The pothole of debt

I'm currently preaching through a sermon series entitled "avoiding the potholes of life" and today's pothole was debt. It was a powerful service. I really got after it in my preaching, trying to challenge people to a counter-cultural way of living.
At the beginning of the service we had everyone in the congregation write down their non-mortgage debt. We had 65 adults in the sanctuary and their total debt was 1.02 million dollars!!!!! Wow, I can't believe it. I'm not sure whether that's normal for our area or not, but I was blown away by the number.

After the message, we sang a couple response songs. But during the singing I was prompted to follow through on an idea I'd been kicking around the last few weeks leading up to today; to challenge people to cut up their credit cards. But the problem was that I didn't have anything to cut with, so I tracked down the custodian and he lent me a pair of scissors.
I went up and interrupted the band, read Hebrews 12:1-2 about cutting away the sin that entangles and challenged people who were struggling with debt to cut up their credit cards while the band played the next song. Well, the band had to wait while Nate cut up all his credit cards. We then had a few more people come up and cut their cards in half. Dave Ramsey calls it a "plasectimony." Whatever you call it, I know that turning from debt honors God!