Sunday Messy Sunday

Sometimes Sundays aren't what you expect.

I woke up and started the day feeling a little unsettled. Uneasy. No particular reason. I wrote this in my journal this morning. "God – take this morning. I give it to you. I'm feeling ... a measure of anxiety and fear. Please replace that with hope and trust and faith."

Arrived at church at 9 for setup. Initially, things were going great! Everyone was happy. Light-hearted. Several Nacho Libre jokes. There was joy!

But 5 minutes before the worship service started, everything seemed to unravel. Cables failed. Sound issues kept popping up. Which sort of set off a chain reaction of slightly fumbled moments, clumsy transitions, awkward silences, etc. Basically - nothing went smoothly. Everything was a bit of a struggle. Like me, the service was very "human."

And here's what I learned. It didn't matter.

People still met with God. The worship (despite the technical woes) was real and beautiful and challenging and lifted high Christ. After the service ended, I sat down in the High School lobby with two new people. One had attended once before in March, but this time she brought a friend. We chatted for about 10 or 15 minutes. Not only did they love their experience, but they also strongly resonated with what we're doing and with how we are choosing to be the church. In our conversation (directed by their great questions), they both shared how they loved our reasons for choosing a school (to free up resources to serve others and to create/foster relationships with our community).

And not once did they mention a clumsy transition or awkward silence or "scratchy" speaker signal.

And so - I think what happened today was a gift. A reminder. Great church can be very flawed and human. Maybe it even should be a bit of a mess.

Having said all that ... I sure hope the sound system works next Sunday :-)