Church and Football Playoffs

I looked at my blog log for the first time in months tonight. I was amazed to note that there are still people who check for new posts, week after week. That’s in spite of the fact that I haven’t posted an entry since September! Wow… if you’re someone who has checked my site in the past and still had enough hope to check it again, thanks. That makes me feel pretty good!

Today was a great service @ CCA. That is odd in a way. Today was the Seahawks playoff game with the Bears and I was feeling a bit bummed going into the service – bummed that we hadn’t been able to pull off some kind of tailgate party and all watch the game together on the big screen. As some of you know, at least two churches in our area did exactly that and even made it into the paper on Saturday and the evening news today. Pretty cool.

Anyway, I was feeling a bit like a non-progressive stick in the mud because we were having plain old normal church at plain old normal time. But in reality, our service was anything but normal. Our students were in the middle of their annual Winter Camp – something that takes place on our church campus. This year another church joined us, so for three days there are over 50 students running around the building, playing laser tag and dodge ball and just generally having a really awesome time with each other. Tonight is their last night and I’m sure they’ll be up till late-thirty and be absolutely dead in the morning.

This morning, they all sat behind me in our service and, as the singing began, I just felt the wave of worship rolling over me like a warm bath – it was deeply refreshing! There was no sense of “of what a bummer, we’re missing the Seahawks game!” It was just pure joy in Jesus. They were happy to be with each other and happy to listen to the word being preached (by Jeffrey Portman, who did an awesome job) and happy to know in their hearts of hearts that Jesus is very, very real.

It was a wonderful reminder to me of where joy comes from. Sure, it would have been cool if we could have pulled off some kind of football party – maybe we would have even made the 6 o’clock news. But I was so encouraged that, in order to serve up a real experience of true excitement and true joy and true connection to God and to each other, we didn’t have to. Plain old Jesus was more than good enough. I hope I always remember that.