SAYING GOODBYE

I've got mixed feelings about leaving the UA in Patchogue on Sunday. I'm not sure how it will sit with me on the day, so it was interesting to read these comments from my friend Tony McCollum down in Buford, GA who moved out last Sunday from the movie theater he had planted his thriving church in five years ago.

They're heading into a great set-up in a school and as the whole world hopefully knows, we're moving into a fairly new, state-of-the-art theater in Ronkonkoma.

Here's Tony -

Yesterday was a bittersweet day for me. We had an awesome service at the theaters. Then, we packed up and left for the last time. I didn’t expect to feel so attached to the theaters on the last day.

I’ve been wanting to move for a long, long time so I was surprised to find myself getting a little emotional as we left.

I really wanted to be the last one to leave theater #10. Once everyone else had left, I stayed behind and just sort of soaked it all in. We spent five years at that theater. So many big events in my life happened in that theater. So many lives were forever changed there.

I decided to pray for a bit and then I just left. I ran into two great, great couples (the Reksten’s and the Hipps’) in the parking lot on the way out and I told them how shocked I was to be feeling the way I was feeling. I also told them that I guess it was because I had invested five years of my life into that place.

Then, Bryan Reksten said, “No, you invested five years into this place” as he pointed to his heart. I knew he was sort of half joking but I also knew what he said was true. The church isn’t a place or a building. It’s people.