Surfing the Inner N8

“Hollywood God” kicked off at CrossWay yesterday with The Pursuit of Happyness. We watched several clips from the movie about how Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith) chased after what he thought would make him happy, letting absolutely nothing get in his way. The movie ends like so many others: happily ever after. We see the goal achieved, and are left to assume that now everything in life will be great and everyone will always be happy forever.

The problem is that at the end of the movie, the main character’s happiness is still dependent on circumstances. And since circumstances are constantly in flux, such happiness is fleeting.

The good news is that there are other, better, more long-lasting things we can pursue that do not depend on circumstances–things like contentment (Philippians 4:11-13), joy (John 17:13), peace (John 14:27), and a full life (John 10:10). All of these things can be found in a personal friendship with Jesus Christ.

That’s the good news. And the Good News is that as we pursue friendship with Jesus, He’s pursuing friendship with us.

All that might sound simple and trite, but the truest and most profound things often appear that way on the surface. Sometimes the Bible gives us a spiritual answer when we’re looking for something tangible; but as A.W. Tozer put it in The Pursuit of God: “The spiritual is real.” More real than anything else.

Someday everyone who has a relationship with Christ will leave this old life behind and begin a new life in which they will always be inexpressibly happy. In the meantime, we can experience a foretaste of heaven by having such wonderful, unshakable gifts as peace, joy, contentment, and a full life.

During the service we had popcorn and sodas. The windows were darkened to enhance the movie clips we watched (about 10 minutes worth). We gave our first-time guests popcorn bags containing a Blockbuster gift card, microwave popcorn, a CrossWay pen, and several other things. At the very end of the service we collected all the Connection Cards and drew one for the winner of a DVD of The Pursuit of Happyness.

One of the best parts of this weekend was seeing how so many people from CrossWay really came together and worked hard to make it happen. I won’t even try to begin naming names. But for those of you reading this who are a faithful part of the CrossWay team, THANK YOU!!! It is an honor to serve Jesus with you! And I need to give a shout out to Pastor John from the Gathering Tree who designed the graphics for each week.

Something else about yesterday that was really cool: It was our first day of not having Sunday School, which we did in order to strengthen Children’s Church, and we had some children who were first-time guests who participated in Children’s Church! Seems like confirmation that we’re making the right move.

I’m really looking forward to next week when we do Ratatouille. (And forget it–we’re not serving ratatouille! I looked up the recipe for this “chunky stew”–its literal translation–and it looks like pretty funky stuff.)

Oh yeah, one more big answered prayer: all the technology ran smoothly in the worship service!