Making the Connection

Yes! It would be hard to convince me that there is a better bass player in the known universe than Brady Muckelroy. Don’t believe me, then check out one of his solo gigs. Better yet, check out the "Night of Worship" happening down at PromiseLand San Marcos on April 6th. He’s going to be playing with the Chris Kipp Band and I hear there’ll be some solo stuff as well. It should be a great night of worship. If you can’t make it, you can always hear him on Sundays at TCC. It’s funk-tastic.

If you don’t like organized religion, you’ll love the Connection Church. We have a tendency to be disorganized. In an effort to help us be a little more structured for our next wave of growth, we’ve added an online form on the website so people can let us know what team they want to serve on starting Easter Sunday. We plan on seeing a record attendance on April 8th. It’s going to be incredible. And it’s going to take an incredibly committed team of people to pull it off. With this form, we can find out what someone’s interest is and follow up with them so they can plug into the right team. It’s going to take everyone of us to do what God has called us to do. If you haven’t found a place to get connected, what’re you waiting for? Stop waiting for the world to change. Let’s change the world!

People want to take next steps in their connection with God, but we have to be clear about the next step that needs to be taken. Not everyone’s in the same place, taking the next step at the same time. That’s why we break things down into stages. A healthy church has people at different stages, with those higher up the ladder holding out a hand to help others get up to where they are.

Zak brought it home on Sunday morning with a great message and incredible illustration about the way we do church. He used a literal ladder that he broke apart and put back together with help from people in the congregation. What was so amazing about this the time I saw it, was that Zak forgot to give the guys nails to put the steps back on with. They had to improvise and find nails left in the ladder or the broken steps. To me, that was the coolest thing, watching them figure out, on the spot, without asking, how to make it work.

That’s the way we have to do it a lot of the time on Sunday mornings, making it happen with the limited resources that we have, with a lot of new faces watching. Thank God that we have a group of creative and resourceful people who put this together so that we can have all the steps in place for people to climb on. Climb On!

What will people say when they hear that I’m a Jesus Freak? What will they say when they hear that we’ve got a lot of them at TCC? This is the first installment of a new feature where I can spotlight some people who are living out being sold out to Jesus. So, for this first one, I’ve got a few to let you know about.

Sundays can be looong. We get to the school to set up at 8, until Easter when it will be 7. We do two services, tear-down, and then sometimes in the afternoon, we’ve got our classes like 101, 201, 301. Yesterday was 301. And then, some people have Connection Group. For me, that meant a total 14 hour day away from home.

Yesterday, several people did it all. 301 is 3 hours, our longest class. Most of the people at 301 were also doing group that night: David and Ruth Martinez, Jeanette Ramirez, and Aaron and Stacy Jackson. But there were a couple of people that were total freaks! Trey and Jennifer Williams led out with the Cafe, somehow worked in lunch, came to 301 and then HOSTed their Connection Group! Ellen Martinez leads our Nursery team, came and watched kids during 301 and HOSTed her Connection Group! Unbelievable! So I’m designating them the FREAKS of the WEEK! You are awesome.

It’s been too long since I posted, but there are several things I need to put down before Sunday.

1st: Yesterday, I picked up the new "I Love the 80′s" mailer from San Antonio. They look totally awesome. We will be sending them out at the end of the week to promote Easter, the Big Hunt, and our new series. We’re sending out over 18,000 to all of Kyle and Buda. I hope they catch people’s attention. One thing’s for sure, they position us as a different kind of church. We’ll also have about 1000 to personally hand out. Please pray with me about the mailer, that they’ll be effective and people will be receptive and respond.

2nd: I spent many hours this weekend pulling weeds from my lawn. I’m not sure how it happened, but my backyard was covered in them. With the help of my family, I collected 12 trashbags of weeds. It’s wild what happens when you let a few weeds go untended. It reminds me of making sure I don’t let any unhealthy weeds form in my life. I need to pull them by being honest to God about the weeds in my heart. Now, my legs hurt from doing yardwork.

3rd: I’m excited about tomorrow, Sunday morning. Zak will be speaking, and I think it’s going to be a great message. He’s using some props that I think will really drive the point home about why we do what we do. And the band is supposed to be doing the Robert Randolph song, "Ain’t Nothing Wrong With That."

As for me, I think I’m going to go ahead and head over to the Journey Church in New Braunfels to see how the church is doing that we are helping to sponsor. I hate to miss out on a minute of TCC, but I’ve been talking about going for a long time, and I just need to do it. After I’ve done setup at TCC. I’ll be back for tear-down. Then. we’ve got 301 and the Big Hunt meeting. So it’ll be a big day with big fun. I’m going to bed now.