I’ve been kind of lax in creating worship re-cap posts lately. Things have been very busy, and sometimes some stuff has to be set aside for a while. For those who have missed, I’m sorry. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into rhythm in the next few weeks.
This week we started a new series called “Improving Our Serve.” 2 Corinthians 4:5 says, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” The theme of serving others is something that has been growing in the heart of our congregation for some time now. Each year we take time to look at this important topic.
The choosing of this title was very intentional. The clear teaching of Scripture is that the world will know the glory of God and that Christians are, well, Christians is by how we love one another, and then others. The thing is this: it needs to happen in community, not a bunch of individuals doing spiritual things. So this year, we want to not just help people grow in serving others individually, but to do so together.
The theme this week was the overview of what serving is, why it is important, and the example of Christ. In Matthew 20:20-28 is the story of James’ and John’s mom coming to ask Jesus to give them a couple of high ranking thrones in the kingdom. Philippians 2:1-4 speaks of the example of service found in Christ and that we should emulate that.
We began the service with welcome and announcements and then moved to a missions spotlight moment. We had a couple with us this weekend that is going to be going somewhere difficult to serve and tell people who haven’t yet heard about Jesus.
We began our time of singing with a call of worship from Psalm 150 and the songs As It Is in Heaven (Maher/Cash) and Because of Your Love (Baloche/Brown). We wanted to focus on that our service for others flows out of what God has done for us in Christ and that it is for His glory. Our people responded with energy, vigor, and excitement right from the beginning as worshiped together.
We took time for prayer and confession based on 1 John 4:19-21, and then responded to God’s forgiveness and worth with O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing (Wesley/Glazer arr. Chapman).
During the offering, we introduced the song that will be a theme for this series, God of This City (McCann/ Aaron/ Jordan/ Comfort/ Kernaghan/ Bleakley). We’ve already received some very positive feedback to the message of this song, and will be signing it together during the series.
We then introduced the concept of having a great serve in tennis through a humorous video before the message. It will be posted in a separate post. In the first service, we went right from the song to the video, and it was a slightly awkward transition, so we took a moment to pray together after God of This City and before the video. It worked much better.
As we concluded the message, we took time to talk about some serving opportunities coming up. One was a spring Time to Serve event. Each year we create opportunities for people to serve together as a church in our community for the benefit of others. In the fall, we do it on a Sunday as part of our corporate worship service. In the spring, we do it on a Saturday to allow for some bigger projects. The other opportunity is a multi-week thing we are going to do called “Got It Covered.” We handed our business size cards, and encouraged people to pay for the people in line behind them in the drive-thru or coffee line. This isn’t an original idea, but one I got from Rich Kirkpatrick’s blog. I met Rich at the National Worship Leader Conference in 2009, and this is something they’ve done at their church with great impact.
We ended the service by singing a song sung by the early church that’s been released as part of the Odes Project called “I’m Putting on the Love of the Lord.” These are songs found and attributed to the early church that have been adapted and set to music for today’s congregation. We then ended up by saying a prayer attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta together about serving.
It was a good morning. If you were there, I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.
Thanks for stopping by. To find out what other church’s did this past Sunday, check out Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.
