Is this God or is this a strange obsession? I have wandered into the "emergant" conversation and am pretty intrigued, or obsessed. Okay that's my problem, but I still have questions. One friend said, "I'm not Emergant, but I'm the emerging church" Okay I shouldn't label; no membership cards, but I go about the various links in this conversation and still see so much semantics. I am patient while I want to run.

A man in charge needs the framework, but the work of God will organically come out from the people to form the church. Is that emergant? How is that different than any other of the old thoughts of old books and movements of all old societies? It's not, and I guess that is the common link.

I go to a conference to see and hear how Christ is being expressed in the life of another. I do not want to battle definitions, although I see the battle is within me.

Maybe this is me coming to the end of my search for permission.

I am ready to go do it. When I got home to my turf, I realized that I had lost my memory for three days. I stepped back into the life that is presenting the field of harvest. My prayer at the end of our trip to Ukraine last month was "O Lord do not let me grieve the loss of Your hand on my life. Let my grief be my love poured out. I do not leave a people, but seek to continue pursuit of Your life as You live through me."

When I went to Ukraine in 1997, I came home and obsessed over the Russian language in order to stay connected to the people with whom I fell in love. I did that. I wrote to them and kept my heart with them and God was so all over it. I went back to see them 11 years later. Those who can listen know the whole story. Now, I am burying myself in this new language in order to stay connected to those with whom I fell in love. I'm writing to them and keeping my heart with them because God is so all over it.