Hey friends,

This week's humorous spiritual story took place just this last Sunday.

On Sunday, I "played preacher" at church. I'm just the second-fiddle Associate Minister, but when the "Real" Minister goes on vacation, all the responsibilities fall on me.

The sermon-preaching part is one I've done plenty of times before, but there are also a lot of other duties on the checklist at a small congregation. Most of them tech-related.

So I got to church early but not as early as I'd like to get the slides setup, livestream ready, sound system turned on, ect. A lot more stressful than it should be, but I managed to check off my whole list.

Fast forward to service--and everything proceeds to go wrong. Okay, not everything but a lot of things. Okay, not a lot of things, but a few things.

One of my duties was to test the children's video that we play at the beginning of worship to make sure the sound worked. I tested it in the slideshow and it was fine but when I saw the sound guy their early, I just assumed he'd test it in his normal tests while I finished my other tasks.

Guess what? When service started, no one had tested the video and it wouldn't actually plat.

Though in my defense, even if I had tested it and it didn't work on the big screen I wouldn't have known what to do!

Another duty was to check the batteries in the mics. I saw all the green lights and saw one of the elders changing out mics after Bible class so I assumed all was well.

Well--one of the mics inexplicitly cut off during the opening prayer.

Then when it was time for me to preach, my slide advancer wasn't working and the audience and I waited awkwardly for the screen to cooperate (I had pictures to show that required the screen, otherwise I'd just skip it). It did start working after a few moments, luckily. Whew!

All and all, it was a chaotic and stressful service in my perspective! And my parents were there to see it all! :| I promised the senior minister that I wouldn't burn the church down and to that I followed through. But technology was not a friend to me.

Yet, in retrospect, it occurred to me that I was judging the success of the service on a scale of how well technology did. Videos, microphones, slide shows--those are all extras. Jesus never needed those. Paul never preached with those!

What I should be measuring a service by is how well we participated in the grace of God, glorying our Creator with all our ability, setting our hearts on the things of God. Did we do our best to transform people? Did we show love to God and others?

Crazy enough, I preached about changing our perspective on trouble and recognizing that God is in control even in a supposedly no-win situation. And that's just the lesson I needed. I focused on all the wrong things. Too often, if you are like me, you focus on what goes wrong and not what goes right.

Sunday afternoon, while I was still grumbling under my breath about the failures, I received a text from a member of the church who is in the midst of a tough cancer diagnosis. She told me the sermon was exactly what she needed.

She didn't mention tech trouble. She just saw how God had been working.

May God be glorified even when the microphone cuts out.

Be still and know,

Jake Doberenz

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