media woes

Every week I say how great sunday went and blah, blah, blah. Well to be honest this Sunday stunk. On Saturday night I pulled the plug on our Sunday morning teaching. It's the first time I have done this since we launched emc. I felt led of the Lord to take a different direction with the teaching. Even though it was a holiday weekend I just new we were going to have several people coming to the embassy for the first time. The sermon I had prepared, had media designated for, and was ready to roll with was going to be one of the deepest as far as teaching goes that we have done to date. Now some people will say that teaching is boring, I don't feel that way at all. I don't feel that teaching is boring, I feel that boring teaching is boring.

I had prepared an exciting teaching that I was calling "revealing God's covenant code." The thing was God on Saturday night led me to take a different direction. So I decided no media (slides, clips, etc.) this weekend we we're going to do "embassy unplugged" and I was going with a completely different sermon. I heard from many that the sermon touched them deeply so I know I made the right decision to go unplugged and shoot from the hip. This should have been an easy day because we had 50% less media than normal.

Once the sermon started everything went fine until the lights went unplugged for the first time in 21 weeks. I looked like Sting in an old Police video. One blue light shining on my cheek that was growing red quickly. Well that would have not been such a big deal had not every single media element crashed leading up to the sermon. We had a baby dedication and somehow back ground music from our pre-service mix was playing behind the images of children that we're to be dedicated. This music was definitely not the nice eclectic lullaby/ambient sounds tract that Jared found and would have been so fitting.

Dedication ends and our trailer promo-ing our next series only gets half played. All this combined gets me off my train of thought and I commit the church planters cardinal sin...I forgot to take up the offering...duh! Then like I said while I was preaching the lights went out in Georgia. Maybe you can't expect a win every Sunday, but we drive into our team it is all about Sunday. So yes, I expect a win on Sundays.

The whole reason I switched up the week was because I felt that many would be there for the first time and what I had planned wasn't what God wanted to use to speak to these people their first time at the embassy. Then we go on to put forth a sub-par presentation that I didn't feel honors a God who is never sub-par. Some would say Ross that's pride, and you are just red faced because things didn't go well. You know maybe I am proud of the fact that our team with the little resources that we have week after week hits home runs. I guess that's what frustrated me so much. We have what it takes, but this week we blew it, and you can't get that Sunday back.

The great thing is we have another Sunday coming in 5 days. The team will regroup, look at the mistakes, figure out what happened, and then we will go back to the plate and seek to hit another homer for God. Next Sunday we will plan for a win, next Sunday we will give our best. Why? because God deserves it and people need it. That's why we are all about Sundays and that's why when we miss it, it is so frustrating.