The Stouts Online

Okay folks, (GO CHARGERS! Sorry, LT just got a touch down) it’s time for me to fess up this weekends confessional. Technically I think this is (Thank you Sproles!) number 18, but I didn’t do a video for the last two. Things have been progressing along with the new LIFEUnplugged venue as well as our “Plugged” venue. Saturday night was just Jon, Rachel and I. Today was just Jon and I, and another kid came during first service. I feel bad because I never caught his name. He did an excellent job on the camera! He left after first service though.

I personally have a real problem. I need to remember to take things as they are, and that we’re there to serve God. Our facility has been rented out several times over the last few months and I always find something wrong/different/broken afterwords. I’m not trying to point fingers at anyone, matter of fact, some of it is us; however, we’re $49,270 in the red for our operating budget this year. That means I have no money to purchase new equipment, repair broken equipment, or replace broken vital equipment. Recently, everything purchased has been funded by private donations which are wonderful blessings, but thouse sources are not infinite. So needless to say, Saturday night when I received a text message saying something was running the way it shouldn’t have, I was a little upset.

When I showed up on scene (I was just leaving the house when I got he text) luckily everything was okay; however, I found out that there had been attempts to make other equipment work using wrong materials and such. Luckily, no damage that I know of had been done. Later on, a camera stopped giving us a feed and I needed a flashlight to check a cable. Naturally I looked for one of my three brand new flash lights. Nowhere to be found. Eventually we found a loose connection and repaired but I was steaming at this point.

There is no way to find out who broke or misplaced anything nor does it really matter. (That Field Goal attempt Kaeding just missed might.) It just is really hard for me to swallow that so much work, and money has been poored into our ministry yet things are mistreated. On top of that, how am I to justify the expense of things when we can’t even pay our staff? It’s just frustrating and challenging.

I left a note afterwards saying, “Please don’t change anything or return it to original” in the tech room when I left. There was a little more to it, but I hope that it is taken humbly and not to harshly. I just think the solution is that if anything is to be turned on more then house lights, someone from my tech ministry must be on campus. I just don’t have enough people or time to really make this happen. I hope we can make this transition/recovery smoothly with no hurt feelings. Ah, I hate being the bad guy sometimes!

Tags: Blogging, Confessional, Life Church, Tech Confessional, responsibility // 4 Comments »