Simply Cavernous...

Yesterday, my two co-workers Todd and Tony took me on a hard-hat tour of the new facility that will be home to our church congregation in a little less (or more) than a month. The 180,000 square foot campus is simply, in a word, ginormous. Some highlights:

• The main hallway, which leads out of the sanctuary down to the children's departments and then down to the offices is more than 250 yards. That's two and a half football fields.

• The main sanctuary is seven time the size of our current sanctuary.

• The stage feet have been put in place. The stage is 140 feet wide. Our current stage is 28 feet wide.

• There is a steel I-beam girder that runs the span of the ceiling in the main auditorium that is something like 200 feet long and 8 feet tall. A section of a similiar beam was lying on the floor and it was taller than me. It was the biggest piece of steel I have ever seen in my life.

My office is right next to Todd's and Tony's, and is just a stone's throw away from the showers. We have a bathroom that has showers, just in case our car breaks down and we have to clean up. I can't believe I get an office. That's insane to me. I'm glad I'm in the wing with the arts people.

But the best part was just standing in the back of the sanctuary with Todd and Tony and looking at the vast empty area that will soon be carpeted and filled with thousands of chairs.

"Just think how many people will fit in here," Tony said, almost getting choked up.

The three of us just stood there and looked out.

For some reason, my mind went back to this time right before I left Hawaii, my buddy Pastor Dan Kim prayed for me and he prayed that I would find a team that I could be a part of and that I could be valued and use all my gifts. I'd never heard anyone pray that, or even think that way, but I realized that really, that's what I've been looking for all my life. For someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, "You. We're building a special, crack team of super heroes to change the world. You have something special. Let's go."

I think that's kind of what everybody needs, at some level. But standing out there with Todd, one of the most talented musicians and vocalists I know, and Tony, one of the most knowledgeable guys about theatre lighting and camera operating that I've ever met, I felt like a member of the X-men.

I can't wait to communicate that to every single person in the congregation. Church is like the X-men, and everybody is crucial. It is you that's going to go into battle and change this person's life, or give hope to this person. It's your intelligence that's going to solve this problem, or your compassion that's going to help this person, or your creativity that's going to help communicate this truth effectively.

It's going to be a wild ride - and I can't wait to see what God does with the small army of believers he's assembled at 478 Piercy Road.