It’s the Sunday before Christmas, and today we’ll gather for a small Christmas service on this church planting journey. Our church is barely two months old, with about twenty-five of us so far. We don’t have a children’s leader yet, except me, a setup crew, me again, a welcoming team, still me, or a media person, of course me. Jamie, hubs, has his own long list on Sundays, leading the service, preaching, and making sure anyone who needs a ride gets one, along with many other things.
This week, we scraped together the money to buy a projector and a laptop so we could show the words to the songs we’re singing. We don’t have a song leader, but our daughter Andreya, she’s eighteen and has an amazing voice, is helping us out. We decided we needed a laptop and projector to show the words to the songs we sing.
I asked Andreya to make the slideshow for this morning’s songs. The projector remote lets us click through the slides, making the transitions seamless.
Church planting supposedly seamless
We bought the laptop and projector on Thursday afternoon. On Friday, when I went to set everything up, the laptop wouldn’t boot. So we went back to the store and exchanged it. After that, I was able to set up the laptop. Yesterday, Saturday, I took time to connect the laptop to the projector, and I did.
Andreya took a little time to get the slides to me. She took her time because she wanted to make the day special. She added sweet backgrounds with Snoopy to the presentation. I asked her what her thought process was in adding those.
“The little kids will like it and pay attention.”
I couldn’t say anything, she was right. Snoopy has his place in the service.
Then I went to learn how to connect the projector’s remote so we could click through the slides, as the salesman told us we would be able to do. What he neglected to add was that I needed a USB cable in addition to the HDMI cable to use the remote this way.
Today we will be manually clicking through the slides. Jamie volunteered to do that. We also didn’t think about how to position the projector in the room so it would be high enough to project onto the wall. Then I had a brainstorm. We’ll use one of our kitchen barstools until we can get something more appropriate.
This is my day so far. These are the lessons in church planting that aren’t discussed. I think I may write a manual someday.
It doesn’t feel spiritual to click through slides or balance a projector on a barstool, but it is. We have learned to do as the occasion demands. How do you handle the unexpected?
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