A Glimpse of Main Stage: Looking Back on Last Night
5,200 CHIC participants filled the University of Tennessee’s Thompson Boling Arena last night for the first Main Stage service of the week here at CHIC 2009. Jumbo screens assisted in getting participants excited for the start of Main Stage as they counted down the minutes and seconds until 8:30 when the service began. Aside from the awesome worship experience, led by Matt Lundgren and the CHIC band, one of the many highlights of the opening service was the emergence of two drummers from a wall of water. YES a wall of water!!! The wall was used as a projection screen for images and words to assist during worship.
Following the worship experience, North Park Campus Pastor, Judy Peterson addressed the audience in a charge to be fully committed to, open to, and receptive to all that CHIC has to offer. She urged us all to use this week as a catalyst in undoing our thinking that CHIC is a one week experience that can only be applied back in our churches. She invited us to see the whole world, and to share what we learn from this experience with the world.
For the first time EVER, CHIC was able to send three students to Thailand to see first hand how just how much the Covenant World Relief Offering that is taking place here at CHIC will help the people of Thailand. During last night’s Main Stage, another first in CHIC history was made as participants here in Knoxville were able to connect with the students in Thailand via satellite. Read a summary of that conversation.
Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic Church in Los Angeles California, delivered the message on ‘undoing our dreams’. He spoke of how each and every one of us were created with a specific purpose and how none of us are ‘ordinary’. He juxtaposed this with the story of Moses’ birth in Acts 7:20 where it reads, “At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child.” This was all to show that before we were born, we were all a part of God’s dream and before he ends our time here on earth, we need to live out his dream. He also shared that many times we either dream too small or dream so big that we write the stories of our lives without God and that’s when our lives become to seem undone. We have to have the courage and faith to trust God that he will meet us half way. There are things in life that God calls us to do for ourselves hoping that we will have the faith and courage to do what it is he wants us to do. Through a comedic antidote about participating as a stunt man, he conveyed to the audience that God blows up our obstacles for us and carries us so that it feels like we’re flying. All this happens through becoming undone about the way we view our lives and dreams. “Tonight may be a chance to become undone”, was his charge to the audience.
**If your dream becomes your life, would the world become a better place.**
