When the day comes, you pray. You pray before the service. You pray after the service. You pray afterwards. Following the tear down of the equipment and clean up of the mess, you gather everybody together and you praise God together. You take communion, you worship acapella for one song, and you pray. Then you debrief. You celebrate the small victories…always. These small victories will sustain the morale of your group and remind them of why they were there. They will share things that happened in the small groups…I’m assuming you want to use an interactive model of church because I made it sound so awesome…they will share conversations. They will share prophetic words, or things that God has revealed to them.
The reality is that 90% of the success is just showing up. Things will go wrong. Count on it. Something will trip up. Stay calm. Put it down to the ghost in the machine, the devil in the details, or the cheap in Chinese goods. Either way, follow the rule that I use in every wedding. Laugh. Learn to laugh at yourself and your feeble efforts and keep your mind on the one thing that matters, God’s glory. In the end, God’s glory isn’t affected one bit if your sound system breaks or your slides don’t work at worship. Ever seen that happen in a concert? A good musician grabs his accoustic, makes a joke, and gets on with what everybody came for. Trust me, the nonbeliever in your midst couldn’t care less about how polished your service is. He or she just wants to know God and possibly even feel Him. If that can’t happen in your church plant then you’ve got bigger problems than the sound system…
Buy Peyton’s newest book “Reaching The Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art” over on Amazon.com. You can also download a free chapter and watch a cool trailer for the book HERE or click the image below.
