This past Saturday, I had a great day. It started by having my friend Scott Berkey speak to a bunch of Kidmin leaders at my church through the day. He taught on leadership and I believe everyone there came away feeling better off hearing some great leadership stuff from the book of Joshua and really seeing Scott being very transparent. I was blessed for sure.
Then, I went home for what I thought was the evening. I sat around and watched the Baylor bears eek out a win in the tournament. I know they won by 15 but with 4 minutes left in the game it was still in doubt. I tend to have the same fear with Baylor Basketball as I do with football that the defense is gonna give up a slew of points at any time. I just thought I was done for the evening though.
About 9pm a buddy of mine shoots me a text of hotel prices in Austin. It was like 225 for a 1 star hotel in downtown. I asked him when it was knowing Austin hotels don't cost that much. It was for that night. It is a South by Southwest weekend in Austin. That is why all the hotels have prices that are ridiculous. I texted back, Why are you looking at hotels for tonight? His response he wants to go see a band. Evidently, when my friend was younger he used to be a groupie for this band and hadn't seen them in a long time. I was half joking and half serious when I responded to him and said "Let's Go!"
Many of you know, I tend to go to bed at 9 on Saturday nights because I get up and try to go into the church early on Sunday mornings. I never leave the house that late much less decide to leave the house that late. We made sure our wives weren't joking about letting us go. Actually, we think they were relieved that we were not tugging them along. After a little bit of discussion and trying to figure out if we were either man enough or dumb enough to go, we left my house at about 10:30 for a 1 am show in downtown Austin. It was a great experience. Thousands of people were scattered all throughout downtown Austin. You couldn't walk without bumping into someone. Streets were blocked off. Music was blaring out of every building we passed. Every kind of music could be heard from reggae to rap to rock. Laser lights were shooting up and down the streets. It was a blast. I had never heard the group but they were good. Show was over about 2 and we walked back to the car and left for home.
I took away a couple of things from this trip that I feel are very important. First, I realize many of the thousands of people need Jesus in a big way. We were down there to see a show and go home. Many, I am sure, were not down there with that intent in mind. I pray that the God calls and the church accepts people that are called to people in that scene. I am pretty sure that jumping up and preaching on a soapbox in the middle of the group would not really do the job. Maybe, if the job were to have a beer thrown on you. I don't even know what an outreach to that demographic of people would even look like. It isn't like they were a certain age or color or gender. It was a massive group of people that were just having fun listening to music and watching movies.
The other thing, I am glad I went because I saw stuff that I would have never seen other wise. When you do that, it helps creativity. I challenge everyone to do stuff that is out of their comfort box, things they have never done. It doesn't have to be in the middle of the night but it is always good to try something new or do something different. I had another children's pastor tell me once that his pastor told him he should get all of his inspiration from the Bible. If that is the only place we look for inspiration how do we tell people how to apply the Bible. We have people in our churches that see things like a massive crowd at sxsw or sunrise at the beach or anything that you haven't done. If we can do something that doesn't compromise our belief in Jesus Christ and it can show us something we have never seen then take the opportunity. It will make you a better person. How did I do the next day in Kid's church? I think I mixed up the words on one part of a story I was telling. My wife tells me that is probably less than I normally do.
So, get out and do something new.
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