What have you learned in the past 5 years and how would you describe your journey?

The past four years has been a time of being exposed to a cultural mindset that we had to learn to relate to. There has been much about Gene's personal journey of discovery involved in this - learning that he is not a "pastor", he is not a "CEO", that he is an artist, a visionary with an apostolic gifting. Losing his dad was a loss of the voice in his head that said "you can do this", "this is worth doing"... This was a factor in our detour through the Quad Cities. It was also the facing of these leadership / authority submission lessons that caused us to fine tune our values. Looking back, we church planted because we knew we couldn't lead against our values, we left a mega church staff and we parted with the GLBC for the same reason. We prefer to function freely in environments that allow for people to seek, to journey, to investigate, to be who they were created to be. We want to experience all that God has for us, we want to trust the Holy Spirit - even when it doesn't make sense. We like to try new things. We want to be allowed to trust the Holy Spirit in the lives of others and release dreams. This all requires us to be careful to associate with others who are like minded (free spirits, humanitarian hearts, missional worldview). This is the way we can best love the Church, this is the best way for us to represent the Kingdom, honoring our gifts and apostolic wiring. We have learned much about idealism, community and partnerships. We have learned not to "lay hands on anyone too quickly".