Part 3

On January of 2011, we began a 21 day fast in our church.  It has since become something that we do every year.  This was not 21 consecutive days of fasting.  It was a 21 day time period for people to fast and pray within.  For some that would be a meal.  For others that would be a day.  For others it would be multiple days in a row.  For all of us fasting, the agenda was the same.  We gave our congregation a list of things to pray for which included things we wanted to see happen in our church.  One of those things we wanted to see happen was for The Bridge to have a permanent place of its own. 

In praying for a building, our prayer became “God, give us a place to house your glory.”  That's what we wanted.  It was not about us having a building for our own glory.  It was about having a place where the Spirit of God could dwell and linger.  We prayed often on Wednesday nights at the church office that God's presence would fall on us during our worship services (We still do this).  But, as you know at LNS, every week we were faced with the task of immediately breaking down our service and setting up the cafeteria for school the next day.  What if God's glory showed up among us?  Could we come back that night?  No.  Could we come back that next day?  No.  School would be in session.  We were desperate for the presence of God (and still are) and we desperately wanted a place that could house His glory. 


Our first indication of God moving us out of LNS was about a month later.  We thought it was just a hick-up but we now know that God was preparing us to leave the school. (Also, there are no hick-ups in God's economy!!).  We got a call from the office saying that we would have to find a new place to meet over the summer.  The air-conditioner at the school was being redone and that included the cafeteria.  The administration was very apologetic and assured us that they wanted us back in the fall.  I thought to myself, "It's just for the summer.  We can come back in the fall.  It's not the end of the world."


As our staff put our heads together to think of a creative solution to our problems, we came up with a strategy called "Summer Sunday Nights."  We would hold our services at 6:30pm on Sunday nights at Venice Presbyterian Church.  It seemed like a great idea and I was really excited about it.  It was different, it was new, and I had Sunday mornings off for the summer!  It started out on the right foot.  The services were electric (and I mean electric) and the crowds were good.  After about 3 weeks in, I noticed we were down about 100 people.  After 6 weeks, I noticed we were down about 200 people.  I started to really get worried.  From 450 to 250!!!  Why?  To this day, I still don't understand all the reasons.  Thankfully, as the summer progressed, we started to climb back up to our normal numbers, but needless to say I was really looking forward to getting back to our regular schedule at the school.  Little did I know at the time, the plan was already in motion for our contract to never be renewed at the school again.