Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them.
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.  Matthew 19:13-15 NIV

Today marks the first time back on my blog in a long time. I have had a lot transpire since I created this blog and had visions of grandeur about writing each month and keeping my podcast current.

The most significant and exciting change has been the coming of Ashlynn. She is beautiful, already one, climbing on my arm as I type this. I love her and I love the role I play in her life. Right now as we adjust to being parents, I have the opportunity to be home with Ashlynn all of Monday and in the afternoons Tuesday through Friday. On the weekends Ashlynn and Janel often join me in crazy adventures and church events. Worship has taken on new joys as I sing with Ashlynn in my arms. I plan to write some blogs about what parenthood is teaching me.

While every other change seems insignificant to being a father, I will note some since they will inevitably affect the posts here. June of 2018 I graduated with my Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. I absolutely loved my time at Fuller and all I learned. I especially was impacted by the several courses I took from Chap Clark and Mark Lau Branson. One class Chap led us through devotionals from Henri Nouwen’s book In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. The concepts about power and moving from “leading to being led” have forever changed my assessment of what successful leadership looks like. While I am still discovering what it means to “join God in the neighborhood” as professor Branson would put it, I am excited about reflecting on experiments and forming learning communities with others. I hope to write some blog posts on both of these key life lessons.

February 1st was the due date for the manuscript of the book I have been working on the last four years. I finished it and am awaiting the publishers edits and that process which could take months. It feels good to have completed this big project no matter the outcome. I hope to write a series of posts close to release time about the book and the process of writing it.

We moved apartments again. This time it was a very short move: from the front unit to the back unit. Bryan and his family, the other pastor, moved into a house owned by the church which has much more space for hospitality and opportunity for their two kids to play. We were then given the opportunity to renovate the back unit. To save money and get more renovated to what Janel and I wanted we opted to fly Janel’s dad in to help and do the work ourselves. We demoed the carpet, kitchen cabinets, and bathroom flooring. We installed IKEA kitchen cabinets, wood laminate flooring, tile in the bathroom, and insulated/drywalled the garage. The garage is now a semi livable area where we can host church groups and use as our living room with a tv. Our actual living room inside is setup for Ashlynn to play. The work of renovating was invigorating and exciting. I love seeing stuff get completed and be able to say “I did that.” I hope to write about some of the intentional choices we are trying to make with our space and the joys of doing some of the work ourselves.

Our church has also made some significant changes in the recent years and so I hope to distill some thoughts regarding locality, theology, doctrines, worship, ministry, and failure.

Poetry. I have always loved writing poems to Janel here and there, but now that my book project is completed I am already pondering doing more intentional writing of poems. I hope to express and quote some of the important voices I have read recently on importance of poetry, parables, and story-telling.

Perhaps you’ll open up this blog and wonder, why did Lars write this? I am trying to do my best to get back into a consistent form of expression and writing. This particular post I hope updates you on some important aspects of my life and will help you contextualize the other posts I write. As I don’t want to have to burden each post with context, this form of story telling and musing helps me be honest about where I am located in time, history, geography, culture, and stage of life.