Time for a follow up!

For those of you who read my birthday post and were keeping me and our church in your thoughts and prayers, it's time for me to give you an update!

This past month we officially hired a new senior pastor! YAY! So that is a big answer to prayer, since it took 9 months for it to happen (and for those of my family dealing with pregnancies, that's the closest thing I'll experience to that unless until I meet "Mr. Right" and marry him... but that's a different prayer request. *wink*).

Tom Hopkins has been here several Sundays now, and his enthusiasm and ideas for our church's future are contagious. One thing he's mentioned to me as part of the tech crew is that he would like to see us have a little more media during the service (i.e. moving backgrounds, videos, and the like). Another plus is that he does his own slides for his sermon, which, if you know how difficult it is to try to take someone's notes and get into their head in order to have the "right" things shown up on the wall, you know that this is a blessing! (and Chris, I can't say I envy you your job... I really understand the amount of work you must put in every week!) Anyways, having Tom wanting to see us do more things is definitely one of the things I was hoping for - because I can see that we have the potential to do that sort of thing, but it's getting past the mentality of "this is the way it's always been done" that's hard to overcome... and when your senior pastor wants it to change, well, then that's a hurdle that's a little easier to cross!

We have also moved into the 20th century, as we now record the Sunday sermon digitally! Granted, we can't get CDs to folks until Wed, but being able to put them up on CDs or even up on the internet is a great improvement from the cassette tapes we were using. And we're going about it in probably the least expensive (and possibly not the best) way, as it gives the computer guy (me, or whoever is on that week) one extra thing to do before we can sit back and just listen to what's going on and what God has to say. But it gets the job done!

So, although we don't have a worship leader on staff yet, I'm already starting to feel like a burden's been lifted off of me - I've been wanting to see something like this happen for a long time, but "just me" and my lack of tact isn't going to make that sort of change. I'm really excited about where this could go, and am now thinking that prayers need to shift slightly to us getting a few more "tech savvy" folks (or at least those who can learn computers and software programs quickly and can control their ADHD for a few hours) on rotation... we have willing workers right now, but they will need a little training and continued coaching to keep things running smoothly if we are going to start changing things... or maybe a few more people who can work together when we have a Sunday with just a few more visual requirements than in other weeks.

Seriously, I'm excited about the changes that should be coming in our church soon, and I think I can hold off on wanting to do a major Christmas production like we did in years past for another year or two!