monday monday

So I go to visit the sick mother of a community member today at the county home. I can;t find her. I run into, however, a young woman from my previous pastorate. She's working there in admissions. She's living in the city with her cat. We chat for a few minutes. Mostly small talk about life. I think she's an occasional attendant at the church I used to serve. Maybe more than occasional. We didn't talk about that. I wonder why I ran into her. Was she merely a distraction from some other tasks? There were more distractions today than actual work. What does it mean when I have time to spend chatting in a nursing home lobby for twenty minutes on a Monday afternoon? And I had already spent over an hour at the mall with my wife, kids, and mother-in-law. I went to get lunch with them and the women thought I might get some new slacks and shorts. After that,I stopped at Cokesbury for some more books. Four more books. All good reading, I'm sure. Somedays I don't know what I should be doing.
I have taken to handwriting simple, personal notes to people. I'm sending cards and messages to folks as a means of contact. I wonder if it might be effective? In this culture of email and cell phones, it is insteresting to write and send a badly handwritten little note to someone. My handwriting sucks. I wonder if people will care? I send little words of encouragement, prayers, God's Word. Years ago, correspondence like this might become a treasured possession. Will all of these notes and cards end up in the trash seconds after opening/reading?

emergent emergency

So I've read the books. Hell, I breathe missional ecclesiology. I recognize the need and the opportunity within our small mainline Lutheran congregation to be transformed by the Spirit of Jesus to love and serve the world. I'm into the whole global justice/ local missions thing. I seek to offer worship that is inspired and inspiring, collecting the deep spiritual gifts of the great evangelical, catholic, apostolic, and sacramental tradition into a kairos experience of liturgy. I desire koinonia, the mutual sharing of all the gifts of Christian faith and life, among a diverse body of believers, practicing the faith in the midst of a cracked (broken and fragmented) world. I long for peers relationships with fellow disciples.
So why isn;t it happening? This is a God question, I suppose. What am I not doing as a spiritual leader?
I would like to be part of a vibrant spiritual community. I would like to be a leader in such a community. I feel called into that. So what must I do? The books can paint a vision of such a community and the transformation needed to get from here to there. How do I move the system?