Yes and Yes and No

It’s going to be a great weekend in Anderson. So don’t miss the Yeses!

Tonight from Backstage I wanted to focus on something a little lighter, but something that had real impact in our service. Today our band covered the song, “I Want My Mullet Back” by Billy Ray Cyrus. What was great about the song is that it was about as redneck country as a song can get, but it really fit with the message today. The song basically says “I want what used to be, back” … the older brother in the story of the Prodigal Son wanted that too.

Guess when we decided to include that song? Last Sunday. We plan way ahead and usually have music sets planned a month or more in advance. Last Sunday, On Mother’s Day, Perry simply asked Lee if he thought the band could do the song on short notice (Perry had heard the song and thought it fit and that it would provide a fun moment in an otherwise tense service). Lee immediately got together with Tom Pellerin, who would be leading worship today, and they listened to the song. Tom said he could do it and they immediately made cd’s for the band and started working on the song before last Sunday’s services were over.

I want to give major props to two incredible worship leaders who desire to say “yes” to their pastor instead of offer a million pride filled reasons why they can’t do a song. Also, not only did they do the song but they spanked it. They had fun and the folks that attended each of our services really responded to the song in a big way. The band also covered a Tonic song (You Wanted More) in the same set which rocked. Most importantly today the worship time (Glorious One, Let Me Sing, Nothing but the Blood & Kingdom Come) was energetic and Spirit filled. I just love the way Lee and his team lead worship and never get in the way of people seeing Jesus during our worship time… preachers preach and singers sing!

Also, Albert Einstein was in the news today as well. A letter he wrote in 1954 was found and in it he says, among other things, “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” If you’d like, you can read the rest of the article here.

I wonder if Einstein believed in aliens?

Mother’s Day 2008 will probably go down as one of the most memorable services we have put together. Last year on Mom’s Day we gave away a home to a single mom and we thought that would be a great thing to do each year on this day. So we did… and then some. This year we also gave away a van equipped with a wheel chair ramp to a great mom who cares for her son whose only way to get around is by wheel chair.

(If you weren’t at our service this year it will be up on our website (newspring.cc) by mid-day Tuesday, May 13, so check it out. Also, I you can take a look at Perry’s thoughts from the day here.)

One of my team’s tasks was to present these two stories via video. In today’s service there was over 25 minutes of video between the two stories. We also included another 4 minute video to go along with our band’s version of the Chris Tomlin song, “God of This City”. We used this song and video to recap many of the ways NewSpring has served our city over the last few months and it also cast the vision that we’re not stopping in Anderson. We intend to take this sort of thing to Greenville and Florence.

What most people don’t know (at least I didn’t until I got into this ministry) is what goes on behind the scenes to make the videos come together in their final form. It takes 10 to 15 hours of work (from original video shoot to the end of the editing process) to produce one minute of finished video. Think about that. Just for the video elements used in today’s service that is somewhere over 300 hours of work. We used our own staff along with three professional freelance camera guys to compile over 2000 individual segments of video. From there our team did all the work to put together what finally ended up in the service.

Needless to say our video team really shined today. That team is led by our Visual Director, Ken Wilson and the people on his team, David Jolley, Will Rodes, Ben Coleman, and Judith Farkas went all out to make Mom’s Day at NewSpring awesome.

Why do we do all this work for one Sunday? The answer is that we want people to see Jesus and to meet Jesus. The stories of two great moms and the giving of two great gifts is just a drop in the bucket compared to what Jesus has done for each of us. Our hope is that by following Jesus in his many examples of generosity we will be able to show those who attend our service how much more he has to offer them than a new van or a new house.