Being on the Moon

Last night was an incredible night. We had an early Christmas service at the Moon, one of Tallahassee's most famous night clubs. What an atmosphere! It would actually be a great place to do church all the time. We had lots of people show up, and of course we grossly underestimated how many would be there. Dean was hoping for 350. When all was said and done, we had 570 show up!

The music was great, I had a blast playing there... very rock star feeling! Matt Long did an incredible job (as did the rest of the band members), and Rachel Boeselt about blew the roof off. Natalie Mitchell was awesome on the couch, just being real and connecting with people. She has a real story to tell! Matthew Robinson is amazing as the man who puts it all together... seriously, I don't think most people have a clue as to how much he does. And he has a full time job that has nothing to do with the Well. If he's not too busy to help out, much less play a major part in the Well, then no one is!

Dean was incredible preaching up there! I prayed for him the whole way there, that his cough would just magically disappear, and it did. And I wasn't surprised. I was so proud of him. I'm always proud of him, but last night I was just bursting with pride. One thing I've known about him since I met him is that when God calls him to do something and he does it, it's going to be incredible. God has immensely blessed everything he's done and he's always had immense success. And it's obvious that it's God working through Dean because he would be the first to tell you he doesn't have the experience to make these things happen. Praise God!

I feel like I'm just rambling, but words really can't describe the experience last night. I have to admit, I was a bit edgy after our crazy Easter service, but I think we were prepared for whatever might happen. We had someone prepared to call 911 if needed (lessons learned from experience), we had armed security, and it all went off without a hitch. And it made the 11:00 news last night!

I'm really excited to see what God is going to do with the Well next!

Weekend Recap

Last night at The Well was awesome. I love walking in with the last group of stragglers as the music is starting, just watching everything happen. I am more and more amazed each week by the faces I don't recognize. I'm bad with names (working on that one), so I usually tell people that I wind up meeting them twice but after two times I'm good. Well, I'm still on my first time with lots of people. That's a great thing!

Right on, Matt , I totally felt like that message smacked me in the face. And I knew it would. I was so looking forward to hearing it (in the way that you'd look foward to getting hit by a semi). Dean brought up this point last night, but since churches are made up of imperfect people there are lots of imperfect things that go on. And Satan wants to use as much of it as a distraction as possible. And I'm not immune to being used as a distraction. That's one thing God's teaching me to pray about now. Not being distracted and not allowing myself to become a distraction. This is a lot easier said than done.

Living with (and sleeping with) my pastor shows me the unbelievable amount of work and trust and dedication it takes to preach. I've never for half a second thought I could ever do anything like that and Dean just makes it look easy. I am never more proud of my husband than on a Sunday night when he is preaching something hard, something that speaks to him just as much as it does everyone else (I think that's every Sunday night). And I never love him more than when he is sitting on the floor with Tommy just playing cars... or whatever Tommy wants to play with at that moment. I'm so lucky!!

I'm so glad it's cold again! This Saturday was my first FSU game of the season, but it really felt like football. When I watch it on TV and see people wrapped in blankets in the stands shivering, I'm secretly jealous. Most of my football game memories are of wiping the sweat off my face, and standing for four hours straight. Lawton and Sarah were awesome enough to just randomly call a few days before and offer us their tickets so we could go to the game and they could stay here with Tommy. We jumped on that one, thanks guys! Just before the game a little kid threw up in our seats. So we moved over a section. As my father in law said, can you imagine out of 80,000 seats, ours got thrown up in?

107.1 is playing Christmas music again!!! My heart always skips a beat when I first hear it and I get really giddy. And Target and Publix are decked out. This thrills me.

Reflections

Last night at the Well , Dean preached a pretty charged message on racism. He was talking about James 2 in the beginning section about not showing favoritism. It's sad that we live in the "Bible Belt" and yet we are by far the most racist part of the country. This is a hot issue that usually is not preached in church but Dean presented it really well. Did he upset some people? I'm sure. But I've learned that the Gospel upsets people, and as someone once said to Dean, if you're not making people mad, you're probably not doing your job.

Confession time: It makes me nervous when Dean preaches hard truth that may offend people. I worry about the fact that there's not a whole lot of security in church and Satan doesn't want people to hear this. Does this show a lack of faith on my part? Possibly. But I never want him to stop preaching Christ just because it looks like it might one day get dangerous. I'm really proud of him for his guts and fortitude.

I had a great time on the Couch with Matthew Robinson last night. Although some of the pictures were slightly embarrassing (thanks, mom), it was fun just to be up there answering his questions. The funny part was that I answered the serious and more difficult questions pretty well, but when he asked which store was my favorite at the mall, I just froze. I still don't have an answer to that question.

Confession number 2: I knew what I wanted to "challenge" people with, but I didn't have a scripture reference to back it up. It was basically that I wanted people to take ownership of the church and realize it's not about them but about people who aren't here yet. So even though I didn't have a verse, I still debated on bringing my Bible up there because just about everyone else does. I didn't want to look bad. Isn't that silly? But it's true. And I also had one of those experiences falling asleep last night where I kind of did a mental forehead slap about all the things I said that I can't believe I said in front of 300 people. This is just one of the many incidents that shows me that I absolutely don't have it all together.