At home in a new place

I've had a few people ask about how our first worship service as Urban Village Church went last Sunday night and I've been a bit surprised that my first reaction has been silence. I still haven't been able to put into words what my feelings and emotions were like that night. It's still a struggle to articulate it, but I'll give it a shot.

On the one hand, everything went great. We had around 80 people show up which, if you think about it, is pretty remarkable because just a few months ago, we had 2, Trey and I (well, a few more if you count our families). The venue was perfect and the transition between the Korean congregation that worships there in the afternoon and our worship went as smoothly as we could have hoped for (a last-minute email made me nervous about this, but it all worked out). The musicians were great (one found through a contact of Trey's, the other found on Craigslist). I preached and I think that went pretty well. At least people told me it went well.

And yet I still feel a bit detached from it all, probably because it hasn't sunk in that this thing (a.k.a. Urban Village) we've been working on for five months, this thing we've been thinking about for more than two years has actually started. I think we were all so anxious about everything running smoothly while also keeping an eye out for people who said they would come and didn't and being surprised by others who we never would have dreamed show up and did, it was hard to really and truly appreciate the evening.

I think, though, that the best way to describe it for me is that it felt like home. I've experienced a fair number of different worship services the last few months and have felt a little like Goldilocks (too much of something in one, too little of something in another). But Sunday night, it just felt right, even though it's still a work in progress and we have lots of areas in which we can improve. I was surrounded by a lot of people I didn't know and I felt a connection that I hadn't felt in a while. That is a very good thing since I preached about the need for followers of Jesus and questioners of Jesus to be in community together.

I have a feeling we'll look back on this night and chuckle at how we did things. But I also have a feeling that the sense of overwhelming gratitude for what God did in that place during that hour (and all the hours leading up to it) will only grow stronger as the years go along.