I had the best church service here in London yesterday!! It was a special combined in one service at 5pm at the O2 Arena to mark the 10th Anniversary of Hillsong London.
Some facts n figures... if you turned The O2 upside down, it would take Niagara Falls 15 minutes to fill it, the volume is equal to thirteen Royal Albert Halls, it would take 18,000 double-decker busses to fit into it AND the Eiffel Tower could fit inside the arena lying on its side!!
That aside, you would surely know it as the place where Michael Jackson was due to perform his concerts here in London.
Everything just fell into place. The Dominion Theatre which we always meet at is having a change of cast and they needed the theatre yesterday for extra rehearsals.. and since it was the church's 10th anniversary, they thought of a combined celebration service together with the one in Surrey (think: one big happy family). And then the availability of O2 came up.
Sarah asked me if I would like to help out since they would definitely need loads of volunteers so I agreed. We reached at 1230pm to help out but it turned out too many volunteers turned up (wow abundance!) and O2 was really strict with giving out the "event staff" wristbands to everyone so we were asked to hang around till the doors opened at 4pm.
When the crowds came, the atmosphere was amazing. Everyone around cheered even while waiting for the doors to open. This has never happened before in the history of Hillsong Ldn. Well it did feel familiar when NCC had our combined service at Indoor Stadium but angmohs here louder lah, so they created a very hyped up atmosphere if you get what I mean. Everyone couldn't wait to go in and fill the auditorium.
We went up to the fourth level and when we turned around from the steps, we were shocked at the number of people below us.
... and then it was filled. With 12,000 people (altho I think it looked much more). Very, very cool.
And then everyone did the Mexican wave spontaneously a few rounds.
excited!
Brian Houston flew in from Sydney as he's the founder of the church and everyone just applauded for Gary and Cathy Clarke who gave up whatever they were doing in Australia and came over to London to build this church 10 years ago. I can't imagine how they must have felt looking around the auditorium at how much the church has grown from the humble beginnings. (It looks like it has exploded or something?!) Must be so touching. *sniff* Even me, a newbie who's been here for only 1.5 years, was so touched at what I saw. And the team put up a performance of the story of Hillsong London incorporating lots of technology which I find it ever so amazing.. the talent these guys have here.
Some facts n figures... if you turned The O2 upside down, it would take Niagara Falls 15 minutes to fill it, the volume is equal to thirteen Royal Albert Halls, it would take 18,000 double-decker busses to fit into it AND the Eiffel Tower could fit inside the arena lying on its side!!
That aside, you would surely know it as the place where Michael Jackson was due to perform his concerts here in London.
Everything just fell into place. The Dominion Theatre which we always meet at is having a change of cast and they needed the theatre yesterday for extra rehearsals.. and since it was the church's 10th anniversary, they thought of a combined celebration service together with the one in Surrey (think: one big happy family). And then the availability of O2 came up.
Sarah asked me if I would like to help out since they would definitely need loads of volunteers so I agreed. We reached at 1230pm to help out but it turned out too many volunteers turned up (wow abundance!) and O2 was really strict with giving out the "event staff" wristbands to everyone so we were asked to hang around till the doors opened at 4pm.
When the crowds came, the atmosphere was amazing. Everyone around cheered even while waiting for the doors to open. This has never happened before in the history of Hillsong Ldn. Well it did feel familiar when NCC had our combined service at Indoor Stadium but angmohs here louder lah, so they created a very hyped up atmosphere if you get what I mean. Everyone couldn't wait to go in and fill the auditorium.
We went up to the fourth level and when we turned around from the steps, we were shocked at the number of people below us.
... and then it was filled. With 12,000 people (altho I think it looked much more). Very, very cool.
And then everyone did the Mexican wave spontaneously a few rounds.
excited!
Brian Houston flew in from Sydney as he's the founder of the church and everyone just applauded for Gary and Cathy Clarke who gave up whatever they were doing in Australia and came over to London to build this church 10 years ago. I can't imagine how they must have felt looking around the auditorium at how much the church has grown from the humble beginnings. (It looks like it has exploded or something?!) Must be so touching. *sniff* Even me, a newbie who's been here for only 1.5 years, was so touched at what I saw. And the team put up a performance of the story of Hillsong London incorporating lots of technology which I find it ever so amazing.. the talent these guys have here.
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