The Day Before...

I can't even begin to write down the stress and insanity that this week held. We have been anticipating the relocation of our church to our new property for months and months and the week was finally here. The best thing that I can relate it to is when you are moving and trying to get into your new house and set things up but also still trying to pack up your old house, get it emptied out and cleaned out - except multiply that by about 1000! And of course complicating things was the fact that our new building was not going to be totally ready because of some construction delays - so we were cleaning out the old building and putting it not in its permanent place because some areas weren't accessible yet in the new building. Crazy.

David was working these crazy, round the clock hours and every day he'd come home and I would ask him "is it really going to be ready for us?" and he'd say "I don't know" or "they keep telling us it is"! You talk about all hands on deck - the pastors all got a call one morning that the truck had just arrived with the chairs for the worship center and they all needed to get there asap....the truck didn't have a ramp and needed to unload the 900 chairs! It was a week!!

We had an extra rehearsal on Saturday morning with the choir and instruments first - to get our first run through in the new worship center, with the new AVL stuff. The excitement was palpable. This choir has been so dedicated and totally have caught David's vision of where he wants to go in leading the worship in the first blended service. What an incredible group of people they are and such a blessing to us! They have more than doubled their size from about 20 to almost 50 in the last few months and we are excited!!!

The worship that took place that morning was something special. Yes we were trying to figure out microphone and monitor stuff, but our hearts were worshipping at the throne of God. The music was specifically picked by David to capture the theme of dedicating our new building to the Lord. One of the songs we sang was called "This is Your House" by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. One of our favorites and was so perfect for this special day. You can see the lyric on the screen that David was singing in this picture - Let Your glory fill this sanctuary. It talks about "decorating our walls with grace and mercy", that "this is Your house - a holy house of prayer" and on and on. It's incredible - and to be together in that place as we prepared for our grand opening the next day - it was special.

While we were rehearsing - the chairs were being unwrapped and set up...by our senior pastor!! What an amazing leader he is!!!

After the choir finished, the praise team & band for the contemporary service had their run through (which took about 5 hours due to some technical difficulties....people were so kind and patient...bless them.....and it was such a blessing to look out in the worship center and see our choir that had decided to stay after their rehearsal was finished and working alongside of our senior pastor to get the chairs set up. What a special family this family of God is...