Journey of Worship

QOTW: Demonstrating the Father’s Love

Chris — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:00:43 +0000

“We are to seek to demonstrate in our lives the perfect love that has existed between the Father and the Son through all eternity. It is the reality of love in our lives which will be one of the most powerful means of people in the world seeing the beauty of the message of Christ. By our love people will know that the Father sent the Son into the world. By our love for one another, people will know that we are loved by God.”

- Jerram Barrs, Learning Evangelism from Jesus (Wheaton, Ill.; Crossway Books, 2009), 12.

Worshiping Together: 8/29/10

Chris — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:41:07 +0000

Sorry that I have not been as consistent in posting lately. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on and some things happening. This will be a quick recap, but I at least wanted to get this up for those of you who look forward to this.

This was the final Sunday of “The Hand-Off”, and the final Sunday of our senior pastor. We’ve spent the last three Sunday preparing for this time of transition. In the midst of all that, we’ve also been getting ready and gearing up for the fall ministry season. It’s been busy.

We began the service with welcome, announcements, and a time of greeting. We then had six children dedicated to the Lord.

One of our team members lead in the call to worship from Psalm 100:4-5, and then we sang O Worship the King (Grant/Gardiner/Tomlin), Be Unto Your Name (DeShazo/Sadler), and Praise the Father, Praise the Son (Cash/Tomlin). Leading into Be Unto Your Name, we had scripture from Psalm 24:1-6 read. Following the third song, we had a time of prayer and confession and scripture from Philippians 3 about not putting confidence in the flesh but our faith in Christ. I didn’t realize until later that all three of these songs were in 3/4 time, but our drummer did a great job giving them depth and body.

We then moved into the offering, and sang How Great Is Our God (Tomlin/Reeves/Cash) during it and invited people to stand toward the end.

We then moved into the message which was based out of Acts 20:17-38 and 1 Peter 5:1-4 and was focused on reminding to be faithful. Part was directed at the congregation and the other part was directed at the elders. Partway through the message, we took a moment to welcome new members into the church.

Following the message, we had a time of prayer for our senior pastor and his family as they transition. We had some folks sing the classic song “Find Us Faithful”, and then the senior pastor closed the service by praying one final time over the congregation.

We had a strong attendance, and I know that many people came to celebrate and connect one final time with a man who has pastored this congregation for over ten years. For many it is a bittersweet time as he leaves, but we also recognize a new season and are faithful to trust in God for what He will do.

To check out what other churches did this past Sunday, be sure to check out the Sunday Setlists posted at The Worship Community. Thanks for stopping by.

QOTW: The Completeness of the Gospel

Chris — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:00:52 +0000

I once assumed the gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, while afterward we advance to deeper theological waters. But I’ve come to realize that the gospel isn’t the first step in a stairway of truths, but more like the hub in a wheel of truth. As Tim Keller explains it, the gospel isn’t simply the ABCs of Christianity, but the A-through-Z. In other words, once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel, but to move them more deeply into it.

- Tullian Tchividjian

QOTW: The Inexhaustibility of Jesus

Chris — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:00:27 +0000

“Brethren, there is an abiding fullness of truth in Christ; after you have heard it for fifty years, you see more of its fullness than you did at first. Other truths weary the ear. I will defy any man to hold together a large congregation, year after year, with any other subject but Christ Jesus. He might do it for a time; he might charm the ear with the discoveries of science, or with the beauties of poetry, and his oratory might be of so high an order that he might attract the multitudes who have itching ears, but they would in time turn away and say, “This is no longer to be endured. We know it all.”

“All music becomes wearisome but that of heaven; but oh! if the minstrel doth but strike this celestial harp, though he keepeth his fingers always among its golden strings, and be but poor and unskilled upon an instrument so divine, yet the melody of Jesus’ name, and the sweet harmony of all his acts and attributes, will hold his listeners by the ears and thrill their hearts as nought beside can do. The theme of Jesus’ love is inexhaustible, though preachers may have dwelt upon it century after century, a freshness and fullness still remain.

Charles Spurgeon via worshipmatters.com

Worshiping Together: 8/15/10

Chris — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:26:52 +0000

The Sunday kicked off the final series of our current senior pastor. As I’ve mentioned before, we are entering into a time of transition in the life of Cody CMA. Over these next few weeks, he’ll be wrapping up ministry here and preparing the church with some biblical counsel for the next season of life.

The metaphor of the hand-off comes from relay races where one runner has to hand a baton off to the next runner to keep the race going. It has to be done correctly so that the team is not disqualified and so they don’t loose precious time in a tight race. When done correctly, it is a thing of beauty that just happens. When done poorly, everyone’s attention is drawn to it and the price can be high.

This past Sunday, we spent time in the book of Philippians talking about gratefulness and thanksgiving. Our service focused on calling people to gratitude and thanksgiving in a number of ways. We began with welcome, announcements, and our greeting time.

Our call to worship was a responsive call to worship using a litany of thanksgiving that I think came from the Book of Common Prayer. It consisted of a number of statements, with the congregation responding “We thank You, Lord.” We then moved into songs that reinforced this themes and also began preparing us for communion that would come later. The songs included Because of Your Love (Baloche/Brown), Your Grace Is Enough (Maher), and Once Again (Redman). We had a time of prayer and confession before Once Again.

We then moved to the offering. During the offering we showed a short video piece that again reinforced the idea of thanksgiving and gratefulness from Igniter Media called “Thank You, God.” You can watch it below.

We then moved to the sermon. This was the first of three that will be given as a ministry wrap up by our senior pastor. He focused on Philippians 1:3-11, Philippians 2:12-18, and Philippians 3:12-16 and the idea that long term teamwork pays off.

Following the message, we had a time for people to say what they were thankful or grateful for our loud.

We then celebrated communion together and closed by singing Great Is Thy Faithfulness (Runyan) and with Psalm 117.

It was a good morning together. It was a busy weekend in the life of our church due to a major wedding event. As a result, our only time of rehearsal was Sunday morning before Sunday School. Our team did a great job this weekend coming prepared and working hard in a limited amount of time. It’s great to be able to serve with capable and reliable people.

Otherwise, there’s not much to report. It was good to be able to again draw people back to the importance of gratitude and thanksgiving at a time other than Thanksgiving.

Thanks for stopping by. To see what other churches did, be sure to check out the Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.

QOTW: The Secret of the Gospel

Chris — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:00:58 +0000

“… the secret of the gospel is that we actually do more when we hear less about all we need to do for God and hear more about all that God has already done for us.”

- Kevin DeYoung, DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed

Worshiping Together: 8/8/10

Chris — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:23:10 +0000

Last week we did our annual Vacation Bible School for kids from Monday through Friday. The theme this year was ‘Released: God has the power to set you free’ and focused on stories from Peter’s life in the book of Acts. For the last few years, our children’s ministry has developed their own programs instead of buying something.

This year, instead of doing a closing program type thing on Friday evening (after everyone was tired and worn out from the week), we decided to focus the theme of our Sunday service on the VBS theme. We invited families to come and planned a picnic and games for afterwards. We hoped this would be a great way to engage parents and also to engage the bigger church family with VBS.

We did a lot of our normal things with some VBS specific elements.

During the pre-service time, we showed a slideshow of pictures from VBS week.

We then began with welcome/announcements/greeting. Following this, we took a moment to specifically welcome people again and explain the special focus on the morning. Additionally, we took an opportunity to let the newer people know about why we do some of the things we do (like singing) and invited them to participate if they felt comfortable or else feel free to observe and that there would be an opportunity to ask questions after the service.

We did a ministry spotlight on a local organization called Granny’s Love. Each year, this organization collects school supplies and packs backpacks for kids that might not otherwise be able to afford stuff for school. Our kids had learned about his during VBS and brought stuff in, and we took the opportunity to challenge the adults to finish filling the big green box.

We then moved to our call to worship from Ephesians 5:19-20, again taking the opportunity to highlight why we sing and inviting people to do so. We sang songs related to God’s power, some of which had been done during VBS. Our songs included Our God Saves (Baloche/Brown), Mighty to Save (Reuben/Fielding), and Your Name (Baloche/Packiam). We followed that with a time of prayer and scripture based off of Ephesians 1:15-23.

During the offering, we showed a highlight reel of a variety of scenes from the dramas that happened each day during VBS. The dramas were the primary group teaching tool. Afterwards, our children’s ministry director got and gave a summary of VBS. She interviewed two people, one volunteer and one student, about their experiences and what VBS meant to them. She then thanked people and led in a prayer of thanksgiving for all that happened during the week.

For the message, our senior pastor focused on some additional stories from the first part of Acts and built off of the VBS theme of God’s power. He did it in character as Luke, the author of the book of Acts, to help connect with the theme of VBS. At the end of the message, we showed a video of a teen who had recently accepted Christ at a youth conference to demonstrate that God is still transforming lives today. You can watch it below.

We did have a small technical glitch with the video in that it would only play the audio, but no video. We ended up restarting our presentation software, and it then ran fine. That happens sometimes, and we are trying to figure out why. Not sure if it is a windows thing, a codec thing, or a network thing.

After the video, we had a moment for a soft invitation, and then did a reprise of Mighty to Save. We also had Song of Hope (Robbie Seay Band) prepared, but did not end up doing it because of time. The senior pastor closed the service with prayer and instructions for the picnic as well as inviting guests to come back and to feel free to ask any questions that they might have.

We had a number of guests this morning, which was a good thing. The energy was a little flat, but it was good to be able to focus on, celebrate, and involve the larger church in the experience of VBS.

Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to leave a comment with any thoughts you might have.

If you would like to know what other churches did as they worshiped together, be sure to check out Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.

QOTW: The Cross & Forgiveness

Chris — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:00:10 +0000

“On the Cross we see God doing at the cosmic level what we all have to do when we forgive. There God absorbed the punishment and debt for sin himself. He paid it so we did not have to.”

Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (New York, NY: Dutton, 2009), 92.

Question…

Chris — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:00:35 +0000

What’s one thing about worship you wish you knew or that someone would help you understand?

Go.

No related posts.

Worshiping Together: 8/1/10

Chris — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:57:45 +0000

This was the final week of our summer series “Blockbuster Messages”. Over the past many weeks, we’ve been looking at the various messages presented in our society primarily through movies and how those messages contrast with the truth of God. We’ve asked the question, “Is Truth impacting culture, or is culture impacting Truth?”

Our final Sunday dealt with the movie “Up” and the ideas of making the most of life while also not being afraid of beginning new adventures. This was a timely message for our church as we are entering into a season of transition with the departure of our senior pastor. It is a new season that God is leading us in, and we don’t want to be afraid or miss out on what He is going to do. Our Bible passages included Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, and Matthew 4:18-20; 14:25-36; 28:16-20.We began with another live prelude with Song of Hope (Robbie Seay Band) as we are working on learning that song.

Welcome and announcements, along with a greeting time were next.

We had our senior pastor recap his resignation announcement again as some people may have missed it. We have a lot of people traveling and camping during the summer months, so sometimes we have to do things more than once. That was followed by one of our elders leading in prayer for them as they begin to transition.

Our call to worship and primary singing time was focused on themes of trust, dependence, and declaration on the Lord in times of uncertainty and sadness. I began by reminding people of the faithfulness of the Lord and that as we come near to Him, He will come near to us (James 4:8a).

Our songs included Holy Is the Lord (Tomlin/Giglio), Unashamed Love (Hiebert), and Jesus, I Am Resting, Resting (Pigott/Hampton). We then had an extended time of prayer and Scripture focused on allowing people to process with the Lord the news that has been shared and encouraging them to express their doubt, uncertainty, sadness or other emotion toward what is coming. I also shared some Scriptures that again drew our attention back to the faithfulness of God and the necessity of our trust in Him. We were trying to capture a little bit of the idea of a lament, but I don’t know if we quite got there. We concluded that time by singing in response to God It Is Well with My Soul (Spafford/Bliss).

Offering was next with the final Blockbuster Messages video piece. Each week had a little piece with our senior pastor talking about the impact and messages of movies we had filmed in a local theater. The ending of each piece had kind of a movie trailer feel to it.

Following the message, we had people form small clusters in the sanctuary to pray together about the transition and what God has next for us as a church.

At first, I wasn’t sure if we would be able to have a drummer this past week because of scheduling, so our ending was a little up in the air. But one of our guys graciously rearranged his schedule so he could be there. As a result we ended with Song of Hope as a declaration and expression of our hope and trust in God in this new adventure. I also had Blessed Be Your Name (Redman) in our pocket, and we ended up doing that as well since the congregation seemed to want to continue singing.

We closed with Scripture from Zeph 3:17: The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.

It was a good day together. It was good to be able to lead the church in processing and remembering (and reaffirming) our trust and dependence on God. It is a new adventure and season in the life of the church, and we are trusting in God to lead in all these days. It was also great ministering with the team today as we worked well together. And, it was the last Sunday for one of our young guitarists who is getting married and moving to California. He will be missed, but it is great seeing what God has next for him.

If you were there, feel free to comment with your thoughts or how God spoke to you.

Thanks for stopping by. To see what other churches did on this day, check out Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.