This weekend we wrapped up our RELATIONAL I.Q. series. It was a weird weekend in some ways because of course Friday night was the Halloween. For the 1st time in I don’t know how long (at least the 8+ years I’ve been at Journey) we didn’t have our massive Halloween deal, the Family Fall Festival. But Halloween being on a Friday meant we had a service (we were off about 40% which make the dynamic weird). If you are keeping count that’s 3 weird things. The primary reason we didn’t have the FFF was to support the “The CALL” a prayer for the nation & particularly the gay marriage issue. That made for a different sort of weekend of course – no surf on Saturday. I was there for about 5 hours. I’ll blog separately on my experience at the Call. There was no Charger game this weekend & it clearly bumped up our attendance today. That’s a little disturbing – another subject for another time. Here are a few more reflections on a weird but great weekend.
• THIS WAS AN IMPORTANT JOURNEY MESSAGE – We have no problem wearing the “seeker church” label. I think we do that in a unique way, but I believe the assumptions & underlying ideas, I & we fully embrace. That being said, we tend to have lots of people who hang around for a long time without diving in. I meet them weekly. I’ve been looking forward to talk about “USNESS”.
• BACK TO THE JAMES DRAWING BOARD – On Thursday I scrapped where I was going & the research I had done up to that point & decided that we needed to be back in the uber-practical book of James. I love how much James is about US. Personally, the geek in me likes James because his Greek is filled with Hebraisms & unique words. Also, James is the epistle that most seems to be an interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.
• WRECKED BY THE BAPTISM VIDEO – we thought this was the perfect weekend to show our Baptism video. I saw everyone dabbing their eyes. It should be posted tomorrow on Vimeo. Search Dan Stevers. It was maybe the best ever. I loved Tom talking about baptizing all those kids from his Jr High small group.
• WORSHIP… DINERO! I loved our worship / music set this weekend. We closed with “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand”. Props to all the worship leaders re-introducing great hymns to the contemporary church.
• POINTS I DROPPED – There is so much in James on increasing our corporate Relational I.Q. Here’s a few…
o SHHH – James 1:19 on being quick to hear, slow to speak
o GET MOVING – We live out our faith by serving & sharing with others in the us (see the 2nd half of chapter 2)
o There could have been a separate point on complaining from Chapter 5
o I would have loved to do more connecting the Acts church (which James seemed to be the leader of – See Acts 15) and the regular guy changing the world idea of “Elijah a man of the same nature as us”.
It ended up being a great weekend & a great series. One of our Friday night regulars said she was thinking about coming back Sunday but felt weird. Heck, I was glad to be there three times.
