Journey of Worship

The three week mini-series continued this week. The Bible has much to say about prayer and the God we pray to. Unfortunately, we develop these boxes in life that we put prayer in, and ultimately put God in too. When we put God in a box, we forget how powerful and awesome He is, and how much He desires for us to trust Him with amazing and wonderful things. As a result, we pray these anemic and pitiful prayers and miss out on seeing God do some amazing things.

Beyond the Lord’s Prayer, the New Testament is full of great prayer examples of how we (as Christ-followers) can be praying for God’s will on earth and for our fellow Christ-followers. Join us as we expand our vision and discover what’s outside the box.

This week, we looked at the prayer Paul prayed for the church in Colossians 1:9-14 and were challenged in the all sufficiency of Christ.

Service Flow: (Song links go to AmazonMp3 where the songs are $0.99 and DRM free)

O Worship the King (Grant/Gardiner arr. Tomlin)
Greeting
Welcome/Announcement (via video)
Kidz Kamp Ministry Highlight
Call to Worship (Colossians 1:15-17)
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (Neander arr. Cottrell/Mills)
Prayer (Colossians 1:18b)
Message
In Christ Alone (Getty/Townend)
Prayer (Colossians 1:19-20)
One Pure and Holy Passion
Offering
Lord, Reign in Me (Brown)
Dismiss (Colossians 1:21-23a)

We have been having a great summer together. Again this morning as we gathered, there was just a great expectation and desire on the part of the congregation to worship and hear God’s voice. People were engaged and participative. The message was delivered this week by one of elders, Jeff, as our senior pastor is on vacation and we are making it a priority to develop and utilize many of our leaders. The call to worship was done by a young man that I have the opportunity to work with, Arleigh, who did a great job.

The video announcements were a lot of fun. It was our first time doing something like that with green screen and stuff. There are a few things we need to work at and improve (technical and otherwise), but I think it was good for the first time. It won’t be something we do every week, because we don’t want it to become stale and routine, but I think it will be a good tool in our aresenal of communcation. I’ll post the video later in the week for anyone who wants to see it.

I had a lot of fun serving with the worship team this week. I don’ t know what it was specifically, but we had a great time in practice (which was very refreshing for me as I had had a long week) and our time of leading and ministering on Sunday morning was great. The music and vocals just seemed to click and blend really well. It’s great that each week I get to serve with some very willing and capable people. Thanks!

The arrangement of Praise to the Lord, the Almighty is one of my favorite arrangements of a great hymn. This arrangement as added a chorus/refrain that simple allows the people to declare “Praise the Lord” in response to who He is. Super awesome.

The songs were kind of split up this week, but it just seemed to work. It didn’t have a stand up, sit down, stand up feel to it, and things just seemed to work as we remembered and drew strength from the sufficiency of Christ as we live, pray, and worship.

Thanks for stopping by. If you were there, please leave a comment and let me know how God spoke to you.

For more on what other churches did this past week, check out Fred’s Sunday Setlists blog entry.

Related posts:

1. Sunday Setlist: 4/12/09
2. Sunday Setlist: 7/26/09
3. Sunday Setlist: 7/12/09