The Way of Celebrating and Testifying; Noticing and Not Keeping Silent.

Most every imagine/Northampton worship gathering we use the fat cylinder of marbles you see above. Yeah, I know we're weird. Been there; am there; will be there, most likely. Actually, one person's weirdness might just be another person's insight. The reality is our weirdness has meaning: we think Christians should be celebrators and testifiers to the core. We think each through his or her own personality, temperament, and sensibility should develop an attitude of celebration given the enormity of the unmerited grace each one has been given because of Jesus.

On Sunday, we generally begin our worship by giving folks a chance to celebrate the goodness or greatness of Christ by how he's revealed his love for them. From experience, I realize most people think it best to testify to their remarkable encounters with grace, God's provision of healing, kindness or abounding blessing experienced during the week. But to testify to something mundane, seems well, mundane, not particularly worthy of note. In my view, all the ways we are made alive by grace are far beyond counting, from the tiniest to the most monumental. We'll be astonished when he shows them to us.

I remind people that when we hear the word celebrate we need to think of everything from: how our past week was not upended by unrelenting chaos, or fear or danger or loss, illness, cruelty, frustration, stupidity (ours and theirs) etc., to we were able to get out of bed to work another day, or have a roof over our heads. From one day to the next, if we choose to, we'll have bellies full of food we prefer to eat. Yes, we may have had the unthinkable happen this week - because it does for most of us at some point in life - but unless we live in an area of the world overtaken by chaos, it's not the norm. Therefore, celebrating the commonplace or routine is wise. Testifying often and with gratitude to an "uneventful" week is fitting. Pouring out thanks that none of us or those we hold dear went hungry this week is right to do given the One we know behind all our blessings.

I think a hallmark of our being related to the Most High must be our desire to tell of his simple and wondrous works. We are wise to learn the frequent proclaiming of  his greatness, and reminding each other of his goodness. We'd center in REALITY each day by often looking for the evidence of his care and sustaining hand. In other words, a day should never go by without deliberately pausing for a moment to inventory, then acknowledge God's Presence and unmerited favor toward us through the ordinary. Such humility and gratitude soften our hearts to the spiritual discipline of noticing. Taking a moment to perceive God locates us in the REAL behind all that is. The heavens declare the glorious handiwork of God, but so does being able to have a hot cup of coffee in the morning, or being able to wear clean clothes if we want.

And as we make it a spiritual discipline to testify to one another of the Holy Spirit's apprehendable Presence with us each day, we gently entice others to do the same. We point the way. Our noticing and reporting amazing grace unlocks wary lips. Speaking as "normal", Jesus's subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) interaction with his people gives spiritual sight to the hesitant and distracted. When we talk of something regularly over time it becomes to be part of our culture together. Celebrating the Lord's presence in our community helps people begin to look for and share evidence of his life intertwined subtly with ours. God with us becomes God with us because he did this and does that, and "showed up" in this situation, so it goes.

For us the marbles give a light-hearted forum for telling each other how God answered prayer, opened the way for something, healed one of us or someone else, provided just what was needed, is teaching us this or that in real-time situations. Our relating the stories confirms The Story we hold fast to because the God in those stories is the active God of our stories. He's in our midst, and though not physically present in a way we can see him with our eyes, he is spiritually present by how he influences our daily living, whispers in our thoughts, opens our eyes to his Word, answers prayer, uses problems and persisting difficulties to mature us, and sometimes intervenes miraculously such that there is no other reliable way to explain it. Those who seek to know his ways learn to recognize his "hand marks."

The way of celebrating and testifying, noticing and not keeping silent is the way of the Patriarchs, the Kings, the Prophets, Jesus, the disciples, and all who couldn't or wouldn't keep silent throughout the generations since. If God is, then he is to be noticed, celebrated and testified about. It really makes no sense to not tell one another of his faithfulness and beneficent sanctifying in our lives. We are to live/ALIVE as if God is really God so our lives can reflect him. A powerful way we do that is to talk to one another about what our God is doing in and through our days. He's doing what only he can do to make us ready for the weight of glory. So learn to notice his ways in your life. Ask him to teach you of this. Then celebrate what he creates in you, especially freedom and getting to walk with the Teacher of all teachers who will finish what he started in and through you.

Look at the prayer of David below . Notice what he implores his people to do based who he knows God to be and how he has revealed himself in his life:

A Psalm for giving thanks. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. (Psalm 100:1-5)

PRAYER:

Open my eyes, gracious Father, to see who you are and what you're doing in my life.

           Heal my blindness.

Give me discernment to notice keenly much the Holy Spirit is active and near me all the time.

          Heal my ignorance.

Teach me the way of celebrating who you are and how you're making my life matter.

          Heal my hesitation.

Unlock my tongue and open my mouth to testify often to your beauty, greatness, and goodness.

           Heal my silence and fear.

Let me be one who helps others see you and come close because of how I talk of your liberating love and ways.

In your name, the ONE who is worthy to be honored and celebrated.

Amen.

Do You Have Wonder Deficit Disorder?

Definition: Wonder Deficit Disorder is an acute inability to apprehend the wonderful, sublime, beautiful, or transcendent in any part of experiencing life because of chronic loss, disappointment, acute boredom, bitterness or despair. The person suffering with WDD no longer is sensitive to or looks for the wondrous in the magnificent, or the ordinary. They have narrowed their gaze to accept the mundane, the routine, the predictable, or maudlin as all of reality we can experience.

Who experiences Wonder Deficit Disorder?

• Men and women, but more prevalent in men.
• More prevalent in middle-aged to older adults, but can be experienced by children of abuse or profound neglect.
• Men or women who suffered shattered expectations repeatedly for at least one year.
• Children who were taught their bent for wonder, creative expression, and delight was foolishness to be discarded.
• Children who were never allowed to be children, but made to shoulder responsibilities as, or for adults.
• Hurried children or children who grew up in a household trapped in fear.
• Men or women who've suffered life-threatening trauma altering their sense of power or freedom or safety.

"SYMPTOMS":  

1. Uncharacteristic (for the person) attitude for, and focus on the practical, efficient, realistic or functional, but without energy.
2. Loss of the sense in the potential of the extraordinary surfacing; jadedness, sarcasm.
3. Diminished ability to laugh easily, be surprised or playful, feel joy, appreciate the fantastic  behind creation and life.
4. Diminished sensitivity to feel truly alive or passionate. physically, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, relationally or spiritually.
5. Muted ability to create or respond creatively to inspiration.
6. Loss of ability to dream, fantasize toward the enchanting, the lovely, the whimsical or delightful. 
7. Maladaptive attempts to heighten sensitivity through drugs, alcohol, elevated risk-taking, binging on sex or food, etc.
8. Diminished ability to be fascinated by or notice the ineffable all around.
9. Little or no response to grandeur or the astounding. 
10. Robotically living an experience of unexamined distraction, hurry and task management. 

For many if not most people, wonder is slowly unlearned and set aside. If people give less and less time to:

• noticing, lifting their heads and looking around (and closely to actually see) the bounty of colors, shapes, textures, lights and shadows filling their experience,  
• listening to the rhythms, poly-rhythms and varying textures of their daily sounds so they can learn the exquisite, extraordinary "music" in each day,  
• experiencing the physical sensations which heighten awareness of movement, balance and touch, warmth, coolness, pleasure, 
  
• tasting the subtleties of one bite of food from another, rather than slamming food down the gullet while doing something else,

they become radically desensitized to the wonderful all around them. They never develop or seek how to ponder the meaning behind what they are experiencing. It whispers only to the attentive who have learned how to recognize wonders when they encounter it in their "ordinary" days.

Wonder requires a belief in the possibility of some sort of enticing MEANING or ORDER or MYSTERY behind all meaning, including what the senses apprehend as design or pattern. A mystery hides in the fact there is anything wonderful at all. People experience it, if they pay attention or give thought, moments of joy or delight or beauty which can transport them into a momentary lightness of being they want to repeat. Wonder is experiencing a deep pleasure of the heart and a magnificent delight to the senses, or the mind. The heart was made with a natural capacity for wonder, and enchantment and delight. The mind wants to "see" what it is and apprehend its meaning. That's not all the heart or mind were made for, but few of us cultivate their abilities to respond with wonder easily at all the miraculous populating our days.

Wonder Deficit Disorder keeps its victims from closely looking, deeply listening, richly tasting, exquisitely feeling, or pondering contemplatively. They live as surface dwellers unaware, creatures of habit caught in an affective sleepwalk - blind to much beyond the prurient, entertaining, or "shocking".

"TREATMENT":

Counseling, therapy or spiritual direction can be effective in uncovering how a person is motivated to experience wonder though the senses and the mind. The goal is to look for what people naturally are drawn to; what motivates them without having to think about it, and when do they feel most alive or most engaged. What makes them laugh? What gives them surprise? What do they call beautiful or funny or riveting? Why? Where do they look for meaning? When do they feel relaxed, or what draws their attention easily? When were they stunned by greatness or a sense of the sublime and ineffable? What took their breath-away? When did they encounter God? How did it happen?

The next step is to examine closely when and where their capacity for wonder was neglected, wounded or abused. What were they experiencing, and when did they let it fade, or how did it get crushed. Most times it will come at an early age. Certainly, kids with rich imaginations, fantasy lives and creative sensibilities can be victimized more readily because they communicate what they see, hear, imagine and feel as if it's normal. Other kids will let it go when they pick up cues from family it is time to grow up, or turn to other pursuits everyone else their age are doing.

Also, learning to pray and contemplate in silence seem to re-awaken the ability to notice the exquisite hidden in plain sight in the ordinary, the simple or the majestic. The settling and being which grows from praying, makes the person more and more awake to what lies all around. People learn to notice by praying and contemplating. Wonder comes from noticing, recognizing apprehending and pondering sufficiently to be ravished by it.

Many thanks to Abraham Joshua Heschel who reminded the world (and me) that the God of the Bible is the Source of all that is sublime, enchanting, wonderful and ineffable. It is He we must seek to recognize and apprehend the riches of wonder in Creation and the mysterium tremendum animating it all. I couldn't agree more. 

This week of Passover, Good Friday and Easter (Resurrection Day) would not be a bad place for you to start.

May it become so...

LIFELINE Sunday's Community Prayer On Giving.

Abba Father,

Thank you for giving us another day full of grace and opportunity.

Thank you for inviting all of us to connect with You and each other this morning.

Thank for your Son and our Liberator, Jesus Christ.

You revealed your giving heart when you sent Him to redeem the world, including ours.

Thank you for His story which enfolds and gives our stories meaning beyond what we can imagine right now.

And give us everything we need so we are able to give you all we are, one day at a time.

Amen.

Celebrating Our First and Last Easter at 70 Main Street.

It was a crazy week leading up to yesterday.

We'd just finished our first off-site worship gathering since moving to our Main Street space. We've been feeling our first real growing pains and decided to get a mid-sized banquet space at the Hotel Northampton just up King Street from us. The Palm Sunday/Easter services tend to be when folks visit a new place, or go to church for their traditional Christmas and Easter ritual. We knew we'd be in trouble if we used the imagine space; it's not cool to turn away people.

So the Monday after Palm Sunday, Dave, Tricia and I (mostly Dave), began searching for another space.  We were given the impression we could also use the hotel facility for Easter, but that turned out to be untrue. Time was short, so we felt like we had to scramble amidst all the other ministry a week brings .We called about and visited a few spaces which had potential to work. All were no-goes. We tried until Friday. It appeared God wanted us to stay put.

Tuesday night, Jim, Tricia, and I settled on a structure of fitting readings and songs, plus a short reflection in the middle.We wanted different and fresh.

During the week, the imagineWORSHIP Team rehearsed twice and had 6 songs ready for Easter. We spent some time with jazz diva Diane Reeves' amazing renditions of Morning Has Broken to use as an opening song. Eslie ended up singing it acappella, and did a great job. It set a spiritual tone. Michelle brought in and sang a strong lead on Robert Lowrey's 1876 Nothing But the Blood of Jesus hymn. We turned it into an uptempo Bo Diddley kind of groove with djembe, guitar and bass. We also did Michael Kelly Blanchard's BeYe Glad with just voice and snare drum. We finished with Alive, What the Lord Has Done For Me, and Revelation Song. People sang!! Some smiled.

During the week, Karin went to work and found material to read from Madeline L'Engle's "The Ram: Caught in the Bush," Luci Shaw's "To Know Him Risen," and C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia where Aslan has risen and is playing joyously with the kids, but also summoning them to the Kingdom  work ahead. Tricia composed and read a reflection on the idea of Jesus as the Gardener of our souls. Karin also read from John 20. There was food for the heart and mind in what was read and reflected. Karin and Tricia in their own styles drew us in to listen and contemplate.

And there was great food for the stomach...always an inviting feature at imagineWorship.

On Saturday, Tricia and Kait set to adorning our space with festoons of brightly-colored, gauzy material with streamers attached. On Sunday, Tricia launched multicolored, helium-filled balloons (with Scriptures attached to the strings), to hug and bobble the ceiling. The mood created was festive and playful - just what we wanted.

So yesterday, as we'd hoped, we had a number of guests, and the place filled to capacity. Our little room for worship was packed like sardines, right up to the band. The energy was bright and right for celebrating. We had some lovely surprises, including 4 imagineurians, who for various reasons had been away, but were able to be with us - for two, it was like a renewal. Folks invited friends there for their first time, and they all appeared to enter into worship with us. What a pleasure to see it. Another pleasure was finding that someone was there who, as an act of beginning to heal, came to our Easter.

As some of you know, we don't see Sunday morning church as the zenith of our missional task. The day has an important role to play in gathering us all together to celebrate God, to hear from him in the Scriptures, and to sing to him in solidarity with all the gathered around the world. This, our first Easter Worship was alive, and life-giving; simple, but real. We worshipped.

I don't suspect we'll be worshiping at the Main Street space for much longer. But I know Resurrection life is practiced here. Yesterday confirmed it.

Monday Morning After Worship: A Tribute to imagine's Volunteers.

It's early Monday. I have already been out with the dog at 4:45. Heavy wet snow falls. Now at my computer, I have to express what I was feeling after worship yesterday as Tricia and I debriefed over dinner at Cafe Paradiso in Northampton.

Gratitude filled my thoughts as we processed what happened. As many of you are aware imagine/Northampton's worship events are like a traveling roadshow in the sense that we have to set up and take down everything we use for each worship. We load up vehicles, transport the stuff to the Northampton Center for the Arts, set up tables and chairs, musical instruments, the imagine/Kids room, the food tables, projector and screen, and put out signs. We then take it all down and leave the space ready for the next occupants. It's a load of work. Our Sunday begins at sun-up and ends in the early evening.

My point is I need to convey a recurring sense of wonder I have when people step up and help shoulder the burden each time. I have been in ministry for many years and worked with volunteers for our retreats and the big productions we have done for worship, but I never get over the generosity and servant-spirit people always exhibit in helping.

People sacrifice time to help us. I think about the folks on our Leadership Team who have pulled up stakes and moved from Connecticut at great cost to launch imagine/Northampton. Their sojourn here has been filled with challenges and difficulties. I think about the talented folks who have gathered since late August to develop and serve on our Worship team. They have given time (weekly rehearsals and worship events), and resources (a place to rehearse, for instance), to make it happen.

Amazing to me.

I think about the gifted young couple from Connecticut who show up to our stuff, pray all the time for us, help out, and are working their tails off to finish school and get up here next summer.

Amazing to me.

Then there are a number of people from other churches who show up early or hang around after worship to help do the grunt work. They are cheerful. They pitch in without being asked. They lighten the load. Thy are wonderful.

Amazing to me.

These folks show up, again and again. They are Jesus-followers with big, generous hearts. They serve because they love him, and they support what he has called us to do in Northampton. We love them.

They are simply amazing to me.

So, I guess I will never get over seeing people of Christ offering their time and talent to imagine. I am glad I will never get over it. I must never get over it. And I must never stop being grateful to him.

Why We Want to Re-tool Our Worship

Before I explain what I mean by "re-tooling," I should say what I do not mean. I do not mean we will change our worship in a way that it has no identity as worship. It will not morph into something unrecognizable. We will not try to make it merely an expression of cultural hipness or relevance to increase our favor with the surrounding community. We will not strip our worship of biblical truth, or present a tamed and impotent god. We will never compromise the essentials of historical, biblical Christian faith to make them more palatable to people. We will be sensitive to those who have no Christian culture, but not at the expense of what God has revealed as the ultimate Real underlying all of life.

The following are my thoughts, not necessarily everyone's on the team.

Re-tooling might mean the following for us:


1. Using music, art, drama and dance that is unfamiliar, might not be "Christian," at all or is neither based on hymns nor contemporary Christian songs. The art forms may be provoking, uncomfortable to look at, or challenging to experience. They will always be about truth, and at the very least, hint at redemption.

2. The worship "service" may not look like what people are used to experiencing: there maybe be no sermon or message, or no music. A group "object-lesson" activity may be the only thing we do when we gather. There may be be just a drama with a reflection, or a presentation with prayer. The entire gathering might be about praying together.

3. We will make more time for interaction, participation and spiritual formation-type reflection. It may be silence and quiet reflection after the message, or a group activity that expresses a concept we are working on as a community.

4. Worship may be liturgical, or spontaneous and free flowing, depending on what God wants to do on a given day.

5. Maybe worship will be about debating an issue of concern to the community and how Christian ethics, morality and principles shed light on it.

6. Some Sundays might be about a service project together in Northampton.

7. We will change the atmosphere of the worship space from time to time to reflect what God is doing. We might add reflection "stations," creative expression labs, and prayer zones.

8. Perhaps it may be an open-to-the-community meal and celebration together.

So we are looking at how we do everything regarding worship. We want freshness and aliveness to be in evidence when we gather. We really want to follow the Holy Spirit into a fresh way of worshiping so people's imaginations are enticed and opened to the God beyond their imagination. If it all becomes so predictable, people eventually tune out and sit there passively. They expect little but predictability. They are satisfied with sameness, but deadened to wonder. Or they become cemented in only one way to worship (the way we do it here), and stay closed to other ways God might be inviting then to enjoy him.

We hate that!

Re-tooling for us is the chance to create worship that will spark people toward following him with vitality and creativity in their lives. It should refresh and refocus them because they find something new and wonderful about God each time they worship him together. It should make them want to bring their friends who want little to do with him or those who say follow him. The "hour on Sunday" should be more than an obligation or a "might was well go." We believe and are searching for how to make it a reality at imagine/northampton.

May the Holy Spirit grant us favor in finding such worship.

Pray for us!

Notes from imagine/northampton's Very Second Worship

Let's begin with weirdness: the Wednesday previous to our very second worship my back went into serius spasm. Periodically over the years it has done so. The weirdness derived from the day after the worship: it unlocked with little fanfare. The day before, I genuinely feared I would not even be able to show up on Sunday, much less set up and play my drums. Worse still, I would be of little use in schlepping and setting up any of the other pieces to our "travelling roadshow." While much of that turned out true, I was able to play my part no the worse for wear and drawing no attention to myself.. I also received generous help borne of compassion from team members.

What worked/hints of encouragement:

1. While we knew we would have fewer folks the second worship, we had 50+ with some new people.

2. We had more people to set up and take down the stuff (we have to turn an empty space into a worship space, including the imagine kids room). In being able to do so, we then could have adequate time for the worship team to run through the set without pressure and confusion.

3. The music was tighter and better done. The potential of the team was evident. People worshiped even when the style was unfamiliar at times. We controlled the sound problems in the room a bit better.

4. We communicated announcements better.

5. We were able to get people interacting more effectively during the sermon. Jim got them talking.

6. The imagine kids room was less chaotic and there was more help for Karen and Ophelia. They had a ball.

7. The room looked beautiful. We reconfigured the set-up so the worship team was off the stage and in the nearer the people. The seating was in a u-shape and facing west rather than north as the month before. It felt a little more intimate.

8. Tricia's reflection drew people to ponder the coal which touched Isaiah's lips and the nail that pierced Jesus's wrists.

9. The food and hospitality was wonderful.

10. The coordinating of all the pre-worship logistical details was spectacular!

11. Jim's talk was clear and efficient.

12. The team of people and smattering of volunteers (some who even belong to other churches), we have to work with are wonderfully gifted and dedicated!

What still needs improving:

1. The acoustics in the room still need to be controlled better.

2. People must have the chance to participate more, so there is less a spectator worship environment.

3. No one from the town came. There are still 99% Christians in attendance (don't get me wrong, we are grateful they are with us). The "service" still addresses mostly believers and has a "churchy" feel to it. No real innovation is evident. The structure is just like what virtually every church does. More about that in my next blog.

4. We need to get better at "directing traffic" to the Northampton Center for the Arts, including places to park.

5. We need to get the word out to the town more effectively.

6. We need to do the offering more effectively so that people know our real needs.

7. We need better videos to use; perhaps even create our own.

8. The entire service was a half hour too long; we must tighten it.

__________________________________________

All in all, I'd give us a C, maybe a C+. Average is ok, but not in line with our core value of excellence. We have a way to go, but there is a growing, solid foundation to work from.

Please pray we have the resources, courage, strength, wisdom and humility to actually become imagine/northampton as God sees it . . . nothing more, nothing less.

Reflecting Our Very First Ever Worship

Someone asked me a few days ago why I had not blogged immediately about imagine/northampton's very first worship gathering. Part of my tardiness in the matter had to do with a strong need to recover from the sheer effort and hard work necessary to actually pull it together and pull it off. We knew it would be a mountain of work to be a "traveling roadshow" of sorts, setting up and tearing down everything, but "WOW!" This old man's body sat me down and had a spirited chat with me along the lines of "Do you realize what you're putting me through, cowboy?"

The second reason I didn't put down my thoughts sooner had to do with the tangle of ideas and emotions careening in my head after the event like quanta. It began on the Monday-after with being pulled every which way from, "I have to get new music together for the team to rehearse this Thursday," and reflecting on all sorts of comments people were invited to offer about how the gathering was to them, to "How are we going to solve some of the problems we encountered on Sunday?" There is so much to learn, and so much to get better at. And that's just with the worship piece of imagine/northampton! I felt that weight right away.

Gladly though, I have had time to think about the day and I have a few observations:

1. I can't say enough that even in the "hurry-up" of creating the worship space with the team that morning, I was filled with life at the notion we were actually finally doing worship, and people were gathered. There has always been something very lively to me about getting ready for a public worship event, perhaps its the wait-and-see potential of it all. The energy is infectious and uplifting. The anticipation of how the day will play out captivated my wondering and hope.

2. When the atmosphere was created it looked beautiful and different for a church "service." The ballroom was lovely and light. The tables, centerpieces, and food, and the stage filled with drums, instruments and mics intensified the energy for me. It felt good and right for that day. There was a place for the kids to go and good stuff for them to do around the idea of wonder. They would be engaged (the 20+ of them were, I understand).

When people began to come into the space, many I recognized and some I didn't, I felt the realness of what we were doing differently from other efforts we had made in the mission of imagine. People were gathering with a "come and see" anticipation and seemed engaged from the git. I was amazed people were there at all, frankly. I'm being honest.

Another remarkable part of the day for me was being once again able to help lead worship. Most of you know I had been on the Worship Team at the Barn for 15+ years as a drummer. The last 2.5 years before we moved to Massachusetts I was on the Worship Design Team at the Barn also with many of the same folks now on our current Launch and Leadership Team. Last Sunday, I was finally doing it all again, only this time with a church I was a part of launching. It felt very natural, like being in very familiar surroundings, but now in Northampton and at the very beginning.

An experience not as pleasant was the tension of trying to stay on top of all sorts of set-up details (nowhere near my gift), and last minute logistics needing attention. All kinds of work was getting done by team and imagine group members, but I was still trying to stay on top of musical details, drum equipment details, plus everything else from "are the greeters in place," to "are we going to get all the tech stuff ready before 3?" I was not at all solely responsible for that, but my mind was still racing with everything needing to come together for the gathering to go well, at least with our part of the bargain. I wasn't worried about God.

All in all, the essential minutiae were distracting me from completely savoring what was about to happen. Still there I noticed

MANY WONDERFUL MOMENTS:

• Seeing people milling about before the worship eating, greeting one another and talking together.
• Seeing the team pull it all together under pressure.
• Having our son, Dan, daughter-in-law Lindsay, and grandchildren Conor and Taylor there with us.
• Watching Jeanne Dubuque make her acting debut in the opening sketch (with very short notice, mind you), and do it well.
• Seeing Tricia do a bang-up job drawing people into reflection after Jim's talk even though her mic was off, and seeing people engaged with the questions she gave them.
• Hearing Jim preach again after almost 2 years. Seeing him in his element ably handling the Word of God for us.
• Hearing Silvana nail the reflection song after Jim's talk.
• Experiencing Maureen's servant heart and can-do spirit as she helped us set it all up and then greet people.
• Watching Karen and her dad set up the imagine Kids room, knowing they would be in great hands. Having Ophelia from Amherst College help with the kids.
• Getting to sit at my set of Gretsch drums behind a group of talented singers and musicians taking our worship maiden voyage together, and despite not having enough time to do a run-through, keeping it together and helping people worship God.
• Getting to hear Jen and Kris play.
• Hearing Mike pull people into worship with the songs he sang lead on.
• Playing with Jim again.
• Seeing Matt Bayne's smiling face at the back of the room knowing he had been substantially ill.
• Knowing a number of pastors were with us to give support
  
• Having some of our family and guests stay after to help clean up.
  

SOME FLIES IN THE OINTMENT:

• Terrible room acoustics creating tuning issues and making everything sound jangling and boomy on the stage.
• Schlepping bins of stuff up and down the stairs - being rained on and getting soaked.
• Having to go to our storage shed in Hadley before the worship to retrieve a piece of drum equipment I forgot, and the office to get the Proxima I forgot.
• Not having enough time to do an adequate sound check and sketch run-through.
• Not having enough help with the kids (we didn't really know how many we would have.

So all in all our very first worship in Northampton was good, all things considered. Again, nothing I said can overshadow the fact we got to do it at all, and that God did show up as only he can.

It is a wondrous thing to start a church at my age - at any age, I suspect - and a sobering privilege that God uses old guys like me to create and deepen the Kingdom in the lives of people.

I never realized one sunny New Mexico mid-morning when Jesus engulfed a then, 9-10 year old boy in light, overtook me in a flash with astounding joy I had no name for, and let me know that someday I would truly know him, that at 60, I would be launching a church in his Name and for his glory.

Life is a grand and fitting mystery, indeed.

I hope I miss none of it apportioned to me while I'm here.