Couple that with the end of "The Door," and I'm sort of in a valley in my journey. I was riding such a high for such a long time and then the bottom just kind of fell out. Now it's like I'm lost and I can't figure out how to find a place where I feel close to God again.

I think that ending "The Door" was the right decision. Work is so busy right now that I couldn't have put any time into. If I still had the two other leaders on board, I could have shuffled some of that over to others for a while until things settled down.

So, we were set to visit Collierville FUMC last weekend when I noticed an ad in the paper for an "Alternative" service at 10:50 at Germantown Baptist, one of the mega-churches around here and I decided, what the hell, let's give it a shot. We got there and the service was moved with no directions as to where to find it, so Jamie made some sort of comment about wanting to go to the Contemporary service, not understanding that what some churches consider "Contemporary" is really cheesy and bad and that's exactly what it was. There was promise though when we checked the website before we went they were advertising a Monday night post-modern service called Ecclesia with a musician leading the music that we were familiar with. I was excited about the prospects of that.

Fast forward, the "alternative service" is just in another room with another band playing more rock oriented CCM stuff, so it's really not alternative per se, in style, just maybe musically. And the Ecclesia service was in the bulletin that Sunday and it's for 18-25. Jamie asked about it when she called and we were basically discouraged from coming because it's not geared for us. That's a mistake on their part. We may just go anyway, when we can get a baby sitter again.

The Door - Love Feast

This week we're exploring the tradition of a Love Feast or an Agape Meal, a concept that I wasn't really familiar with. Was something that was a lot more common among United Methodists back in the day. Everything old is new again, I suppose. Ours is more of a twist on the idea though.

Who Do You Say I Am (PDF)

It was a bit heavy on reading and light on ritual. If I were to change anything it might be to make the stations be more visual metaphors of scriptures, but this was one of those last minute services.

Last night our service was based arond the scripture from Luke where Jesus asks who people say that He is. We used the hillarious Jesus videos from vintage21.com, and I clipped some stuff from a great article in a recent issue of Relevant, "O Jesus Who Art Thou?" I'll post a more detailed flowsheet, etc. IN the next day or so.

Next week we're going to go with an agape meal, but sort of frame it as a wedding, Christ as bridgegroom, etc. Will be a nice change of pace from what we have been doing lately.

Check out his recap of Take Back Time

The church we go to on Sunday mornings has moved to a new location. Last time we went, it really felt odd. Ever since the baptism issue, the church hasn't really felt like my church home to me, but I never felt like I really needed to leave. Now that they've moved everything feels really different. The band members have all changed. They have added all this fancy lightning and cameras. The result is that it feels less intimate on Sundays, less like the anti-church and more like a typical church. That's all besides the point though.

The series going on right now is called Identity Crisis and I guess I just had my identity confirmed by what I heard today. I had this real sense of dread when I got into church this morning. I sort of attributed it to a post-camp letdown, but it was more than that. When the message started, I really heard God speak to me, but it was probably not the response that was intended by our pastor. It was all about being involved in the church and being more than a member and feeling accepted, valued, etc. and I kept really identifying with the fact that the church I was in didn't make me feel any of those things. I have no real relationship with anyone there. He talked about the community groups and all and how they needed people to step up and lead them. I volunteered, but because of the baptism issues was not allowed to lead one, but I'm not so sure that is a bad thing anymore. I don't think that Highpoint Church is where we are supposed to be and when I accepted that I really felt better about everything. It was really strange. It was like God was making me more and more uncomfortable about it this morning until I made the decision that it was time and then a burden was lifted. One of his key points ended up being about the idea of Jesus being "the door." When he got to that, I had no doubt that God was sending me a message.

For Pentecost we did a service that we called Spirit. It turned out really well. We used our celebration center at Heartsong, but we used curtains to cut the room down to about 1/3 of its size to create a more intimate area. Some standout elements: our Sr. Pastor ate fire (seriously). Multiple images of fire and water were projected around the room throughout the service, also icons that represent the Holy Spirit. We had stations set-up around the room to process the evening and to dig deeper. When it came time for communion, we had the table set up so that when the elements were brought in and touched the table, the table lit up from underneath it, a really powerful moment. People were also given the option to be annointed with chrism.

Here's my flow and resource sheet from the evening:

Spirit Worksheet.