Saved Souls and Kool & The Gang at JakJazz!!

Hi Everyone! I want to share just a brief report about the Jakarta International Jazz Festival Gospel Concert with Salvation Message this morning. I don't have any pictures for you yet but will get some up in a few days. We have little time right now because Pastor Joy and I will be leaving on Monday for the CWS Pastors Annual Retreat (at the CWS Retreat Facility in the Hills a couple of hours out from Jakarta) which is a welcome spiritual renewal and rest time!

The morning did not go without it's hitches... we started a bit late due to sound system challenges and the clock was ticking as we had to be off of the stage at 12:30pm in order for Kool & The Gang (their most famous song which is still widely played especially around New Years time is "Celebration") to do their sound check for tonight's JakJazz main stage performance. But once we started, the sense of stress was quickly replaced with a strong awareness of the presence of God! "Joy McKinney and Soul 2 Praiz" rocked the house for His glory! I don't know what the attendance was yet, but it was solid with as many numbers of people we didn't recognize as numbers of Church members who we did.

Though the concert was in English, I used an awesome interpreter (Sister Chanda) for the message. I utilised a "layered response approach" when appealing to the people for salvation. The prayer of salvation came first, a showing of hands second and then an invitation to come to the front third. I estimate around 70 hands that were raised for salvation and a couple of dozen who braved coming to the front. Praise the Lord!!! The bottom line is that many people were saved and touched who had not previously even stepped foot in our Church! We truly must use this as our Que to keep on reaching out... out of the facility and normality of what we usually do.

I want to thank the membership of ICCJ for your support of this event! I know that many of you sacrificed to become workers and it wasn't very convenient for us to cancel our Services in the regular venue... but you pulled together and the Kingdom of God has been enlarged! You are awesome!!

From reports I have received this afternoon, many were not able to reach the venue for the Concert due to terrible traffic jam. For those of you who made the effort and were not able to attend, I apologize that you missed the concert and I want to thank you for your support! May the Lord bless you richly! You are awesome too and we love you!

Now to close with a little more about Kool & The Gang... We did end about 15 minutes over time with the permission of Brother Ireng Maulana, the founder and owner of JakJazz who is thrilled with what God did this morning. Because of lateness, members of Kool & The Gang caught the message and the closing songs and they made comments... "Awesome Sermon!" "Incredible Worship!" These are among my High School days music heroes... I never thought I would meet them but they ended up in the service! Pastor Joy and some of our other folks were able to hook up with them some more and had a "Kool" time. God is so good!!