Grace Bible Church is a large evangelical church in Gorham, Maine. In my LOL juggling troupe of seventh and eighth graders, I have a student whose family attends this church, and her pastor invited us to be part of a Sunday morning service recently. It's not easy getting the students together outside of a regular school day, but we were able to get 14 of the 15 members for this show.
After the church's normal time of worship music and announcements, they have a time for special music; someone in the congregation sings a song. This particular Sunday, two of the LOL members sang: Grace (whose church it is) and Jaclyn. I do not know the name of the song, and I wasn't familiar with it, but it was beautiful. Then the pastor introduced LOL.
The show was a little rough in places, probably due to the lack of warm up time prior to going on, but it got better as we moved along. The audience loved the humor of the Wise and Foolish Builder and Prodigal Juggler. By the time we got to the Machete Medley, the kids were warmed up ,and they were spot on. It ended with Jaclyn and Rose stealing three machetes from each other, then Rose going into a full split while still juggling them. Then she stood back up without ever stopping the pattern.
Our closing routine involves students bring banners with words like "fear", "shame", "sin", etc. printed on them to a large wooden cross. They hang the bandanas on the cross, kneel to pray, then stand back up and celebrate by juggling together (all done to the song "Beautiful, Scandalous Night") After this routine I spoke to the congregation about the bandanas we all carry: worry, self doubt, etc. I reminded them that Jesus would have us bring these things to him and leave them with him. After the show a lady who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer told me how much this touched her.
The church took up a congregation for LOL's upcoming trip to Vermont and they were very generous: over $400. We now have met budget for the trip. All in all I'd have to say it was a very good morning for everyone!