Leadership Summit

I have taken a bit of a break from blogging. Not that I am the best at this discipline. But I needed to get away for a few weeks to be with my family, to break from deep thought, and to refresh myself for for the next season of ministry.

The last two days have been spent at The Leadership Summit. The biggest take-away I have from all the speakers was Bono's question, "Where does your sphere of empathy end?" Wow! What a haunting question. I have spent the last 5 hours wrestling with that question. I will spend many more hours and days wrestling with it. My greatest fear is that my final end is way short of what Jesus' end would be. It is really not my fear ... it is my reality. And that haunts me. I cannot claim to be a follower of Christ and be so exclusive. The outcast, the fringe, the lost, the sinner must all be within my sphere of empathy. Yet, in honesty, I still have a definitive line that measures my expression of grace. How I wish this was not true. But I know that it is. My prayer coming out of The Summit is that Christ and the Holy Spirit would expand my sphere of grace. How can I hope for infinite grace in my own life without extending it to those who Christ brings into contact with my life? Wow. I am humbled.