Sunday. 52 a year. Everyone has the same purpose for a church planter yet each one presents its own challenges.
Sometimes you know the challenges. Most of the time you discover them on the fly.
Here is a recap of what our day was like.
1:45 am | Genesis wakes up with teething pain and a runny nose. She was so tired but couldn’t breath so I propped myself up in bed and held her until 3am when I returned her to her bed.
5:30 am| | My alarm goes off and I turn it off as I wish it were a different day other than Sunday. Some pastor I am! I only wanted to sleep not minister to sheep.
5:45 am | my 2nd alarm clock, Judah, calls out for me. In fear of him waking up Genesis, I go and pick him up and bring him to our bed. I tried, but I couldn’t convince him to go back to sleep.
It didn’t matter anyway because Genesis woke up 5 minutes later.
7:30 am | I get our equipment ready for the fleet of cars who come to transfer it to the hall.
8:00 am | While the team starts taking the equipment into the hall, we make a stop at the Superspar grocery store down the road to buy bread to make some peanut butter sandwiches for some of the kids. But most importantly, we make our routine trip by the bakery so Judah can get his donut, which is really a pastry with cream.
8:10 am | After giving one the employees at the hall a ride up to the hall and unloading the family and equipment from our car, I drive back to the entrance to put up the flag signs.
I am not too bummed I haven’t delegated this out as I am get a couple minutes—my only couple of minutes alone on Sunday—to be with my Creator in the amazing portrait he creates for me to enjoy.
8:20 am | By the time I returned to the hall, the sound system is mostly up and I assess where I need to jump in.
Today, I was the chair guy and the fan guy.
I started setting up the chairs and then when others jumped in to finish it off, I ventured to check on the kids set-up, only to find that their room hosted a party that had the evidence that some people might not remember what happened last night. (See image below).
Now it is getting close to 9 am and one hour from service beginning. They are mopping the last quarter of the room. So with our leaders ready to set-up the kids room, I go in search of a fan to dry the soaked floor. Most places hand-wring their mops, if they wring them at all (which was the case today). They don’t have the fancy mop buckets everywhere here.
9:00 am | As I was getting a fan, Steve and the hall crew were making the final sound checks to prepare to have production run-through.
I found the fan with the help of management. In talking to Sylvia, the managers wife, she told me the bar chef’s son was shot last night. Talk about perspective. Suddenly, this fan and the not cleaned floor didn’t matter so much.
I get the fan running to dry off the floor only to run into the hall as they are finishing theist song of the set. I get my mic on to have my mic check and talk the team through the message cues.
We pray for the chef’s son, and give the cue for the band to come up for the closing song in the run-through.
9:40 am | I gather our leaders from all areas and we pray. We’ve done what we can do. Now the rest is up to God. This is a prayer of thanks and dependence knowing He builds the church and not us. We are only tools in His kingdom.
9:45 am | We begin welcoming the few who come early. I get my last coffee in, while conversing with those coming in.
Today was a Bring-n-Braai day. After the service we have Boerewors rolls (similar to a bratwurst, but not so similar). We use this as a way to invite as many people to the weekend experience.
10:00 am | The band starts with “I Will Wait” by Mumford and Sons and I welcome a couple of the people who are just walking in.
After Steve welcomes everyone and has them shake a hand, I make my way to an open seat. Cool thing is that it was harder to find one today.
I sit down and sing along to love on Jesus and before I know it, the bumper video is playing.
I take a deep breath.
I get my table and chair.
Then I rely on a week of prep to make its way through the craziness of a typical non-typical morning and make sense as I share this life-changing story that I love talking about.
11:05 am | We enjoy the company of each other and some wors rolls.
We make sure that a couple of the people who we know can use it, get the intentional extra rolls for the next couple of days.
Then we clean up and pack up and load out. Only to do it again the next Sunday morning and see what new opportunities we have to navigate.
Oh. It is becoming a Sunday tradition for the Robinson’s to eat lunch at Wimpy (a fast food restaurant) at the airport. It’s Judah’s request.