Have you ever gone for a file download or installed a new program and gotten that message? I grew up in the dial-up era and this message sends my eyes rolling instantaneously. Call me a bonafide millennial, because I can't handle waiting anymore. I may be a pastor, but I'm still human (spoiler: all pastors are). I'm not good at waiting. And I'm even worse at unexpected roadblocks.
Say, for example, contracting strep throat over the weekend. Maybe the same weekend where North Carolina decides to look like Canada with inches of snow and ice? Maybe the same weekend where I have a four-day week before going on a business trip for most of the following week? Maybe the same weekend where I already have several meetings and obligations scheduled? Yeah - that weekend.
Why do you think you're receiving this newsletter several hours later than usual? That's been my lived reality - along with many others, I'm sure - for the past five days. It's stressful. It's overwhelming. Throw in the far-more-important responsibility of keeping your family taken care of and it's enough to make me break into a cold sweat - or maybe that's the strep still breaking?
So - what's the point of this newsletter then? Well, first off, this newsletter's purpose is to keep you - the supporters of Checkpoint Church - informed of the goings-on of our community. And currently that's the most pressing issue. But the more important thing I want to highlight is that, despite all of this, our community hasn't stopped moving. If I had gotten sick a year and some change ago, who knows? We probably would have gone stagnant for that time period. But now? We're a living organism. We're a vibrant community. It's not just my actions keeping this thing going and arguably it never was in the first place. Sometimes we may be downloading at a gig per second and other times the pastor may be sick; but we've reached a point where the download may take a while, but it never stops - and that's because of you.