This weekend was one of those weekends I don’t think we will forget anytime soon. We have had some special weekends at Southbridge. I think of the week we did cardboard testimonies, the week people left without their shoes, weeks where multiple people made decisions for Christ, and now this weekend. What happened this weekend? The church got robbed. No this is not a blog about people failing to tithe. We literally got robbed. Here is my version of the story:
It was Saturday night, I had just finished the final touches on Sunday mornings message. At about 8:30pm, I called our worship leader for that Sunday morning. We talked through the service and we were about to pray together, when I saw someone beeping in. It was Jon Cullen, our Family Pastor. I ignored the call. Then he called my cell. Then he called the home line again. I knew something serious was going on if he called that many times. I also knew his wife was out of town, so perhaps he had burned his house down, that or he was hanging out with John Piper after the conference he attended this weekend. Either way I called him back without knowing why he had called.
When Jon answered, I said, “Jon this is Scott.” To which he replied, “Hold on, I am talking to the police.” POLICE! What is going on? Where are you at? I could not ask those questions because he stopped talking to me. Then after what seemed like a long time he said, “Scott, let me call you back.” I said, “Wait. What is going on?” He said, “I am standing out here by our trailer (we are a portable church), and someone broke in. It looks like they cleaned it out.”
Sure enough someone had broken into the trailer where we keep most of our audio visual equipment for Sunday mornings. At this point it was almost 9:00pm on Saturday night. What happened then was truly amazing. People from Southbridge jumped on this situation and went to work so the hundreds of people who would come to Southbridge this morning would have an unhindered worship experience. Did we have the television in the lobby, cameras for the video venue, or all of the technical bells and whistles we have grown accustom to? No. But the troops were united and at work. The worship team prepared a new worship set (that was pretty much all acoustic in case the tech team could not get anything worked out). However, the tech team (whose leaders worked past midnight), went to one of our elders (Allin Foulkrod’s) office to assemble a temporary sound system and get a projector to show the words (from one of the guys laptops). If you were there in the second service we missed a slide on one song (I think because his battery was dying. Sorry, but one slide was not bad after all that had happened). People work hard every week at Southbridge, setting up, tearing down, etc. However, this week they were working extra hard and I am super thankful for all of them.
I reminded everyone this morning of a verse from Genesis: Genesis 50:20 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
What man intended for bad, God intended for good. God united people so that the gospel could still go forth. We were reminded about what we really NEED (the technical aids are nice, but it was nice today taking a few steps back technically). We desire to connect people to Jesus for life change. Today we were reminded that all we need to be able to do that is:
1. Jesus.
2. People.
One of the ironic things about today was that I was already planning on speaking about generosity from 1 Timothy 6:17-19. The challenge was to hold all of our material stuff with open hands. God has a funny way of making sure we apply the truths He desires for us to learn.
