A friend introduced me to blogging in mid-February 2005. He blogged for all of 3 months, signing off the day after twenty-five friends and I launched Common Grounds Online. Through this friend's blog I met a friend of his, and through him I met David Wayne, the Jollyblogger.

The Jollyblogger was one of a few heavily trafficked Christian blogs in the spring of 2005. David had already attained a vast readership and it was obvious why he had: David had a gift for taking complex, often controversial topics and reflecting upon them with clarity, wisdom and grace.

David and I shared in common RTS-Orlando and a love for Richard Pratt. In short order I read everything he posted and at some point our virtual relationship developed to the point that I took him up on his public invitation to DC/VA/MD bloggers to meet up for dinner in near DC.

Meeting in person cemented what had begun via the Internet. I asw in person that David was in real life as he appeared on his blog- humble, wise, loving.

I was graced with a couple of other meet-ups as David would let me crash at his house the night before flying out of BWI. When he called to tell me was having a colonoscopy I was floored, and then devastated by the report that he did have cancer.

And so Stephanie and I have prayed that the Lord would heal him. Thus far David is still in a fight, but the fight is for a handful of years, not decades.

All that is a rambling preface to this: David, who rarely blogs anymore, has posted a piece that punctured me with searing honesty. He says that as a pastor he has sought the significance of a large church and now realizes that much of his ministry was sourced in a desire to be big. He regrets not loving his people, not being a shepherd.
http://jollyblogger.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/dying-to-self-in-10000-or-s...

Isn't this the way it goes? A gifted cook regrets not working at making a dish better, a talented singer regrets the one note missed, the scratch golfer laments the missed eagle.

David is a shepherd of souls, one of the best I've known. He loves. He loves.