Some of you missed it.  Some of you experienced it.  I’m laughing now, but I was not laughing then.

Last weekend (June 27-28) was our last weekend of One Prayer.  I spoke LIVE at our campus the first 2 weeks and then the last 3 weeks we were joining other churches across the nation via video.  The first 2 weeks went as planned.  We debuted our new HD video equipment and everything went great.

Then our third week rolled around and the first 2 services went as planned like the previous 2 weeks.  The band played live and then our 12’ x 20’ screen lowered from the ceiling to display the video message in full-quality HD resolution.

Then the third & FINAL service in the One Prayer series started @ 11:30am on Sunday, June 28th.  The band rocked it out, Brandon began to pray after the worship set was over, and then all hell broke loose.

Here’s what happened from my perspective:

• I went up on stage as Brandon was praying to turn off the middle SD projector so that we could use the HD projector for the video message.

• The screen started coming down while I was on stage (as it should) and once I walked off stage, to my surprise, the screen froze about 1/4 of the way down.

• One of our media guys came running down the aisle to tell me that we lost power to everything and accidentally tripped into a whole section of chairs causing the loudest crashing sound imaginable (Brandon is still praying at this point but looked up to see what was going on because he figured either someone just passed out or got knocked out).

• I made it back to the media area only to find everyone scrambling to figure out what just happened.  It wasn’t just the screen that wasn’t working, we lost power to ALL video, audio, and lighting.  Terrible timing!

• Some of the guys reset the power and everything came back on. Then some things immediately shut down again.

• My microphone was working so I went up on stage and asked everyone to talk among themselves and give us a few minutes to correct the problem.

• I went back to the media area again and it looked like we were going to have power to our SD projectors, so I went back up on stage and told everyone that we were going to watch a different video message (Plan B) since we only had power to some projectors.

• The media team started the Plan B video and we lost power to EVERYTHING again…  all audio, video, and lighting!

• Time for Plan C.  I made it back up to the stage and told Brandon that I wanted him to grab his guitar and play some songs that people know to buy us some time to fix the video.  He unplugged his guitar because we still had no audio, stood on one of our subwoofers, and sang Amazing Grace as loud as he could.  Besides forgetting the words to one of the verses (when all hell breaks loose, you forget your own name, so it’s understandable), he did great and everyone sang along wondering what was going to happen next.

• At the end of the song, one of our staff members came up to tell me that power was not going to be restored and that there was no way to show video of anything.

• Plan Z: Pastor gets up, prays the microphone will work, and preaches impromptu.  This was the only plan we had left, so we went with Plan Z and thankfully the microphone worked.

• I prayed that God would speak through me and started sharing the story that radically changed my life 18 years ago.  The story that while we broke God’s law, Jesus paid our fine and offers forgiveness of sin & assurance of heaven to us as a FREE gift.  The only thing he asks of us is that we would receive it by repenting of our sin and placing our trust fully in Christ.  I told everyone that God must have a different plan for this service than we did and that there are people in the room that probably needed to hear what I was telling them more than they needed to watch the video.

• I finished the story, prayed, and that was it.  Still no video or lights, just a single microphone that happened to work.

• To be honest, after leaving the stage, I was a bit disappointed.  Things didn’t go according to plan.  I was sure people would be disappointed.

• And then the unimaginable happened… after the service I was bombarded by people who said they were glad the video didn’t work because the message that was preached was the message they needed to hear.  In fact, several people gave their lives to Christ as a result.  How cool is that?

• You know what I realized?  When you ask Jesus to lead the service, he will… and it might not go according to your plans. But of this we can be sure, his plans are better than ours and will always bring more joy to us and greater glory to Him.

Thanks, Jesus, for leading our services!  You’re a better leader than any of us!