Worship Confessional – 08.30.09

Yesterday’s worship service felt like a satisfying breath of fresh air after months of treading water.

I’ve mentioned in the past posts that I struggle with feeling ready to lead in the services due to the amount of set up and family “chaos” I have with me on Sunday mornings.  It’s just part of being a part of a church plant.  However, yesterday, I dropped  Crystal off at the airport 1.5 hours before we showed up for church set up.  I had 45 minutes in the car just to myself after I dropped her off.  I chose to keep the radio off and just pray and sing.

By the time I got to the church, my heart was in a totally different place than on a regular Sunday morning when Brian and I are trying to herd our babies out of the house.  I had already connected with God, so I was TOTALLY prepared to help others connect.  I don’t know how it went for the rest of the congregation, but overall, I felt like it all just clicked… the set up, the worship, the fellowship time… all of it.  I was so thankful.

Here’s the Sunday Setlist:

1. All We Need – Charlie Hall
2. Desert Song – Brooke Fraser
3. How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin
4. Mighty To Save – Reuben Morgan
5. Our Great God – Mac Powell & Fernando Ortega
6. Sweetly Broken – Jeremy Riddle
7. Till I See You – Joel Houston & Jadwin Gillies

Highlights:  Definitely having a REAL and rare quiet time alone in the car prior to the service… having my heart in the right place.  I’ll have to figure out how to do something like that every Sunday morning (obviously not that extended, but just some alone time).  I think EVERYONE showed up to set up yesterday morning to help set up, because we got started late due to the school being locked up when we got there, but we STILL got set up within 15-20 minutes.  This NEVER happens.  We sound checked and got everything up and going a good 45 minutes before doors opened… so all of the set-up crew sat around with VooDoo donuts and just got to fellowship.  My kids were also in great, behaving moods.  That always helps.

We had NO technical issues and a pretty full house.  We had to pull out MORE chairs during the service to accommodate all the newcomers.  Brian leaned over at one point in the service and said, “I think we’ve hit some kind of strange momentum during summer the last month!”  We’ll take it.  I love that people in the Bethany area are just WALKING to church to check it out… and what’s better is that some are staying.

Lowlights:  I cant say there’s much.  It was the last day of our series “The Real OT”… kinda sad about that cuz I actually really liked this series.  I LOVE the Old Testament though.  Also, at one point during the sermon, it got pretty noisy with babies crying/fussing.  We don’t have a nursery through the summer and it’s been pretty good till yesterday.  I felt for the parents trying to calm their child and miss part of the sermon.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the kids fussing… that’s just real life… it happens.  I feel for the flustered parent who’s struggling with feeling self-conscious about their flailing child and missing out on their experience.  I just want to help serve them.  We’ll get back to having a nursery in September.

So… how was YOUR Sunday?