Advent Conspiracy, Week 1: Worship Fully

Kind of an off-kilter Sunday ...

• Woke up earlier than usual to go over John 4:19-29 for a message I was asked to share at Mars Hill Bible Fellowship at 10 a.m. (read the passage ... you may appreciate the irony of the rest of the blog entry);
• The bathroom sink backed up at exactly the wrong time, like right before I jumped in the shower to get to Mars Hill;
• I left the PowerPoint file for our 1:30 p.m. service at CICF on the computer desktop rather than save it to my flash drive;
• Got to CICF after preaching at Mars Hill, got things ready for our service and our guest singers, Jed Santa Maria and Guada;
• The on-stage monitors weren't working, which meant that if you were on stage you couldn't hear (or at least, barely hear) the person next to you;
• One of our lead singers had been ill during the week;
• Our drummer had his schedule changed at the last minute, so we didn't have a drummer;
• Discovered I didn't have the PowerPoint for worship service (it had announcements and other important info);
• We started service late because somehow, some thought we were starting at 2 p.m. (?);
• And Angelo, Mark and me (mostly ... er, actually totally on me) forgot to pray before service.

But God met us anyway, in spite of my inadequacy and lack of preparation ... In a way it was maybe the best way to start the Advent season (that 4 weeks of spiritual reflection leading up to the traditional celebration of God become flesh and hanging out with us for a while). The world wasn't quite prepared for the coming of the Christ; in fact some totally missed it or just didn't believe it happened. Like my Sunday, ready or not, prepared or not, God was going to do what He was going to do, because He knows much better than we do.

So about half-way though a set during which I was not very comfortable (you ever just feel off?) and when I had told Angelo and Mark we would cut it short by one song ... God set it up that it wouldn't happen the way I wanted it to, but the way He wanted it to. I couldn't make eye contact with Pastor Ed -- he had his eyes closed -- to do the opening prayer, so I just launched in to the song ... good thing it happened that way because Week 1 of our Advent Conspiracy is to worship fully ... and the church did just that ...




Link for the Facebook note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMp3Y82jamg

Welcome to the Advent Conspiracy ...