A crazy day with Bob Caldwell.

As many of you know my church (Colonial Heights) is without a pastor. For the next few Sundays we will have guest speakers. Today we have Bob Caldwell. Bob is the Pastor of Outreach at the First Baptist Church of Arnold.

Bob is continuing a series on evangelism that began on Pastor Mark’s last Sunday. The series is called “driven”. The series driven compares the sharing of your faith to a Nascar Race. The topic Bob is covering today is the “Pit Crew”.

In this series the pit Crew is your support mechanism. In Nascar each driver is determined to win the race, but they are not the only ones involved in the race. When the driver is tired, needs work on the car, needs gas or a tire change he turns to his pit crew to keep him going and lift his spirits. When you are driven to share your faith you need those around to encourage you, lift you up, replinish you and when you fall help you get back up and continue. That is why mentors, freinds and your church are so important. (Amen! Ha that is not the spiritual application I have today, but it works too.)

Now, that series sounds really planned out and organized as well as the service., right? We plan our services to a T. We know what is going to happen 2 weeks out from a service. We know the songs, we know who is praying, touching the offering plates and what what events will be announce. Then today happened.

Now, today, If you were a regular attender you probably didn’t see all the craziness happening behind the scenes. This morning we started everything late. I came in at 6am instead of 5:30am and prepared everything, my sound guy texted me that he was sick. I had one person choose to start volunteering for another ministry, a camera man moved away this week, one of my best volunteers is out of town for the day, another camera man has family in town and I was supposed to sing a solo during the offeretory. That was just the beginning. The praise team and band came in late our visiting pastor ended up late (not his fault) and we added a drama just before the sermon during worship. Normally it takes 12 people to run the AVL (Audio Video Lighting) aspect of the worship as well as 7 band member, 4 praise team members and various other staff. For the first service today out of 12 we had 6 of the 12 people for AVL and 3 out of 7 band members.

We keep going. Between the first and second service we have 15 minutes and the first service went 15 minutes over meaning we ended when the next service was supposed to begin. Between the second and third service we have 30 minutes. The second service went 25 minutes over and the third we want even talk about. Since the services went longs we began cutting things like announcements and offertory(solo not the offering) the closing song, and other informational things that we do at the end of worship.

All that to say, I hope no one noticed. At Colonial Heights I have been told my job is to add to worship not subtract. Now days with all the things we do in worship it can get crazy, computers can act up, lights can go out, and people don’t show up, but God always does (cheese but true). When I am running around like a chicken with his head cut off, I have to remember that everyone is watching me. They are watching me because I am a leader, they are watching me because I am a staff member and they are watching me because I am a Christian. I must realize that when my team and the church see me freaking out and running around they start freaking out and running crazy. They turn to me for confidence and affirmation. I’m not saying I should lie to them and tell them that everything is OK and then walk behind the door and freak out. I should be honest with them and tell them things are crazy but show them I trust that it will work out. Show them that I trust that God will give me the time I need to get things done, the help I need to get it done and the discernment to choose what to and not to do. Then and only then will I be invisible to everyone around me and God show through.

So no my job is not to add to worship my job is to be invisible.

JC