Sunday, February 11, 2007
If anyone reads this before 6:30 p.m. Central Time today, please feel free to say a prayer for Jared. He's teaching his church's new college/young adult service tonight. You can check it out here.
"People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy."
- G.K. Chesterton
- G.K. Chesterton
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Comments on "Element Nashville":
2. Daniel Ross
- 02/11/2007 3:59 pm CST
I'm excited about this for him and, selfishly, for all of us who will be able, in the near future, to hear his talks via podcast.
4. Jared
- 02/11/2007 11:30 pm CST
LOL
Thanks so much guys. I can't tell you how much your prayers mean to me.
Seriously: I can't tell you how much. The value is HUGE to me.
:-)
Here's an email I just sent to some friends:
Hey, guys. Thanks SO MUCH for your thoughts and prayers. I know they worked.
Before the service today, our programming guy was kind enough to basically tell me to opt out of the "getting the space ready" time, and because our church is set in wooded hills, I was able to just walk some trails and get some peace from God for a while.
The service went really well. Our crowd was not as big as we'd hoped (about 50), but the encouraging thing about this is that at least half were people we'd never seen before. Completely new faces. So that was awesome.
And we're also telling ourselves it's just the first evening, so hopefully it will grow via word of mouth anyway.
And from the beginning we've been birthing this thing out of a growing Bible study community, so we are hopeful that the community connection continues to be the seed of the service's growth too. I never wanted it to be about A Program.
Lots of people came up to me afterwards to tell me I did a great job, that they loved it, that they're going to invite people they know because they liked it, etc.
I thought, message wise, I was only okay. The one guy I can count on to tell me the unfiltered truth at all times said "it was better than ok," so I felt like that was high praise from him. (Since he really did mean literally, it was just better than ok. :-)
But the worship time was amazing. This crowd has been hurting for real worship. And our worship guy delivered big time.
The vibe was great. Our pastor and student minister were there, and they both told me I did great.
My feeling is: I didn't do a great job, but I did an okay job, and since it was my first stab at this in ten years, I can be proud of what God allowed me to and trust it will get better.
You can judge for yourself since I am told the podcast of the message should be up on the site tonight(!). We'll see if that holds true, but hopefully it will be up in the next day or so. Please tell me what you think if you get a chance to hear it.
If you've listened to the first Meta-cast then you know it's just me reading a position paper, too. We are overhauling the Meta-cast asap. It will now be a roundtable discussion type thing. And we're recording the first one tomorrow night. So starting with the second podcast, the Meta-cast should be halfway listenable and available this week sometime.
I'm so thankful for God's faithfulness in this stuff. The feedback I've gotten has sort of helped me see this as the culmination of a years and years of study and struggle and hopes and dreams. I'm just glad that God is so good, even when I am not.
Love you guys,
jared
done.