View From the Pew

For nearly five years, I worked on staff at Buckhead Church with the team who puts together the Sunday morning service for adults. It was a great job. I saw first hand the hard work and heart that staff and volunteers put into creating an irresistible worship experience. I watched from backstage or on stage, I listen with one ear on headset. I worshiped with one hand ready to push buttons or cue speakers.

Now, I’m with you. I wave at the host team while we find a parking spot. I drop my son off in Waumba Land. I search for a seat. I skim the bulletin. I hope for a message that will really hit home. I nervously anticipate what we’ll hear when I invite a friend to join us.

I sit in the chairs. Maybe we have sat next to each other. I like to sit somewhere new every week. I think it drives my husband a little crazy. But I like to see things from a new angle and hear the music from a different place. Do you do this? The balcony is much different than the front row, isn’t it?

I like to guess the story of the people sitting around me. The other week I sat a few chairs down from a man who sat the entire service. I wondered if he was there for the first time and still not sure about the whole worship thing. A while back multiple generations of friends or family sat behind us. I wondered who was the first to come to Buckhead Church. Do they come together every week? Months ago, I sat down the row from a disabled man and his brother that brought me to tears the way they worshiped together. I wondered how they came to love each other so well.

Everyone has a story. We are all coming from different places but ending up together on Sunday at BC. Isn’t that so compelling? There is a commonality that brings us to the same place that closes the gap between your life and mine. We are all on this journey of faith together.

Maybe it feels overwhelming at times to enter a big auditorium. You’re hoping to spot a familiar face as quickly as possible. I hope we’ll start to see that we all have familiar faces. Someone not so unlike you is walking by at every moment.

See you in the seats. See you on Sunday.

Amber