Thoughts from our launch Sunday

Sorry it's taken me so long to post about our launch Sunday! Here's an email I sent to our prayer team yesterday that summarizes things. The first part of the email was written by my colleague Trey:

"Well, friends, Urban Village Church is out of the starting gates! Our first weekly service went really wonderfully. We could not have asked for a better beginning! There was a great, warm spirit in the place; amazing music; lots of laughter throughout the service; and, best of all, about 150 diverse people, many who were totally new to us. Thanks to God and to everybody who showed up and helped out!

"A colleague of mine who lives in another state but has friends in Chicago emailed me on Sunday afternoon. He had sent a 'spy' to the service to check us out and he wanted to share his friend's experience of Urban Village:

'It was awesome -- hilarious, witty, welcoming, open and inspiring. Out of an overwhelming sense of gratitude, I cried. Twice. Loved it.'"

As I noted last week, we really had no idea what to expect, but everything went about as smoothly as we could have hoped. Afterward, we were pretty tired and, to be honest, I was a bit deflated for 24 hours or so afterward (kind of like that post-Christmas feeling that kids get), but the great news is that we get to do it again this Sunday as we proclaim the good news of the resurrection. People really want to hear this news! Here's another email we received this week:

"I sincerely enjoyed your authentic services on Sunday. I appreciated your candor, insight and the welcoming message. It was refreshing to find a place that declares to its congregation that it's OK to doubt. That it's critical to your development as a Christian to question things, to push, to question, to be uncomfortable with God. That God is so large that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of his messages for our lives. I have been to too many churches here where the congregation is disinterested and just going through the motions. I have been looking for a church home that is interested in getting into the meat of the scriptures, finding life applications to His Word, and finding ways to serve the neighborhood."

I think and hope we're striking a chord out there--will be really interesting to see what kind of response we get this week.

Skipping church

"I, on the other hand, had a wonderful day. And I owe it all to skipping church."
--Homer Simpson

I skipped church last Sunday. Blatant. Premeditated. I'm not sure if it's admirable or sad that I can't remember the last church I did that. Of course, when you're pastor, it kind of goes with the territory that you'll be in worship, but even when I took a Sunday off as a pastor, there was usually a reason (vacation, sabbatical, conference) and, even then, I tried to go to worship somewhere.

It was supposed to be a beautiful day last Sunday so on Saturday, I told my wife, let's go to Starved Rock State Park tomorrow and let's leave in the morning. I've always wondered what it was like, though, for a family to just do something else other than go to church and as we sat there eating our picnic lunch, my wife intimated that she could kind of get used to not going to church. (I think she was kidding...I think).

But she had a point because it was a beautiful day. Our son wasn't sold on the idea and whined a bit (OK, whined a lot) but once we got there and started hiking around, our moods improved dramatically. As much as we enjoy living in the city, I'm finding it more and more important for us to make sure our kids stay in touch with nature so they get a more holistic view of God's creation.

I must confess that, as a pastor, I would occasionally silently judge people if I knew they were doing something else other than being in worship. I do think it's important for folks to be in worship on a regular basis, but, after last Sunday, if a person needs to play hooky on the occasional Sunday, I think I may have a better understanding of why.

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.