"No Church" Today

Friday morning (about 9 hours ahead of predicted schedule) a major ice, sleet, and snow storm hit Oklahoma and has sense significantly impacted Missouri too. Airports are closed or facing major delays from Dallas to Denver to St. Louis and impacting the rest of the country too. Since we had already started school for the day we stayed open until normal time even though I had less than 30% of my students actually attending class.

Saturday saw another round of the storm and only complicated the situation even more. Saturday was when Missouri really got the action. I stayed home to be safe and kept looking for the news to report that "Crossings Community Church--OKC" was closed for Sunday services, but nothing. I checked the church's website and nothing. I called the church's automated phone service and the recording said that plans were to have our 11:00 sanctuary service (cancelled the 9:30 santuary and 10:45 gym services) but that there would be an update by 8:00 Sunday morning. So I went to bed with the plan of getting up and going to church.

I woke up at 8:00 on Sunday and called the church again and received a similar message that we WOULD be having church at 11:00. I showered, got dressed, and ate a light breakfast. It usually takes me 10 minutes to get to church but I knew with the ice that it would take longer. I also wanted to get there in plenty of time in case we were still having a choir practice before the 11:00 service. So I left home at about 9:20 and arrived at church around 9:45. As soon as I got in I ran into Pastors George Skramstad (Worship Pastor) and Matt Anderson (Associate Pastor) and they told me that church had just been called off all together at 9:30...since I had already left home I missed the message.

Well, I hung around for a few minutes and another choir friend showed up. We found out that the church had already made a batch of coffee for the few others who had showed up and Pastor Marty Grubbs (Senior Pastor) had called in and said he would bring some donuts for those people who might have not gotten the message that church was cancelled and we could hang out and visit for a while.

Apparently there were several who did not get the cancellation notice and we ended up with about 115 people (all ages, from infant to 80s). Keep in mind, this is a congregation of 6000+ people, so 115 is not even 2% of the whole church. We ended up having an impromptu worship service in the atrium (our fellowship hall). We had an amazing time of singing some favorite hymns and heard some amazing testimonies of why certain hymns were so special to various people. Pastor Marty led a short devotional from Acts 2 and we had a special time of prayer in which we actually took time to voice special concerns from the congregation (we don't usually do this due to the size of the congregation).

It was truly an awesome time of having "no service" on this chilly Sunday morning. For a cancelled church gathering we really did "have church". God was present even with the "two or three" that we had gathered on this day.