Filling my thoughts with what I’ve gotten wrong turns bitter my gratitude and stingy my praise. I can stay here, wallowing in regret, but it’s like quick sand. It will pull me in until I can’t see the way out. But filling my vision with Him helps me see the grace He covers me with and gives me the strength to reach up and grasp His hand.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Can you tell me what is it that you do? No fluff, just the meat and bones version? Guys, this one’s just for you. Today we answer the question: What exactly is a neighborhood missional community, and how can I replicate it where I live?

* This episode is not solely for husbands, but written with husbands in mind. If you would like a straight-forward explanation of how we do neighborhood missional community, this is for you!

** Also, my voice was a little scratchy during this recording. My apologies, and thank you for understanding!

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links mentioned (not affiliate links):

• Small is Big, Slow is Fast: Living and Leading Your Family and Community on Mission by Caesar Kalinowski
• Building a Discipling Culture by Mike Breen
• 123 Lifeschool Podcast
• Shared Meals Cultivate Community
• Cultivating a Life Worth Imitating
• The Road Forward to Missional Community
• Obstacles to Neighborhood Missional Living Series

If you are feeling empty and discontent, my prayer for you today is that you can move toward more than what you have known, more than what you believe, and more than what you see.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Joining the mission of a holy God sounds a little intimidating, if I’m honest. Holy is a heavy word. The completeness of God’s holiness—His through-and-through pureness and awe-invoking presence makes me feel a little like Susan inquiring about Aslan in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

“Aslan is a lion–the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion". . . “Safe?" said Mr. Beaver . . . "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

I feel small. And inquisitive--drawn to the exploding mystery of One who can simultaneously be good and not safe. So when I try to wrap my head around my purpose from my creation being to join the mission of this holy God, I find it both irresistible and unnerving. Possibly you feel the same.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

As we are beginning to experience or looking forward to coronavirus restrictions being lifted, we may find that we are feeling all the emotions, again. Anticipation couples with worry, relief is tinged with regret. We thought we were more than ready, but then the next moment we are not so sure. Whether the waiting has gotten old, the transition unfolds too slowly for our liking, or we aren’t ready yet for another change, the truth is that this is new for all of us, just as the onset of a world-wide pandemic also was. As mission-minded people, how can we prepare our hearts and minds for such a transition as this?

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links Mentioned:

• Free download of the 6 missional rhythms
• Yes! Please send me the 6-day email series to unpack each of the missional living rhythms.

All the things we want fast—check-marks on our to-do-lists, digits on our direct deposits, accomplishments to pad our resumes, yes, even godly character and a mission-immersed life at microwave-speed—could we hold them with open hands? Could we dare to believe that something far richer could be won in the places our patience must grow most extravagantly?

Because when we are weak,

I AM is our strength,

but we may need a slower pace to see it.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links Mentioned:

• My quarantine playlist on Youtube
• The song I’ve been playing on repeat.

Do we trust that He is good, even in the midst of a world turned upside down and fear turned loose to whisper in our ears? Because before we can proclaim His goodness across the room, or across a driveway, or across the space of social media, we need to first wrestle with it in our own hearts. Is God good even through a pandemic like covid-19?

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links Mentioned:

• My quarantine playlist on Youtube
• Sign up here to join my email list and receive a free download of six missional rhythms to cultivate during the quarantine.

These past few weeks we have been graced with ample opportunity to be beginners. Yes, though this time in history is hard and it’s heavy, and I am not negating the pain, grace-lines our floundering, our feeling like we don’t know what we are doing or how to respond. The breath of grace lingers on our up-ended schedules and overturned priorities, our now in-side-out proficiencies and side-ways routines. Why? Because when we acknowledge we are not in control, we can learn to trust the One who holds the whole aching, groaning world tender in His hands. Through this current season of us all feeling like beginners, I am discovering this as well: it’s when we feel we don’t know where to start that we may actually be most ready to begin living missionally in our neighborhood.

Last in the “Obstacles to Neighborhood Missional Living” series is “Neighborhood Missional Living When I Don’t Live in a Neighborhood”! Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog. From this page you can view the full topic line-up for the series and easily click over to the post on the blog.

More content is available on TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links Mentioned:

If your small seems impossibly small and you also relate to any of the following obstacles to neighborhood missional living, I encourage you to go back to the earlier releases in this series: my house is too small, I am an introvert, or I am just too busy. The entire series, Obstacles to Neighborhood Missional Living, is available both on the blog and podcast.

In the midst of our world-wide efforts to flatten the curve of covid-19, missional living may have drifted off our radar. To compound the apparent disconnect, today we are talking about neighborhood missional living when we don’t even live in a neighborhood. Strike two. Yet I’m choosing to believe that because you are here, reading or listening, something in you also believes that living on mission is not only still relevant, it’s all the more needed. Non-neighborhood dwellers, today you may feel small, alone, insignificant—like an outsider looking in. I can relate. The weight of wanting to live a missional life yet thinking that it can only happen in certain scenarios is one I lived with for years. And I wish I had known then what I now know: many of the same principles of missional living in a neighborhood apply to missional living outside a neighborhood.

Next up in the “Obstacles to Neighborhood Missional Living” series is “Neighborhood Missional Living When I Don’t Live in a Neighborhood”! Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog. From this page you can view the full topic line-up for the series and easily click over to the post on the blog.

More content is available on TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links Mentioned:

Rain is an Opportunity to Share an Umbrella

The Turquoise Table (Kristin Shell)

Leslie Verner

Ann Voskamp

Caesar Kalinowski

“How can we possibly add everyday mission to our already-packed fifteen-to-nineteen waking hours of each day?” ask the authors of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission. Perhaps this is a question you and I have asked with similar words—one that haunts us and simultaneously offers us permission to dismiss the nudge to live on mission. They continue: “The very thought is enough to overwhelm us and keep us from even trying.” We nod in agreement. But their next question is unexpected: “But what if that’s the wrong question?” The statement that follows hit dangerously close to home for me, a former we-need-to-say-yes-to-all-the-things type of mother: “God’s mission cannot be added into our busy lives; our busy lives must wrap around God’s mission” (Connelly and Roberts, Jr. 117). In this post/episode we are going to unpack how neighborhood missional living can take place in the midst of our busy lives.

Next up in the “Obstacles to Neighborhood Missional Living” series is “Neighborhood Missional Living When I Am Too Busy”! Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog. From this page you can view the full topic line-up for the series and easily click over to the post on the blog.

More content is available on TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links Mentioned:

• Creating Margin
• Margin Meets Mission: The Gift of Availability
• The Paradox of Rest
• Summer in a Picture-Frame: Nos and Yeses