Oh the joys...

...of entrepreneurial endeavor.

Man oh man do we feel like we got killed today.

Today was 'day one' at THE WELL a new church we're planting in Burlington Ontario, Canada. We'd been prepping for several months and today it all came together.

Sort of.

Technically things were fine and, for those of you who know, it's extremely rare to not have any gremlins rear their ugly heads.  Everything we had to set up did it's job and didn't break so that was good.

(next week though I think we'll totally change the room around)

Part of that is due to the dry run we did Friday night where we set everything up, made sure it worked, then tore it all down again.  Didn't do that the first time we planted a church so 'day one' back in 2001 was a nightmare.

Learned THAT lesson.

People came.  That was cool.  Could have been just me and my family.  We had 45 adults and 25 kids so that's, what, seventy people all told.  Pretty good numbers for a first week.  Next week I expect we'll drop to 30 adults and 15 kids 'cause our friends and family who drove in just for the launch won't be back.

It's tough with people.  You try to read them, hope they're having a good time and getting something out of it but you just can't ever really be sure.  I must confess that, while preaching, I felt like I was running uphill into a bowl of a pea soup.

Just couldn't get off the ground.

That's hard.

I'm used to there being some point in the sermon where things really start to 'click' and you find the 'pocket' and really start rockin'.  Once in a while (usually two or three times a year when you're a full time preacher) you'll have one of those Sunday's where, no matter what you do, you just can't seem to get it going.

Today was one of those for me and I found that tough for our first Sunday.

What I've learned though is you just put it behind you and start thinking about next week trusting that, really, none of this is actually about you or how you feel or think you've performed.

You just stay faithful, do your job and let God do the rest.

My wife, on the other hand, got killed (figuratively speaking) today.  

Never mind running the kids program--which she doesn't want to do--on top of homeschooling all week but, she had a girl we've been thinking of paying a small honorarium to help us, come with her mother and it became very clear that there's a strong philosophical disconnect between how we want the kids program to go and how they expect it to go.

So, we'll let them know tonight that it's not a fit and will move on.

Then 'the disgruntled religious lady' got ahold of her and talked her ear off.  Totally slimed her. It's taken Niki five or six hours to shake it off.

All afternoon Niki's been in a serious funk wanting to quit, pack it all in, run away, basically do anything except this.

That's tough.  Real tough.

We were fortunate to have one of our best couple-friends and their kids come out today and they came over after and we ate and chilled and de-toxed.

Then Niki went for a bike ride with the girls while I unpacked the minivan and she stopped by my parents place.  They were there with our godparents (who'd also come this morning) and all four of them said what a wonderful morning they'd had at THE WELL.  Dad referred to their first Sunday planting their church in Jerusalem back in 1982 and told her that after their first week they felt flat as a pancake, felt that it had sucked, and wanted to quit.

He reminded her that it's simple faithfulness that's required and that God will do the rest.

She was real encouraged by that.

Then we got an email from a girl who was there today and she LOVED it.  Loved the worship, loved the preaching, loved communion.  Loved it.

So, maybe we didn't suck as bad as we thought.

I will now sit down to watch 'Sunday Night Football' then sleep then get on a plane to fly to L.A to shoot 33 interviews this week, meet with a high-level agency on a BIG initiative I'm hoping to get on the rails, squeeze in some time to write next week's sermon, fly home Friday, detox Saturday then...

Do 'Day Two' at our wee baby church.

(and preach better so help me...)

C'mon out and see us?

T