Happy phone calls

We spent a lot of time and money sending out 2 sets of postcards to 16,000 homes, and I have gotten several calls from people who have read them and are interested. It's great, every time that phone rings and someone is interested, it just makes my day. It's a ray of hope that people will come, that Easter will be amazing, and that The River really is filling a need in people's lives. It's pretty cool.

Dress rehearsal

We had the Dress Rehearsal for Easter yesterday. It went well. It was really great to see the room decorated, I had wondered if we could pull off the vision in that room and I think we did. It was great to see it as we had envisioned. The band sounded great, the sound system worked fine...we had a glitch with the PC that needs to get fixed. For some reason, we couldn't get our presentation software, called Opensong, to use the cool feature that was the whole reason we got it in the first place. This feature allows the PC to projection the presentation on the projector while showing the slideshow outline on the laptop; this allows you to see the whole presentation while projecting only a part of it. Pretty cool- if it works.

The biggest surprise to me was how unprepared I was. I've been planning this worship for months, so I thought I'd know it cold, and I just kept forgetting stuff. It was a learning experience for me, which was the point, and Easter should go off without a hitch. Well, OK, without too big a hitch. There's gonna be mistakes, and that's fine. Just as long as they're mistakes we can live with.

Having seen this vision come to life, I'm even more excited for Easter. I can't wait to do it 'for real.' I'm just really pumped and can't wait!

We walk by faith, not by sight

I was at another church this past Sunday (being able to do that is the best part of not having worship), and it was 5 minutes before worship started and there were hardly any cars in the parking lot. Which is not all that noteworthy- most everything folks go to these days they show up at the last minute or late. What I realized, though, is that at some point on Easter Sunday the parking lot is going to be empty and I am going to be freaking out. Even if 1,000 people end up coming, there is going to be a point where I look out, see no cars and think "We're finished."

We may not be, but at some point that morning anxiety is just gonna take over and I'm gonna feel like I've just wasted the last 10 months of my life. And right after that, the place will probably be filled with people and it'll be great. But that moment of terror is coming. I know it. I felt it brush past this Sunday. It's stalking me.

Fear is new for me. I'm usually too arrogant to be genuinely afraid of failure. Either that, or I can delude myself into thinking it won't happen. Used to be I could do one of those things and fear wasn't an issue. It just went away, and I have basically lived a life without fear. But this job has scared the daylights out of me because there is a very real chance that it could fail. That I could take on the biggest challenge of my life and flop. For once in my life, there is no getting around the fear. It's there, and it's not going away. I have never felt so vulnerable, for so long, in my whole life.

We walk by faith, not by sight is what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5. People will come. I don't know how many, but some. I know that. But I'm still going to feel that terror in my gut.

Maybe walking by faith doesn't mean walking without fear.
Maybe it means walking in spite of it.
And if God's power really does work best in my weakness, then God is about to kick some serious butt.

another observation

I went to a local lutheran church the other night to fill in for their pastor, and I noticed that one of their stained glass windows had a sword. And it wasn't just any stained glass window- it was right behind their altar. It wasn't just any sword, either- it was a big sucker, probably 8 feet long, and it basically was the window. This kinda thing probably seems normal to many Christians. After all, Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, right? He should have a crown, a throne, a sword, a scepter, whatever he wants. OK, I get that.

But I've been trying hard to see things how people outside church see them, and this window confirms what many people think about Christians- that we don't really care about people outside our faith. After all, who do you suppose they think God would use the sword on? Certainly not the devoted sheep who show up every week and pay their dues! No, God would use it on the infidels- the people outside Christianity. I don't think the folks at that church had thought anything about this. I also don't think they'd thought about how Jesus could have had all that stuff, but he chose instead to live the life of a humble itinerant preacher.

In The River, we're going to show Jesus the way he chose. We're going to show him as a shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep, who did so forgiving those who killed him. That's not just who he is, it's a message our world desperately wants and needs to hear, but it gets lost in all the conflicting images. There will be no pictures of God with a sword in The River. No crowns. No scepters. None of that stuff. Just Christ crucified. If he wants to come back with a sword, that's his choice to make, not ours.