Wednesday, October 10, 2007

God provides

Our humble little worship team has been borrowing space from Kingdom House of Prayer the last 9 months. They have been so generous and gracious to us in loaning us the space on Wednesday nights to allow us to practice and fellowship as a team. While us practicing there on Wednesday nights doesn't necessarily fit into their vision for 24/7 worship and prayer, I was happy that we had opportunities to volunteer down there for various events.

KHOP recently revamped their schedule and is pushing more towards that 24/7 worship and prayer model. Unfortunately for us it meant that we needed to start looking for a new practice space. We've been down this road before and truthfully I kind of like the adventure of it all. In fact, I had been spouting off to a fellow member of our ministry to have some fun and faith when it comes to overcoming these obstacles. Little did I know I would be facing that same challenge myself.

So I put out some calls to some of the churches we partnered with over the summer at Ankeny's annual Summerfest. We had played a half-hour set with three other churches during the peak of summer at the Ankeny band shell. So I figured I would call them up and see if they would be willing to loan us some practice space since we're technically nomads...a church without its own space.

The United Methodist Church responded and within a week's time, we had a new home.

While the space and the media equipment isn't ideal, God provided nonetheless. It allows us to get together during the weekday to practice and fellowship, to prepare for the weekend's worship services. It's located in Ankeny so I don't have to worry about the band traveling too far from home. And honestly it's nice to partner with a church in the area...to share the same vision of reaching the community of Ankeny, which only 30% attends church. Hopefully it will be the start of a great friendship between churches.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Grace Like Rain

This weekend's sermon topic was about "Grace" and our worship team played "Grace Like Rain" by Todd Agnew as our offering song. The song mixes the traditional hymn "Amazing Grace" with a powerful chorus written by Agnew.

Provided our worship team didn't practice this week (that's another story) they hit a home run during this song. The Holy Spirit was upon the team and it turned out to be a very moving song to play.

I listened to Pastor Mike's sermon about grace and one comment he made that really struck a chord with me was, "God liberally give us grace." Now before all the legalistic theologians respond to this post, let me clarify that he was saying that no matter where you were in life, God's grace is still good enough for you. You could be a murderer, a rapist, a slanderer, or whatever.

At the second service as we finished Grace Like Rain, we walked out into the lobby of the school and the sky opened up and poured out a beautiful rain over us. All I could think about was God liberally raining down His grace on us.

Have mercy on me a sinner.