Bad news first thing this morning. My wife found out that a former interim pastor of ours died last night. He was at our church when my Grandmother died and got my mom and her sisters through a pretty rough patch. I didn't have a chance to talk to my mom before I had to hit the road this morning, so I don't know how she is taking it. I'd like to be able to go to the funeral, but at this point, no one has any information.

In any case, it's Thursday, so that means that I'm off to school to get ejukated. We are starting a new class this week. I hope it will be better than the last one. We had the instructor in a previous class, so I'm hopeful. Part of the problem is the material. I'm in a series of management classes (my degree is a BS in Management, so go figure...) that just seem to be very repititious. This string of four classes could easily be consolidated down to two, maybe even one, without changing what is covered. I'm also not that interested in the material. It has been very difficult for me to maintain any level of interest in what I'm doing. I didn't want this program to turn into just checking off boxes; I wanted to learn and use what I was learning. I just keep telling myself that it's only ten more weeks, then I get back into the kind of classes I enjoy.

Yesterday evening, I found myself deep in some serious conflict at the church. The conflict part is nothing new; sometimes I think that's all ministry is. What's ugly this time around is that instead of a conflict about ideas, this is a personal attack on me. I don't see a positive outcome at this point, but who knows. I've run for public office in the past, so I've seen dirty politics up close and personal. But secular politics has nothing on church politics for just pure venom.