Set List:
Heart of Worship
Sing Sing Sing
You’ll Come
Lead me to the Cross
Our God
A Beautiful Exchange
Jesus Paid it All
Last Sunday was just incredible, on so many levels. I don’t think I have put more time and effort into any one Sunday to date in my ministry. It’s not that this Sunday (as important as it may have been) was all that much more important than any other fall kickoff; it’s just that a bunch of things/projects culminated on this Sunday. For one, we have been working for the past few months to upgrade our sound-system. Without getting into too many details, I can say that it was a pretty involved process, and took a lot of time and energy to actually see come into fruition. So there was the effort on an audio level. Secondly, we changed the set over, building a new lower stage, and completely resetting and re-rigging all of our lighting gear… ALSO a big project. And lastly, going into this Sunday we have been working (literally for months) on re-branding, not just the series, but our entire church. So, on a human level, I don’t think I have arrived at a Sunday to date that represented more sweat, blood, creativity, energy, tears, whatever. I had a lot invested in this Sunday.
It was in a pre-service prayer time that God spoke to me regarding all that was surrounding the morning. I realized in that moment of prayer that if I didn’t release all that had been done to arrive at that place in time, over to God, then it would be all for not, and I would be not only limiting what God could do through it, but also setting myself up for either extreme pride (if the morning went “well”) or defensiveness (if everything got de-railed). So in prayer, we ALL prayed that God would take our limited, though sincere offering, and use it for His glory.
The coolest thing about this past Sunday is, that I feel God did what we asked HIm, and He took over the service. I know this because 1. The response was really amazing, and 2. The majority of the chatter after the service had little to nothing to do with how good the new sound system sounded, or how nice everything looked, or how smooth it was technically… People were talking about the spirit of the morning. That God stirred us up.
I pray for more Sunday’s like this one. That we can arrive on a Sunday morning, 100% confident that we have given all we could, and then hand over the reigns to God’s spirit for Him to do something amazing.
B
