This weekend we kicked off a series on WORSHIP called “FROM CONSUMER TO CONSUMED”. You can click here for Dan’s hilarious video promo-ing & intro-ing the series.
This is one of those series that I’ve felt a leading to do for over a year. I am, we are making no bones about it: we want and need to raise the worship temp at Journey. I have felt this for a while, but coming off last weekend’s retreat with a ministry (Click here or here to check it out or order their cd) that is marked by white-hot worship, kind of stoked up my own fire about this.
The music was epic. There were times that I felt like they had been in my head throughout the week as I was putting the message together. It also seemed to me that God was giving Jason words from Him as he led us.
At 10:45 we were singing a song who’s refrain is right out of Rom 8:28 – He makes all things work together for my Good. Right then, I ran into Mike Burns who was going in for a surgical procedure the next day. I felt overwhelmed with need of the room and the need for God to rush FAITH into the room, to experience & pray in the line of that song. So we stopped everything prayed for Mike & prayed for people that needed a kind of bridge of faith to experience & believe God for what we had just sung. I think it stretched people a little. I did as much disclaimer as I could. It was a cool moment.
MESSAGE: The message was fun for me in some ways. I really felt like I was sharing collected wisdom with nary an original thought and that that was a good thing. John Piper, Tim Keller, C.S. Lewis, John Eldridge, Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Thomas Merton, Thomas Kelly, Double Aces (Aurelius Augustine) heavily informed this message. I will forever be in debt to John Piper for one of my “conversions” or “revolutions” on my journey with Jesus.
MY JOURNEY – I had a last minute MJ that Chris Pacilio was gracious enough to consent to. It was so perfect. It set up what they call in educational circles an “anticipatory set”. I think we were leaning more forward in our chairs for the rest of the message after Chris shared.
SELAH – Of course if we’re going to do a series on Worship we need to do some worship. These things are all different but God shows up. This week it was about Freedom. There was wonderful prayer, powerful worship and almost no agenda.
I’M WITH ED – This was the big Life Walk weekend. My daughter Bethany had the idea to recruit the girls in her small group (she’s a small group leader in our HS ministry) to stand out there with clip boards & cute smiles & these T-Shirts. Well it spread out a little & the hardscape was littered with people that looked like Liesl Oestreicher. We raised over 4k in pledges just this weekend!
R U READY FOR SOME CHARGER F-BALL? Mike Perez has a block of some of the best seats at the Q and gave me 2 tix to Monday’s Charger / Bronco game. Brett & I went and had a great time with Mike & his really cute 4th grade son. Against sound advice of many lifetime San Diegans I have become a charger fan. Last night was fun because, duh!, I’m on the 49 yard line plaza level of an NFL game. But it was pretty gut wrenching, as the Chargers didn’t have any answers in the 2nd half. It’s weird to be in a line thousands deep to get on the trolley and have it be so quiet. Well at least Sunday attendance won’t take much of a hit for this week’s 10:00 am game v. the Chiefs.
There was some cool stuff I actually left out of the message; I’m going to post in a couple of days.
