The Truth About the Power Outage on Good Friday

One of the questions we’ve received about this past weekend is: “Was the power outage at the beginning of the Good Friday service real or planned?”

I’d love to answer that question.

Here’s what happened if you weren’t there. We opened with the song Wonderful Cross and then I came out to welcome everyone and set up the night. Near the end of my welcome, I said, “Tonight we want to invite you to experience the Story of God.” And then immediately, we lost all power. And there we sat, all 3,000 of us. In the dark.

Yes, it was real.

Normally when a power outage like this happens, it takes a long time to get everything back up and running, especially with all of the video elements we had for the night. Because of this, my first thought was, “We might not be able to do this.” My second thought was, “Wow, there’s Carlos with a megaphone at the front of the stage.” (Carlos Whittaker, our Service Programming Director, had run from the soundboard in the middle of the auditorium to the stage with a megaphone.) However, as we whispered to one another, I noticed my microphone was back on. I don’t remember exactly what I said to everyone as the lights came back on. I think it was, “We’ve been praying for this night and I think God just showed up.”

What’s hard to explain is how quickly the power came back on after the outage. It wasn’t 100%. There were a few lights still not working, but for the most part we were back up and running.

Also, we really don’t have a great explanation of why we lost power. (We’ve never lost power in our new location before.) Granted, the weather was really bad but most of the storms were north of us. If all of this weren’t odd enough, Jen Tamborello began to read Genesis 1 after my welcome as planned. (We were telling the Story of God from Genesis to Calvary.) As she read, “Let there be light” some of our lights that weren’t back on, suddenly came on. (I think that’s one of the reasons why many people think the power outage was staged.)

Now, I usually don’t pull out the “God-card” to explain circumstances like this and yet, I don’t know how else to explain what happened. Sure, the power outage may have been caused by the weather, but if that were the case we shouldn’t have gained almost full power back so quickly. The rest of the night went off without a hitch.

As for me, I’m choosing to believe the prayers for that night were answered. God showed up in a powerful way. It was certainly one of the most important evenings in the life of Buckhead Church.

And so, that’s the truth.

I promise.

Jeff

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