The other day, Saturday, I led our worship service at Nuevo Dia – a Spanish version of New Day. If you’re not familiar with New Day, it is a monastic type of a community. Like emergent. It is an emergent type of a church. It is not a new way of doing church; rather, it is rekindling an old tradition. Specifically, it is a group gathering that gets together on a weekly basis to worship. That’s beside the other daily missional things that the group does. Its visional leader is Dr. Elaine Heath, a Professor from Perkins School of Theology, SMU, who teaches Evangelism among other courses. Better than me explaining what it is, you should check out the website at www.newdaydallas.org.
I initially became involved with Nuevo Dia as part of a class assignment. But I found myself really enjoying the group for its small size, informality, atmosphere, and most of all, its people, which is composed of both students from Perkins and people from the local community. This way of doing church has made an impact on me that I wish to start a similar group gathering at the church where I will be serving for my internship starting in August. I am really excited about this opportunity. I am even more excited because I feel that this did not just happen out of serendipity, but rather it was God directed. This, I believe!
Now, getting back to my leading our worship service. I was asked last month by Shellie, who leads the Nuevo Dia Community, if I wanted to take part in leading worship service during the Summer. I responded, yes, of course. Shellie sent out the schedule earlier this month, and she had two people leading each worship service while two other people provide a small meal for the group. I was to co-lead twice and also co-feed twice over the Summer months. I thought, no problem, I can do this. I can coordinate this leading part with the other person, who in my mind has got to have more experience than me with no experience. Then, the unexpected distressful thing happened. Due to another engagement, the other person said she could not be there. I thought, just lovely, but I moved on. That was two weeks ago and life got busy for me that I kinda put this leading thing in the back burner. Then last Wednesday evening, thoughts of Nuevo Dia started filling my mind. Too tired to confront myself that I needed to prepare something, I put it off to the next day. I am very good at procrastination. Not trusting my memory, and as I do with important things, I intentionally wrote it down on a piece of paper to look into it the next day. The next day, Thursday, came but I still refused to act on it. I could have, perhaps, looked at the schedule to confirm the date, or even email Shellie. But I didn’t. Really, I didn’t want to face reality and therefore continued to prolong the inevitable. Do you ever do that? I mean when we delay doing the inevitable, we’re really just prolonging self-created stress. Yet, it never fails and we continue to repeat this behavior.
Anyway, later that same evening, like some telepathic thing, I received an email from Shellie reminding me that I was to lead on Saturday and that the other person was not going to be there. Sure, it wasn’t really telepathic as Shellie was only doing what a good leader does of sending out reminders. Still, I like to think of it that way. She also asked for the worship layout once I had it ready, and to email her if I needed help. Anxiety set in and instead of emailing Shellie, I spent that evening worrying about it. I knew that I had to work the next evening for 12 hours straight, and that if I didn’t have anything prepared before I went to work, I could not pull it off. Well, what do you know, it was time for me to go to work the next day and I still did not have a clue as to what I was going to do for worship. I didn’t even know what an order of worship should look like. At 5 a.m. Saturday morning, 12 hours away from the scheduled gathering time, I emailed Shellie and said that I was at work and that I had not yet prepared anything, but that I was going to have something prepared that morning and would send it to her when it was ready. Truthfully, I still had no clue, but for some strange reason I was feeling more confident. I don’t know how!
In my mind, my worst fear was that not only was I going to disappoint myself but that I was also going to disappoint a lot of other people. I spent more time worrying about it than actually doing something about it. But in the midst of those worrying hours, I continuously sent God telepathic messages known as prayers asking for emergency help. In those messages, I told God that if I am really called to lead in a church setting, then I should have something prepared. If I am really called to start an internship at a church in a couple of months where I will be leading people and church regularly, then I definitely needed help, a sign, or better, I needed worship order contents, right then without delay.
Well what do you know, I got off from work at 7a.m. Saturday morning, exhausted from working all night that I could barely keep my eyes open, but within a couple of hours managed to put something together and emailed it to Shellie. Yes, God responded to my emergency telepathic messages. I received the sign and affirmation that I needed. I received the worship order contents that I asked for. I also got to sleep for a couple of hours before heading over to Nuevo Dia in East Dallas. God is amazing!
Worship service at Nuevo Dia went well and I received positive feedbacks from Shellie and other colleagues. One of my colleagues said, “it seemed very organized.” I thought, “wow, if you only knew!” I also thought that we had a lively discussion over the Scripture text that God and I had chosen. This, I have to smile about! 🙂
The next day, Sunday, at church, the pastor told a story of another pastor’s experience with his first sermon. He told the story of how anxious this new pastor was that when he gave his first sermon, no one in the audience seemed to be listening. He was obviously disappointed. Then at the end of the service, one person waited till the very end and came to him and told him how much his sermon meant and how it preached to him. That one person gave this new pastor hope that, perhaps, there may be a second sermon. Now, this was not a first sermon for me, as in a postmodern way of doing church, it is more discussion and conversation based. Still!
About a week ago, I recall reading a friend’s facebook status where he said something like, “If you are not welcome at the place where you are, consider moving on. Someone needs what you have to offer.” A simple and important message of affirmation and hope.
I don’t know what the future holds for me and I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. I do know, however, without a doubt, that God is always leading me in a path. This path, I believe, is the path that Jesus said, “come and follow…” Indeed, I will continue to communicate with God telepathically and try not so much to sweat the small stuff.
a journey in existence 