...And this isn't even my music notes...

Okay, I've had a full day to 'decompress' after a phenomenal (and yes that's spoken with extended accent) Christmas Eve service. I wanted to take a day to come off of the emotional highs regarding the service so that I could make clinical comments regarding such. (Okay, everyone who actually knows me, you can pick yourselves off the floor now, it's not THAT funny... Come one I'm waiting, take slow deep breathes to calm down, that's the kind of laughter that gets painful after a while).

I've seen a nice email regarding the service, and Jeremy's Blog as well, so you might want to read his in addition/instead of mine. It's bound to be more informative.

First lets take a glimpse into what went into this one night. Planning for this service began somewhere in mid/late October / early November, details fell in place around late November, and then the final push began the second week of December, here's my completely unofficial stats. (Some of which are fairly accurate, some of which are a wild guess based on inductive reasoning, ie I know about how many people where there for about how long a time.)

Totals man hours of planning during programming meetings: (Because I can' even begin to fathom how much time everyone spent individually planning for the service) 38 hours

Total Man Hours Spent During Set up/Tear down of the service: 105 hours

Total Man Hours Spent by technical/worship team during the run practices/service: 68 hours

Total Man Hours by Decorating Team: 60 hours

Total Man Ours By Parking/Greeting/Usher/Refreshment team: 60 hours

Number of hours it took the Video to compile: 20 hours

Number of hours it took Josh to Put together said video: I have no clue, but it was quite a few

Number of hours to build the loop for the song in the video: 4 hours

Number of barrels of food collected for food bank: 5 (from Jeremy's Blog)

Number of Injuries to myself: 2

Number of sticks I broke while playing: 1

Number of cool new gear I got to buy for the service: 1 new pair of stick/mallet combos.

Amount collected for Simply love (Donation to Hope house and Thurman Brisben center): Over 10k (Again from Jeremy's Blog)

Number if Times Jeremy Acted Grinch-ish: 3 (Mostly during initial planning, see this post for details)

Number of times I acted Grinch-ish: (Way more than 3)

Official Number of lives who have forever changed their eternal destination: 25 (At least according to Jeremy's Blog)

Unofficial Number of lives who have forever changed their eternal destination: Unknown, but higher than the above number based on the hands that went up.

Amount of pride I feel from those last two stats: Immeasurable.

And really those last two items on the list are why we do what we do. Yes I love music and drumming, but that's not why I play for our worship team, if it was just about music I'd be working as a session drummer and/or gigging at clubs on nights and weekends it's about seeing what God is still doing in and around us, it's about seeing lives changed, and it's an amazing feeling.

Matthew Furukawa
Post Christmas Eve Service Reflections (Is that proper use of that word?) 2007