Today was an incredible day.
Absolutely incredible.
I have never played for that many people before in my whole life. There were easily three thousand people in that place, and not only did I get to play (even solo stuff), but I played the entire set without a single scrap of sheet music.
[happy dancing]
God is so good! He has done incredible things for me, even though I never deserved them. Not only do I get to serve Him, but I get to have FUN serving Him. Doing the "stage" stuff doesn't begin and end with the "stage" part, though. It starts weeks before, with practicing and planning, then it means spending hours and hours on the day before... setting up, carrying the instruments and mics and equipment, hooking it all up, plugging it in, testing the sound levels... then getting up waaaay early on the day of the event, making sure all the loose ends are tied up, going over the order of events one more time... then the actual EVENT... then when it's all over, staying behind to pack everything back up, unplug all the cords and wrap them up, sort them out, put the instruments back into their cases and tote them out to the trucks, take them back to the original location and set them BACK up there so they'll be ready for the next time... but you know what? I like doing all that stuff too. I've learned a lot in the past year about how to do setup and where everything goes, etc., so that I can be more useful and not just a "stage diva" type who can't be bothered to actually work.
The event today was called Grace Fellowship. It was actually a combined worship service for six different congregations around the central Iowa area, held at the Polk County Convention Center in downtown Des Moines. Five of those churches were started by one church, Grace Church. That church used to be known as Des Moines Baptist Church, but in 1992 moved to its new building on the east side and changed its name to simply Grace Church. In 1995, several families attending Grace Church left to begin a new church in Norwalk -- FCC. Not too long after that, another group left to start a church in West Des Moines -- called Grace West. Another group started a church in Ankeny, another on the southeast side of Des Moines, and another in the town of Woodward nearby. One of the very coolest things about all these churches is that they weren't begun because of a fight among the members of Grace... they weren't the result of discord and a church split. No, they were people who, although they loved their church (Grace), had a vision for a like-minded church in their own community. Now all these churches cooperate and support one another. They're also not "clone" churches; none of the new ones really resemble Grace in anything except the driving urge to share Jesus with everyone they come in contact with. Each church has its own character and flavor, and all together this morning they combined to make one humongous and enthusiastic crowd of folks.
Before the huge worship service at 10 AM, there was a big youth service downstairs at 9 AM and SoulFire led worship there. The room was standing-room-only; totally packed-out with teenagers and totally rockin' -- although I have to say here that FCC's youth made up the large bulk of those in attendance AND that FCC's youth were the most engaged, involved, active ones there as well. I'm hoping that by combining, we can start the "fire" in all these other groups too. Anyway, as soon as we'd finished our last song, I dashed out the door and up the back stairs to get ready for the big service.
They had cameras doing live shots all throughout the service and displaying them on big screens at the front and middle of the room. Jeff did an absolutely fantastic job leading... he was born to do that, and it's just COOL to be able to work alongside him and help him. That's actually when I'm happiest -- when I'm working with an honest-hearted leader like Jeff or Tim, helping them accomplish what they're doing, getting inside their head so I can intuitively "know" what they need without having to be asked. I don't relish the leadership position myself, although I will fill it if I have to.
Things don't slow down for me now, even though this big event is behind me. There's still regular band practice for Sunday morning, and then SoulFire has several gigs coming up in the next two weeks or so, so we've got practices for that. I'm also in the midst of planning seven weeks of worship services for this fall. And this week I'm producing another silly video. The last one I did actually accomplished its purpose -- we know of a couple of folks specifically who stated that they made the decision to join a small group because of the video. Yay! This time, I'm focusing on getting people to decide to HOST a small group in their home.
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