Sunday Recap...

We are continuing in our "Why Do We Do This?" series and we looked at why do we pray. The day was designed to be completely different than a normal day at Catalyst. We sang a couple of songs (normal), watched a video called Open, by Rob Bell (not normal), and set aside 20 minutes to engage in prayer through creative avenues (not normal):

• Letter to God
• Dropping stones into a black hole with burdens written on them.
• Kneeling/Sitting on a pillow in the back of the room and using an Ignatius Examen guide to help us pray. (Thanks Wes Anderson)
• Come to "the cross" at the front of the room to pray for salvation or be annointed for healing.
• Watch a video that was looping with examination question.

In planning a day like this, a pastor's biggest fear is a bunch of new faces in the crowd. What will they think? Will they come back? Will they believe us when we say this is not normal for us?

On the other hand, it is the middle of July, church attendence is down everywhere in the summer and the chance that new faces will show up in mass numbers is rather slim, right? WRONG!

We had our highest attendence since our first two weeks in the new facility. A whopping 110 people piled into Catalyst, many for the first time, during our weirdo prayer service. I simply had to trust that God could use this service in their lives and that they would buy it when we tell them that this is abnormal for us.

I even had people from other churches ask me what was going on. They were driving to their church and noticed that our parking lot was slammed.

Time will tell if we see any of the folks back in the future, but the service was well recieved and I think Catalyst understand that we pray because God has given us a role in the ongoing creation of the world. Preach it Rob Bell, preach it.