So I went up to Highlands Adventure in Paso Robles where I’m going to do my internship starting in September. I got up there on Sat morning as they were finishing a 3 day event, and stayed through till Wednesday.
I’m excited.
I found out that there are people that are crazier than I am.
So the Saturday event was basically a community open flag football camp. I showed up and they had about 140ish kids (give or take 10) and about a third of them were not from the church. I got to see the whole gang in action as they were just having fun and being themselves. I meet the gang that I was spending the weekend with and had lunch and dinner with them and just had a mellow evening meeting some of the rest of the church at dinner. There was a missions thing going on and I attended and had a wonderful time. I went to bed early cause I had to get up early to be at the ‘church’ at 5:30 to help set up.
Now … basically they have to do a full sound and lighting setup between 5:30 and 7:30 to have a first service by 8am. This is a little crazy, they can get the stuff set up in about an hour and are adjusting for 15 minutes and sound checking from 6:30 on. This is because they don’t have a church building, although they are working on that. They also set up two other rooms for 0-5 year olds, and 6-12 year olds, and a third room for over flow with video and audio being transferred in. And by rooms … I mean theaters.
A look from outside.
Now playing: The Dark Knight, Mamma Mia, and Church. Showtimes listed.
Walking in the front doors.
Down the hall for Kids.
They convert 4 theaters in a movie theater into 4 ‘rooms.’ Now here is the crazy part … they have services at 8, 9:15, and 10:30, which run for 1 hr on a very very tight time limit. The first movie showing is normally at 11am. This leads to … shall we say some cross over. What takes about an hour to unload and set up is torn down and placed outside for loading in 30 min flat. I went to the 8am service and then just kinda walked around for the rest of them to help clean up afterwards. And it was almost too much to take in as the church actually has a sense of community that I don’t think some smaller churches have. This might be the fact that the two main towns are kinda isolated due to no civilization for about 15-20 min on the south to San Luis Obispo, 2 hrs to the east for Fresno or Bakersfield, and about 2ish hours to the north up to Salinas.
Anywho after everything was packed up by about 12:30 or so, and everyone looked like they needed a nap I got an invitation to ‘squeet’ so we went and got ‘something to eat.’ After that I ‘think’ I got a nap, but I don’t remember much.
Monday was another lunch day, had a meeting w/ the pastor, met most of the staff, ‘squeet’d, saw Wall-E and just had a mellow day. Tuesday I drove around town, and then spent the day with the worship pastor and went with him as he took his car into the shop, which ended up taking about 4 hrs before they finally gave us a loaner car to go back up. But it was time well spent. Wednesday I went to staff meeting, the Pastor’s bible study and then drove back to my parents home to spend the 4th with and celebrate my mom’s Bday.
I think what was the most interesting was the fact that I (and a couple people on staff) almost think they should stay in the theater as long as they can. If only from the numerous reports of the following conversation (with variation):
“Hey (so and so), what are you doing here?”
“Oh I just got out of church.”
“Church in a movie theater? Interesting, I’ll have to come back and take a look”
My emergent church friends are getting a warm fuzzy I’m sure :)
The Bad
Gets skipped over and goes right to …
The Ugly
There are times I hate being right, and I’m in one of those right now. About 2 months ago I called something to the date, and it came true give or take a week from when I called it. I feel like the reluctant prophet and I feel this deep pit in my stomach that just churns away at something other than the breakfast I just had. I told a couple people about it, including one who regularly reads this blog, I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but email/call/talk to me and I’ll let you in on the story.
Then again most of the prophets had this message of God’s love, but most of the time the breaking and the repentance had to come first. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.
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