First Service Report

I don’t normally feel this wasted until Monday morning, but we’ve still got our two Sunday services to go before this weekend’s all done. Thanks to those who prayed for our first service at the new location – really had a great night. Awesome turnout – around sixty, I think – probably around twenty-five first-time visitors, plus a good number of people that have come before to the first location. Our faithful-est of members made a great showing, too, brought some friends, and did a great job of playing the hosts. We were standing-room only, anyway, which was a little scary, but did add to the excitement. Of course, a lot of that was first-service effects – and next week will probably bring a much more realistic attendance.

Had a real simple, real quick service. Sang a song (check out us and our a cappella selves), did an introduction of our church, some announcements, and then Sam preached for about 20 minutes. He did a good job – not an easy one to do, either – communicate truth in a second language. Tonight he’ll preach the same message again, and then I’ll preach the second service in Chinese. Anyway, even though we bought an air conditioner and a bunch of fans, it was still pretty toasty in there – so no one really minded that we finished early.

I thought we were going to have to call in an airstrike to get everyone to leave! After the service, everyone scattered throughout the house (which helped with the temperature problems) and, though I haven’t heard any reports yet, I think there were some pretty good discussions afterwards. The American students did a great job of making good connections. Don’t think many people fell through the cracks.

As for my post-service conversations, to give you an idea of the variety that we get to deal with, I first had to field a bunch of questions about the proof for Christianity and the relation of science to the Bible. Then I had a “dating counseling” session. Which to be honest, is way easier than marriage counseling. Because there’s still a perfectly acceptable easy solution that goes away after marriage: “break-up.” Which about sums up what I told them.