This week we are looking at a church wide fast that we are finishing up this week at Liquid Church.  It has been fantastic to see the growth in our people over the last three weeks . . . so I’m taking a look at some the mechanics behind what we’ve been up to.

We had this amazing series planned leading up to Easter.  It’s one of those series that I think people are going to talk about for years to come.  We started some of the brainstorming and work on it.  It was going to be amazing.

But then as we got into January and we finished our Detour series . . . God was stirring something in Tim’s life around fasting.  The Detour series was all about what happens when something unexpected happens in life . . . and your life takes a sharp turn to the unexpected.  At the end of services we’ve been offering response times where we’ve created some space for people to respond to what God was saying to them through the service.  It seemed like God was stirring something up in our people  as well . . . like they wanted more.

Tim believed we needed to answer what was going on in people’s lives . . . to give them some “next steps” for the areas in their lives that they need breakthrough.  The fast series was born out of that.  We shelved the “amazing series before Easter” and started working on “Fast: 21 days to breakthrough.”

I’m a planner.  I like to look ahead and try to figure out what we need to do today to make the future a better place for our people and organization.  However, a big part of planning weekend services in my mind is creating space to change the plans when we believe God is taking us in a new direction.

Three reasons that I’m kosher with us making this sort of change in plans in our weekend services:

• Teaching Leads // At the end of the day our “creative” and “support” elements simply compliment the core teaching of a church.  The person (or people) that stand on the stage every week need to lead this process.  We need them to see that we add value through what we bring to the table . . . but it’s ultimately their call.
• Past Experience // In the past we’ve seen that God has shown up in these “course changes”.  Some of the series that I’ve looked back on and thought had the biggest impact on our culture where these sort of changes in direction.
• The “X” Factor // God’s spirit is at work all the time.  In our planning . . . in the execution . . . in our preparation and our “performance”.  I believe that God does inspire us when we think ahead . . . but he can also throw curve balls in the mix. I reject that either ends of that spectrum are invalid.

What about you?  When was the last time you had to change direction in your weekend service plans?  Does it happen too much . . . or not enough?  I’d love to hear about it!

Come back on Wednesday and we’ll talk about some of the prep we did ahead time for this series that was “out of the norm” for our prep for a new series!