Durham: Day One

Yesterday, 12/14, was the first service of @V21Church in Durham! The past several weeks have been spent researching, brainstorming, ordering, gathering and moving. Yesterday morning it paid off- we were joined by roughly 50 people, including the core group of people who are committed to loving the city Durham and building God’s kingdom there. While several small issues came up, which is to be expected, all in all it was a relatively smooth service, and we are excited for next Sunday already. God, do your thing.

Josh Bain, Curt Hamilton and I arrived around 7:45, and found some of the Durham crew there, as well as an art show from the previous night. It was a large show- at least 30 pieces. The artist and two of his friends came, and we all broke down the show and loaded it into a uhaul. This was a setback for us in terms of time, but Curt and Josh are ridiculously good on the tech end, and the Durham crew hustled to bring the chairs up. Of course, there were some cords and connectors I overlooked, so a run was made for those. Before we knew it, a service was set up, people were there, and off we went.

Sadly, when the service began, it was clear in my heart and mind that I was not ready. Little time had been spent on preparing for the worship service. While a lot of planning went down, I had not spent time in prayer or rehearsing the songs, but instead assumed I had that aspect under control and could get by. Yes, you read that right: “could get by”. How sad it is to think that I would minimize something so important. This wasn’t just about not being ready musically- my heart was not ready to lead, and there were a million things on my mind. Looking back, the wise choice would have been to focus on all of the sound and setup details, and let someone else lead. So for those of you reading this that were in Durham, please accept my apology. God cares so much about our worship of Him, and I hope to not forget that again.

From what I hear, the Raleigh worship music set was beautiful. We’ll hear from Thad and Mike, the band leaders from the service, over the next few days.