Moving Along...

Since before we were married, Steve and I have lived for the weekends. I'm not sure where or when I decided to invest my being in Church on Sunday, but I do know that when I think about how that happened, I'm immediately reminded of something I heard Bill Hybels say way back when I first got involved in ministry. "The local church is the hope of the world".

Every time I think about that statement, I'm reassured that there's nothing else I'd rather give my energy and time to than being part of developing the local church, and partnering with others who have the same passion to see lives changed and people reached for Christ.

We are brand new at the whole "church plant" thing, but it's been sooo cool to see similarity in dynamics between a church of 2000 and our church of 30. Our 30+ member home team consists of people who represent every personality type that I remember back at our previous church where 2000 people was an average attended weekend. Preparation for weekend services is just as much work as it used to be, only a little more involved and physical since our staff consists of 4 people. We came from an established "system", almost like a template for planning the weekend, and here we're in the middle of defining our own system. Last night as we set up for home team, I experienced another dynamic that I think will follow us no matter where we go, as long as we're in ministry.

Last night, our home team met in a new temporary building. It's a classroom inside of an already existing church here in Raleigh about 10 miles from where we live. We're meeting at this location for three weeks. At that point we'll move into a more permanent meeting space closer to us. Our service was pretty simple and structured and included our first communion together as a church. The 4 of us split up tasks during the week for our service. One of my tasks was setting up communion. Throughout the week, I casually stopped in different stores to get the things I would need for dressing the table and the actual elements that would be served by our pastors for communion.

One thing that I didn't get during the week that I was going to need was a black table cloth. I didn't find one in the three stores I went to earlier in the week, but I figured I could pick one up at Target on the way to church. Note to self: Black table cloths are not easy to find. I scrambled around for an hour before our service searching the town for 1 black table cloth. None. Seriously. Steve called me to tell me to come back to the church. He said we'd be ok without the table cloth. I started getting REALLY frustrated because for 1 - Steve was irritating me, and 2 - We had 15 minutes until church started and I hadn't dressed the communion table. AHHH! Anyway...I drove back to the church mad at Steve (it feels so much better to be mad at him when I'm mad at myself) but knowing that I was just going to have to be creative with what I had. Needless to say, I was nervous. As Steve started his first song, I remembered the feeling. The deep breath I used to take at 7:00PM on Friday nights knowing that we had done all we could to that week to prepare and that it was just time to step aside and let God take over and run the rest of the nights service. He was ALWAYS faithful. I took that same deep breath last night as our service began, and thanked God that he's STILL faithful! Awesome conversations took place last night, Lee gave an incredible talk (dude can cast vision like NOBODY'S business) and we took communion together for our first time which, for me, marked a defining moment in the life of Church at the Triangle.