Today is Thursday!?!

Well, I haven't posted since Saturday, and I'm not sure where the time has gone. I mean, I remember all the days in between... the things I did, the people I talked with, all the emails I sent and received... it just doesn't seem like that many days should have gone by. Oh well, I seem to have more weeks like that as I get older.

This evening Virginia and I met Jeff Boyer at the church building to take care of a few of those necessary technical things. We repositioned the stage lights to more evenly light the front and get a little more light on the face of anyone standing at the pulpit. It took a little while and a little ladder work, but the end result is an improvement. There's virtually no natural lighting in our building and the house lights are indirect cove lighting on the side, so stage lighting is critical for people to see faces well. It can be tricky to get enough lighting on stage without washing out the screen, but I think we did pretty well. We'll see (no pun intended).

We're really looking forward to the weekend. The Martinez church is hosting the 11th (I think) edition of the annual Scary Monsters Youth Rally. The name plays off Halloween... the idea that the real scary monsters out there are not ghosts and goblins, but things like Spiritual warfare, not living holy lives, and so forth. It's about the only big youth rally still going in NoCal, and they do a good job with it. A really good drama group from Cascade College in Portland comes each year. And Won By One from Pepperdine comes as well. Because of our history with them, they stay with us, so that's the main thing we're looking forward to... and hearing the new group sing as well. It'll be good to see Lindsey, John and Darnell again and to meet the new members, Natalie, Matt and Stacy. They'll also worship with us Sunday morning and serve as 6 of our 8 praise team members. More about our worship focus tomorrow.