The Presentation

It went well. Yesterday I made my presentation. It seemed like people responded positively, and at the end they even applauded, which I did not expect. (I suspect Vance started that. Regardless, it was a nice surprise.)

Afterward I collected the response cards.  I received 7 that said they were interested in being on the team, and 4 who said they'd pray but couldn't be on the team. That leaves a significant number of people who did not respond at all, but it is still heartening.

I really want to try to make sure that everyone is personally appealed to. I think I will email everyone with a link to an electronic survey and see if I can get some more responses. I plan to work on that today. My survey just has one question with a specific answer, asking people to either check, "I am interested in being on the Hineni team,' and another that says, "I cannot be on the team but I will pray." The rest of the form is open-ended, asking what days & times to meet, and inviting any feedback.

When I met with the worship team prior to the service, at the time of prayer requests, I asked them to pray for me because of "the story I am making up." This comes from Brené Brown's book, Rising Strong. She talks about exploring what you are telling yourself in your mind. I recently read some work by Mary Karr where she discussed something similar, asking "Where are you getting your information?" and often -- like 99% of the time -- we are making it up. In my case, the story I was making up was that there were people who were wondering, "Who do you think you are, Mavis Moon? Who are you to lead us in this movement? Who are you to talk to us about how to pray?" 

I then told them another story, not one I made up. Years ago, when I had been the church secretary for several years, I decided I needed to work full time and gave my notice. A church member and friend of mine told me she prayed a lot about the church secretary decision, thinking it was very important and praying that we would find the right person. Slowly she realized she herself was that person. That's how it was with me. As I wrote, I've been thinking about hineni for months, praying about it and how our church is at a hineni moment. Slowly, it began to occur to me that perhaps it needed to be me who did something about it.