world impact prax

After OHOP, I had to run to church to have a time of sharing and praying with Soul Purpose. A lot of people were late so we didn't start until an hour afterwards.

The night before, while Todd and I were at Applebee's, he told me that Mike was going to performing with Undignified at World Impact.

My first reaction was anger. Mike hadn't told either Tony or myself that he would be performing with UD. It showed an aspect of disrespect that just made my blood boil. I wanted to react with harsh discipline, but luckily, God was good to me and calmed me down. I was able to think through it and look past my own pride at the heart of the matter. If it was just disrespect for me or Tony, that would've been fine. But there was an aspect of not devoting yourself to God. These kids have so much stuff going on and it was a rule, from the very beginning, that no one would be aloud to join more than one arts ministry. I came back to this reason as the impetus for discipline. Originally, I was just going to say that Mike wouldn't be able to perform at World Impact with UD. After praying some, I decided that I shouldn't make the decision. He had made the decision to commit to both. He would have to choose which one he cared about more. If he chose to stick with UD, he would be letting down Crystal, Tony, and myself. If he chose Soul Purpose, he would be letting down Todd and all the others of UD that were involved with the dance. By no means, is it an easy decision. I promised myself that not matter which which choice Mike made, it would not impact further performances or affect my perception of him; trying to show him the same grace that God would have showed me.

I announced that we wouldn't be performing at World Impact because we just didn't have the people to perform. We need 7 people to perform decision time. We have enough going, but we didn't have enough people at practice. Neither, Dan, Spencer, nor Andrew could make it to practice because of other commitments. I could have stood in for one of them, but that would still leave us short one man.

We started sharing a bit. We were close to finishing our time of sharing when it digressed to a commentary on Soul Purpose and Perspectives. The discussion was extremely heated and gave Tony and I a scare. We talked a bit about it until Becky spoke up and brought it back to the heart of the matter. That the church was under spiritual attack. So many people were hurting and we were no exception. We spent the next 40 minutes in prayer which was excellent.

Afterwards, Tony, Becky, and I just stood around and talked about what had transpired. We came to a consenus that their grumbling wasn't about Perspectives or Triple Helix or anything else we've done. Rather, it was from a lack of focus, a spiritual deadness within the group.

We decided that once Perspectives is over, we're going to lay off training and enter a period of focusing on scripture and small groups.