My four day event here was chopped down to a one and a half day event due to budgetary considerations. That messed up some travel plans, but it’s worth it to see the good folk from the local churches again. I’m doing a Re-Imagining the Church seminar here but it’s a much compressed one so I don’t have time to pussyfoot around. The good news is they seem to be ready for the top news. Check over at Tentpegs sometime in the next day or so to read one part of my message.

We had a long drive yesterday, but it was good to spend that time with Kami. With construction in Detroit, Dayton, Cincinnati, and two more stretches of slow road and construction between Cincy and Louisville, we chose to add more miles to our trip by swinging west to Ann Arbor, over to Marshall, Michigan and then south via Fort Wayne and Indianapolis to Louisville. And… of course…we hit some serious construction in Louisville itself. By the way, I love the way Indiana does its construction zones. They have the good sense to have lower speed limits that are only applied when workers are in the immediate area. If the lights on the signs aren’t flashing, feel free to drive normally. Why aren’t other states that smart?

All it all, it took us just about 10 hours to get to Nashville. If we can take the easterly route down through Ohio and IF there is no construction or (seemingly mandatory) slow down in Cincy, we can get there in a bit over 9 hours. All told, we didn’t gain much or lose much by taking the Indiana route. Kara and Lucas met us in the front yard. It was good to see Lucas so excited at recognizing me and — especially — his Grandma Sugar. I got to see Kara’s great job on making her new house a home (Josh was off to the airport to pick up his twin brother who is visiting this weekend), but I hit the road within ten minutes of arriving. About three more hours on the road and I was in Oak Ridge.

At the breakfast this morning, I got to see quite a few of the Highland View folk but I was so tickled to see the Arlington people come to see me. I am always amazed at how they go out of their way to hear me. I would think that they’ve heard me so often that they’d be fed up with me by now. Their minister, Mark Brackney, is a man in whom there is no guile. He is who I want to be when I grow up. He used to be the associate minister at Rochester Church before heading down to Arlington (that’s north Knoxville) to be their pulpit guy. He’s done an incredible job there.

At the talks today, a bunch of women from the local Vineyard Church came to listen. Their husbands are off at a retreat and one of their friends — a member at Highland View — invited them. They loved the first talk and came back to hear the second one this evening even though that meant they didn’t get to see the first quarter of the Tennessee game. That’s quite a compliment! They asked if they could meet with me so a group of us will go out to lunch tomorrow after class and worship. After that, I’ll head west for 175 miles and finally get to really visit with Kara, Josh, and Lucas (not in that order).

On Tuesday morning, I’ll head up to visit my mother and father. They live in Appalachia — Catlettsburg, KY — and serve the poor on both sides of the river. Dad was taken to hospital last week with a suspected heart attack (mild). He is now at home but they did a ton of tests on him and will give him the results on Wednesday. Then, I head back to Rochester via Columbus. It will be a trip of 2000 miles more or less when it is all done but, except for today and most of tomorrow, I get to spend it with family. Duncan is taking care of our house while we’re gone and Scooby is in the bird hotel. Our neighbors are also patrolling our house closely. We have world class neighbors, some of whom are now members of the church, recently baptized.

While in Eastern Kentucky, I plan to pick up a bit of info that I will be able to publish in a few weeks as part of the Hidden History series. Until I get home, it will be hard to update this blog. Patience, please. Pray for our work in Rochester. It has become clear that the devil hates our church and will launch continuing series of attacks until he breaks us. We plan to make that very difficult to do!