So much of my life has been in pursuit of having the stage as my main platform. As a kid I loved and longed for the feeling of being in front of people. I wonder has it changed today?Why the stage? What I have noticed is that so much goes into stepping onto the stage.
Stageworthiness:
To be stageworthy we have to have a talent or gift that takes us from the spectator to the performer and from the audience to the stage. This is a gray area for a lot of people. What i may consider stageworthy may be different than yours.
Preparation:
I am a huge American Idol fan and I often stop to wonder how long the contestants spend in rehearsal time for a 1 min 30 sec. song. In seminary they tell us that for every minute you preach it should take an hour of preparation. Run the math. It’s in practice and preparation time that we find out who we are. We have to remain diligent, work hard, and persevere. Preparation time is KEY!
Guts:
Every artist, musician, or speaker goes through different types of emotion in the days and moments leading up to stepping on the stage, but everyone will tell you it takes guts. It takes extreme guts to open yourself up for attack, to be critiqued by the way you look, or how big your sweat rings are under your arms, how long you speak. The vulnerability takes guts
A Stage:
You have to have a stage…duh!! To step onto a stage there has to be a stage to step onto. The past few months the Warehouse @ our church offices has been slowly converting into a mini-concert venue where we have large group for the student ministry and various other meetings. One thing that was lacking was a stage. Every other week guys would throw the stage from the church on the production truck and we would set it up for the Gathering. After the first time I realized that a stage was important, but the set-up was killer. I also noticed the stage we had was too high.
All of this headache just for a stage?
A couple of weeks ago 4 guys came together to build a stage. I just wanted to take some time to say how awesome these guys are.
Jeff Himes: Jeff came to me and said that he had enough wood from scraps on his jobs to build the stage and he would bring it by the office. Literally two days later we had enough wood to build the stage.
Tim O’Brien: I met Tim only about a month ago and I heard that he had his hands in some construction through the construction ministry at Hickory Grove. Tim came on board, put the church differences aside, and helped build the stage.
Craig M.: Craig is awesome!! Craig has a great talent, plus doing construction is his job. Craig has served a lot with the student ministry, but he is the man at building stuff!
Todd Watson: Todd has enough tools to re-build the World Trade Center Towers. I randomly called him up and pitched the job to him and the next day he came over to look at the space and helped build the stage.
Without these guys there would be no stage, there would be no stepping onto a stage. Sure a stage isn’t everything, i understand that, but these guys are amazing!! I am blessed to know such great guys!
Thanks guys!
Hi Justin and The Church Body. Everyday I am pleased that I still have my health and strength to help other Christians when needed. Everyone has one or more spiritual talants. Iam still searching for my best skill but in the meantime, my job, our job, is to serve when needed. For me, I started small, setting up chairs and tables at the Raceway ministries. Later, I helped greet people in the chow line, many are searching for true salvation and our selfless giving speaks volumes to them. It was the small steps, that helped me grow with Christ. I struggle to go out witnessing but we should not expect “home-runs”. We simply need to love our neighbors and help guide them to spiritual salvation. We need to plant seeds. Kinetic Church is an interesting alternative that seems to reach out to the ones shunned by other churches. I commend you all for your service and Justin’s mom has a lot to be proud about.