Joe Manafo

0 out of 5 doctors recommend church planting

i’m beginning to believe that God tricked me into doing this.

take this past sunday for instance:

*nearly an hour after our rental space was to be opened for us, still no one had shown up. our man was out of town and forgot to hand the responsibilities over to someone else. after some quick thinking and a couple of phone calls we were in. that was scary.

*we had a number of new faces this week, which was fantastic except for the fact that we had more technical glitches then ever before; my message licked - though it looked good on paper, it wasn’t so good in real life; the room where we do our kids stuff (affectionately known as the dungeon) was filled with the the sound of a child going ballistic which then reverberated through the thin walls and into the ear drums of each adult in attendance; and did i mention that it was -17 on sunday morning…and i’m pretty sure it was colder inside our venue…

i’m beginning to learn that this is the stuff church plants are made of. and as taxing as it is on my sensibilities, ego, and lofty ideals, i’m arriving at the conclusion that this church plant may be more for me than anyone else. you could say that God is performing emergency surgery on my soul. it hurts, but it’s beginning to work.

you see…

*the technical glitches were great. though my past experience has geared me for flawless production value, i beginning to see the value in a truly raw, un-cut, ‘as it is’ gathering. are we coming up short on excellence? no. excellence is taking on a different definition these days.

*kids! kids! kids! they’re everywhere! are there any sweeter sounds than that of kids laughing and crying? and picture this: kids being held more by people who aren’t their parents throughout our time together. what a neat sight. and to top it off, we began our gathering this past week with an impromptu singing of happy birthday for Noah who turned two on that day. how cool is that?

*the message: disjointed at best. disappointed with myself, i began to go over in my mind what went wrong and how it could have been better. just then my self loathing was interrupted by someone who pulled me to the side and said something to this effect: “what you said today was for me. exactly where i’m at. you have a gift.” humbled and embarrassed i was reminded that God’s quarterbacking this thing and not me.

*c-c-c-cold: we had a good laugh over the fact that we were wearing our jackets indoors. even darryl was wearing a bulky winter jacket while playing guitar. this truly is the good stuff.

this is some trick God’s pulled on me…

Filed by Joe at February 6th, 2007 under Church Planting