Current Series

Due to the fact that I would be out of town this past weekend, I decided to record the message for use this Sunday in my absence. I've started a new series called "Boulders and Backpacks" which deals with issues of boundaries in our lives.

Many people struggle with being able to know how and when to say "no". Too many people have a hard time observing the boundaries of others. As a result a lot of people are left to anarchy in their relational lives. We hope to address this. The premise is basically (as in hiking) that we're all going up the mountain and we all have our own backpacks (personal responsibilities) that we must carry. We all also must be aware of the boulders in life.

A boulder is an obstacle that can come down to cause harm to a climber. If a boulder does trap someone on our climbing team, we're all right there to help out. Boulders are actual burdens in life that do come from time to time. This is in essence the church being 'the church'.

The feedback I got so far has been great. This is the first time we've used video as the main message. I wasn't sure how it would go over. Several people commented that my style was more laid back due to the fact there was no audience. That was an interesting observation. I see what they mean. I'll have to compare the two sets of footage to see how drastic the shift was. In addition, a 20-something in our congregation Text-Messaged me DURING the message on Sunday (about 10:30a.m.) and said something like "Tally, great video.. have a safe trip." I wrote back "Thanks, now pay attention!"

I also received an email this week from another attendee who said that this message impacted him like no other in nearly a year. He assured me that me being 3 states away had nothing to do with it :)

So, all in all this experiment went well. I think were going to video some intro messages for the web and DVD which will allow us to give a heads up to those checking us out. Stay tuned... it should be fun.