Contagion

Wow! What a ride this morning was. We had our second gathering and I was totally caught off guard with a situation that could have easily been avoided.

The theatre has been so good to us in letting us store our stuff in one of their rooms. However, I'm pretty sure that anyone that has a key can just walk right in. Needless to say, we were unpacking all of our stuff (in record time too might I add - not hard seeing we've only had one other gathering) when we get to the end and find out that a bag that had our VGA cable, computer mouse and some extension cords got seriously misplaced and was not able to be found anywhere. We searched high and low and determined that it was definitely not there.

So now I'm sweating worse than Mike Tyson in a spelling be...seriously. I'm so stinking linear it's not even funny and when something like this happens it's hard for me to adapt. But with failed attempt after failed attempt (Jonny C driving all over the country trying to find an open store...you rock buddy!) at finding a solution I came to grips with the fact that our video was going to be shot. We had made two videos that supported our theme (Who you become is determined by who you listen to) and all our MediaShout stuff was thrown to the side.

10:00am rolls around...our bass player is no where to be found! He calls and says he's at London Drugs (which opens @ 10!) We start @ 10! Not today. 10:20am rolls around and Donavan flies into the parking lot with the exact extension for our previous attempt at a patch job, we hook it up and it stinkin' works!

I'm telling you, I haven't been stressed out like that before in my life! I thought I was flexible on the fly like that but apparently I've got some growing to do. (Sorry to all the people who got caught in the wake of my freak out personality this morning) I thought people would be annoyed that we started so late but they just rolled with the punches as we tried to and it all worked out great. We switched it up from our last gathering and I spoke right near the beginning after the band played "Stars" by Switchfoot. My brain was quite scattered and all over the place but people say it made sense so that's good. I had some massive detours and showed a video that we were initially gonna show at the beginning in the middle of my talk which ended up working out perfect.

The the band came out and absolutely rocked the place. These guys are so stinkin' good for being a 3 piece band. Everything I throw in front of them they devour and make it sound better than the original. And with them being so good you would think that there would be some showy rockstar syndrome accompanying it but as they were playing today you could see right through them into their hearts and it was evident that they were all out worshipping. One song they played "Great is the Lord" by the Starfield and I just got rocked. Their sensitivity is incredible and everyone comments more and more as our gatherings go on how good they are. I probably doesn't hurt that we had an awesome sound man (plug: if you can mix sound extremely well and wanna make $100 a Sunday, come talk to me)

We had an all time high with our attendance which isn't to hard seeing we've only had one other gathering to compare it with. But it felt good with more people in the room. Not because it makes me feel better about myself or anything like that but the vibe/ethos in the place shifts as more people show up. It felt like there was a little more anticipation/participation by people which was really cool.

All in all, I think we are on a train that is gonna pick up steam rather quickly. Our goal of having a core of 100 committed people by January isn't too far off.

One last thought, my friend Jeremy said that when he goes on a trip if there isn't a crises by a certain time, he creates one. The reason why is that a crises unites the people involved to accomplish a focused task and lets them get to know eachother in a way that couldn't happen apart from the crises. I think this morning was just that. My true colors showed but despite that, we found a solution as a team and made it happen. I thanked Donavan after the gathering for taking initiative and getting the cable cause if he had asked I would have said for him to stay put. But because he went, everything worked out better than we had planned.

I have an amazing team of people working with me to get this church launched. Our launch team rocks but not only that, the people who are in the place of decision regarding whether this will be their church home or not rock too. They bust their butts every week to make sure that we get set up/torn down in time. I could not do any of this without their commitment and dedication to see Jesus' church built.

I look forward to the coming days and getting to serve alongside you. Here's to all of you that are in this crosscurrent with me! Cheers!