There's no way to summarize the five days of discovery lab in one quick blog. It was an amazing week, a transformational week. In some ways it was absolutely nothing that I expected and in other ways it was exactly what I anticipated. I laughed more this week than I have in a long time. Seriously, I've got more good inside jokes from those five days than I've got from the last few years. Everyone just connected on a deep and enjoyable level. And it wasn't only fun but it was a deeply spiritual and inspirational time.
What can I say? After getting grilled in direct interviews for 7ish hours, after leading the community in worship, after planing and presenting a proposal for a new church plant (that we had to create as a team in 6ish hours), after doing a ropes course, and lots of other things...all the while having the assessors standing behind us taking notes...it came down to our final interview on Thursday morning. Our interview was last, and as we watched each interviewee leave their interview (if they left the room at all!) in a more solemn fashion than we'd seen all week Jess and I began to get quite nervous.
While I can't really tell you everything from the exit interview, because that would be awkward, I'll give you the gist of it. They said all sorts of good and great things about us, but when it came down to it here's the real prognosis (which happened to exactly match what Jessica and I came in thinking they would say): If we planted a church now we'd have, according to them, a moderate chance of success. But if we pursue their suggestions we'll have a very high probability of success. They said that I've got to put myself into more situations where I'm being challenged on a deeper level. More or less they said that I've excelled at every level I've been at, but the problem is that I need to find situations where I'm not able to easily excel. Their interpretation of what that would look like was a.) more school (being around smart guys) and b.) spend time working at a very successful church that is further down the road than Renovatus (being around successful guys). They also said that my wife is the bomb (they didn't say "bomb" per se, but they really did stress that Jessica is amazing and talented).
I was relieved and disapointed all at once to not have any surprises in the exit interview. The worst part about the whole process is that while we went in anticipating their exact response, we also anticipated leaving the week with a more clear view of what the next couple of years would look like. As it is the future is more wide open and unplanned right now than it's been in a very long time.

...pictures to come...and I'm pretty sure that they'll be good ones.