Setting The Stage

As I was doing my quiet time one night, I felt God speaking to me about something that has been always close to my heart. You see, as the years pass by, I realise more and more that my passion has been in the media and design side of things, and to see it all happen in its best at church. No longer should we accept church brochures and flyers as it is. This is no longer the "As Is" section of Ikea, church design should be right in the most expensive showroom in the house.

So, as I was just reading the Word, I felt God speaking to me about "Setting The Stage". What exactly are you talking about? Well, this is the thing: There are so many times when we're asked to worship lead in life group, when we're scheduled to serve visitors a drink, when we're arranging the chairs or when we're physically setting the stage where the worship band plays. Yet, there are countless times when we would feel negatively over these tasks or wished someone else are doing it instead. C'mon, let's be real right.

Yet, when we read in the Bible, we see who was the greatest stage setter of all times. Countless times, we see the heroes of faith setting the stage and creating the atmosphere to move. We read in the Gospels that when Jesus was travelling back to His hometown one day, He was amazed at their lack of faith. And consequently, Jesus (the Master and Creator of the universe) could not move! Why is this? Simply because, the people's disbelief hindered Him from doing so. In other words, the people did not manage to set the stage and create the atmosphere for Jesus to move. How crazy is that...

Now, back to this main question of setting the stage. And this is what I felt God spoke to me about in the early hours of the morning. He said there were many times, when we are asked to set up the stage, so usher, to clean the floor, to serve the drinks and we complain whether verbally or not. Yet when we look at the Bible, we see God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords setting the stage. Probably the most important stage of all times right from the beginning.

Look at Genesis 1. God specifically listed down all the thing He has done in the first chapter of the Book. He created the waters, the land, the mountains and rivers and even each of the animals, no matter how diverse and different they all are. God Himself took 6 full days carefully planning and then setting up the stage, called Earth before He even put us on it. Think about that, guys. There were so many time when we complain about the 6 or 7 hours we give in setting up once in a while, but yet God took time to make sure everything was beautiful and perfect before He created us.

We see in Genesis 1, everytime after He created something, he would say "It was good". How many time do we set up the stage for Him to move and say it was good. Or do we just brush it off and say "well, as long as it looks ok, it's ok". God Himself had the spirit of first class. He would not even create His people, us, if everything He saw was good enough. Now this is a new thought: God probably felt, if it was good enough for Him, it will be good enough for us. Wow... Think about that.

I wanna challenge myself and I want to challenge you. Whoever you are, to lift the standard on setting the stage on God to move. Whether you're a musician, an usher, a hospitality person, a set up or pack down team member, do your best! For the simple but yet most powerful reason because we're doing this as a stage for God to move. When a person walks into the church hall, do they go wow or do they snicker at the lack of standard in the House of God. Ask yourself this question.

When I think of setting the stage for the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords to move and change lives forever. Everything I do is worth it.

It has been 2 weeks since there was any activity in this space.

It has been 2 very busy weeks for me. Work has been on-going with projects, proposals and presentations. Meanwhile, I was also doing some designs for church, which is awesome. It's nice seeing your designs go on print, framed and the process of conceptual art to actual printed material. At the moment, we're done with the design for the 1st anniversary invitation card and am working on finalising the design for the New People's Pack, which will also be printed and distributed on the church's 1st anniversary as well. At the same time, the editing for the church birthday video is being done, by Jeremy, which will be awesome.

After factoring all these things, it leaves me with very minimal time for social life. But thank God, our company had a bowling and dinner outing yesterday, which helped. And this Thursday, I'll be playing table tennis with them too. Keeps me sane.

It's all gonna be good!

Nice graphics on nice tees. This morning I ordered 3 tees from Threadless. Skye (who ordered another 2) told me about this website and since then, I've been pleasantly surprised by their design. Before this, there was another site that I like, Busted Tees.

Anyway, Threadless is currently having a sale and most tees are going for USD $10 each! That's a good bargain. Hopefully, I'll be able to do less physical shopping and more online shopping through this.

Last weekend was pretty busy. It started with a visit to my colleague's house at Kepong for breakfast and yee sang (mann, first time having yee sang in the morning, it was an... interesting experience), followed by Discipleship at Ps Mark's house. There were about 10 people there and Ps Mark was asking us to share with the rest our journey to City Church and the whole experience. At the end of the session, Ps Mark shared about how he want to take the next 6-8 weeks sharing about leadership as well as conduct a discipleship with us. It was very good actually. The passion and the sheer enthusiasm in the room was infectious and everyone had the spirit of "c'mon we can do this together" kinda thing! It was awesome.

At night, we were supposed to catch a movie at Cineleisure, but instead we stayed on for dinner and fellowship with about 50 new people. Ps Mark organised a dinner where everyone came together for a get-to-know-you. I've met so many new people yesterday it was quite a challenge remembering all their names. I've met an American couple, a Kenyan guy some folks from other states of Malaysia and just getting to know everyone better. Food was awesome but fellowship was better!

The next day, we decided to catch Music and Lyrics at Cineleisure. It was generally a good movie with very very funny mtv of some 80's music. After that, we went to Itallianies for lunch and we only had time to run some errands and go to church. As usual church was awesome. We had Ps Chris Long speaking on creating an atmosphere for God to move. Worship was so anointed, the word was powerful, the people were all great. Church rocks! It was also the first weekend our life group decided to sit together in church to get the vibe going. I thought it worked great and we should keep it up.

It's Monday, and although I have a bit of sniffles going on, it's a nice day 'cause it's been a very quiet day in the office. Thanks God.