A Slower Pace

Last night we partook in our 2nd Winterjam. If you don’t know what Winterjam is, it is a Christian-alla-palooza with many different bands worshiping, celebrating and praising Jesus. We attended the Louisville Winterjam back in February and thought it was so good (and affordable) that we migrated east to Lexington Saturday for a re-do.

Our plan was to tailgate in the parking lot enjoying each other’s company along with some snacks and hot dogs. While the weather was warm enough, the occasional wind gusts would blow over any unoccupied folding chairs and basically made the tailgate effort a fail. Which turned out to be a blessing.

We gave up on the tailgate option and instead headed to Rupp Arena to get in line. And it’s a good thing we did. When we went to Freedom Hall for the Louisville Winterjam (which was on a Friday) there were a lot of people there but the line was very tolerable and not too long. At Rupp, probably because it was a Saturday, it seemed the entire Lexington community was in line. We turned this corner and saw a line of people 4-5 wide and about 1/4 mile long. Aghast, we joined it at the end.

The folks in line were friendly and in a generally upbeat mood. Church youth groups played games and others occupied their waiting time. Thankfully, they opened the doors early and we entered Rupp to stake claim to our seats.

NOTE: I much prefer Freedom Hall to Rupp. Rupp is a box. While I don’t like the navigation around Freedom Hall, every seat is a true seat, not a lame bench seat like the entire upper section at Rupp. For that reason alone, I will not go back to Rupp. After a 5 hour concert, my back hurt. And, yes, I am old. However, I did enjoy the Red show (Christian heavy metal).

One cool part of worship was when the David Crowder Band was playing “O Praise Him”. It is a wonderful worship song and everyone waved their hands in the air. I looked around and the entire arena looked like prairie grass waving in the wind of the Holy Spirit. It was amazing to see and, as so frequently happened in the past, brought tears of praise to my eyes. Below is a video of that song.

One final note of something I saw that I liked. A youth group had t-shirts made for all their kids to wear that were the same color and probably made the youth director’s job easy for control of them. However, it was the saying that go me…..

“The church has left the building…”

I thought that was a clever play on the old Elvis quote and a good reminder that the church is not a building and that our role as disciples is to be out in the world.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net