Contagion

I'm super excited to hear that after coming to one of gatherings people are saying "I would definitely invite (enter said unconnected person) to this!" That is one of our goals for our Sunday gatherings. That the people who come would feel completely comfortable inviting friends who are far from God. Don't get me wrong, we haven't and won't water down anything we say or do. All we are trying to do is eliminate what someone called "The cringe factor". This being the use of insider language, unfriendliness, mispelled words, off tune vocals/instruments, long winded/boring speaking, condemning of sin instead of conviction of sin, not enough signage for guests to get where they need to go....and the list could go on and on.

There is so much stuff that is unnecessary for us to do and yet we do it out of tradition and habit. And a lot of this stuff is what keeps the disconnected from becoming connected. Even though Sunday morning is only one part of what we do, we still want to do our best. It's very easy to settle for second best because we are lazy and we don't want to do that.

One area that we really strive for excellence in is our music. I've talked with a few people in the last couple days and they've told me that at their church the music sometimes gets picked on Sunday morning. I nearly had a heart attack when I heard this! Maybe it's just my personality, but I really honestly believe that the Holy Spirit can lead us what to do a week before the day actually comes. We don't have to wait until the last minute to be "lead by the Spirit". And I'm always open to my plans being hijacked.

Our band practices every Tuesday night until they nail down the songs. So for these monthly gatherings they've been getting a lot of practice. Once January rolls around it will be intense. There is just something about waiting till sunday morning to practice that smells like laziness to me. Or it could be that they aren't learning anything new so they don't really have to practice. Our guys have learned around 8 new songs for the 3 gatherings (including this week) so they've been frantically trying to practice so that we are doing our best.

All of this to say that we believe in trying our very best to do our very best in everything we do. Sure we need to relax a bit and get over our newbie tendencies but that doesn't mean we will let up on being prepared.

Lastly, I just want to make it known that I have nothing against traditional church. I may not understand some of the methods and the reasoning behind them but I am definitely not against them. I understand that they are reaching a certain group of people that our church will never be able to reach. My dream is that I will be able to partner with the churches in Mission to accomplish the goal of connecting the disconnected to Jesus. At times it may appear that we think we've got an edge and one up on other churches in the area because of our approach but I understand that we aren't above anyone and I never want to portray this kind of attitude. We do what we do and the other churches do what they do, but in the end, we all are trying to accomplish the same mission.