A Personal Conversation with Shawn
I remember having a conversation with Shawn Lovejoy a year after starting my new position with LifeWay Christian Resources. I had moved my family down to Nashville, TN to figure out how LifeWay was going to resource church planters, multisite churches, and multiplying churches (we started NewChurches.com as a result).
So we were together at the Exponential conference, and Shawn asked me, “How’s everything going?”
I just responded the way I normally do with a big grin, “It’s going great!”
But then, he stopped, looked at me straight in the eyes and asked me one more time, “How’s everything going?”
I remember thinking to myself, Shawn’s a really nice guy, and I enjoy working with him, but why is he asking me this question again?? We’re in a public place at a conference…does he expect to “counsel” me here?
Sure, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed, but who wasn’t anyway? After all, in the previous months, I was rewriting Planting Missional Churches with Ed Stetzer, developing and launching the strategy for NewChurches.com, leading a major software redevelopment initiative with the North American Mission Board to better assess, train, and coach their church planters, launching The State of Church Planting research project, and now speaking four times at the Exponential conference, but this season was eventually going to pass, right?
I was at a conference and had to put my “game face” on, so who was Shawn to be confronting me like this? Well, the reality was, Shawn was just being himself. He was acting as a wise mentor who had travelled this path many times, and was seeing someone else who was heading down the same path.
So he looked at me and said, “I’ve been where you are bro, I’ve burnt the candle at both ends, and it just wasn’t worth it.”
At that, I decided it was time to sit down and have a real conversation with him.
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