Five Fifteen

It's 5:15 in the morning. I've been awake for a while.

This morning I drive to Annual Conference.

I haven't been in seven years. The last time, I was still on staff. I had a title and a role and a reason to be in the room. Now I'm going to show people a software tool I built during my bipolar recovery while my farm was being sold out from under me.

Sunday I preach for the first time in twelve months.

I'm not sure which one I'm more nervous about.

The conference is in Birmingham. I'll see people I haven't seen since before the mania, before the hospital, before the camper. Some of them read the hospital essay. Some of them read Hope in the Wilderness in the Anniston Star two years ago. Some of them will find out for the first time when they see me in the hallway and ask how I'm doing.

I don't know what I'll say to that.

The honest answer is: I'm rebuilding. I'm in the middle of it. I've been writing profiles of people in Calhoun County who kept going when they had every reason to stop. I've been building a bridal expo and a coaching tool and a sermon prep app and a brand clarity framework. I've been trying to figure out what my sense of call looks like when it isn't organized around a congregation that meets at a specific address.

I haven't arrived anywhere. I'm just going.

The sermon I'm preaching Sunday is John 12:24. The grain of wheat. Unless it falls to the ground and dies.

I chose it because it's the most accurate description of the last two years I know how to give. The farm had to die. The ministry identity had to die. The version of myself that believed if he just worked hard enough everything would hold together had to die.

Death is not the detour around resurrection. It is the mechanism for it.

I know this is true. I've lived it. I'm still living it.

What I don't know yet is what the resurrection looks like in full. I'm inside the process. You don't get to see the shape of the thing when you're still becoming it.

The tool I'm bringing to conference is called SermonCoach. I built it because I needed it. Because I know what it feels like to stand in the pulpit and know the words are right but something is missing — the wrestling wasn't done, the thinking wasn't yours, you let a shortcut do the work that only you can do.

I built it after using AI while manic. After watching it amplify everything wrong with my thinking. After coming out the other side with a different understanding of what these tools can and can't do.

The credential is the wreckage, not the podium.

I'll say that to whoever asks how I ended up building sermon prep software while I was supposed to be recovering.

Sunday I'll stand at Jacksonville First and tell my hometown congregation that the seed must die. They've watched me live it. They don't need me to explain it.

What I don't know is what I'll feel when I step behind that pulpit for the first time in a year.

I'll tell you after.

The sermon: A Seed Must Die