Worshiping Together: 5/23/10

This week was another week of the “Improving Our Serve” series. Our focus this week was what it meant to serve like Jesus. That concept is tossed around a lot, but not always fully understand. Our primary focus was Philippians 2:5-11. We also had some other special elements this week.

Our series mascot, Skip, made a live appearance this week. Instead of a video, Skip was interviewed live about what he had learned so far about serving. It was great to have him as part of the service, and to have him help us bring serving around to the spiritual side of things. Don’t worry, there was some characteristic Skip elements, too.

This was also the Sunday where we take some time to focus on graduates and youth. They were involved more in various aspects of the service. Click through to find out more…We started with our time of welcome, announcements, and greeting. After that, Skip made his appearance complete with theme music and all that is Skip. If you’ve missed his videos, be sure to check them out here, here, or here. It’s been great fun working with Skip on these important videos. You never know, Skip may make another appearance soon.

We then moved into our singing time. It was a little challenging following Skip with the call to worship, but we draw our attention back to the fact that as Jesus served, He always drew attention to the Father. The same should be true for us as captured in Psalm 115:1. We sang Not To Us (Tomlin/Reeves), O Worship the King (Tomlin/Haydn/Grant), Your Name (Baloche/Packiam), and Jesus Messiah (Tomlin/Carson/Cash/Reeves). In between Your Name and Jesus Messiah, I invited people to spend that time quietly praying in response to the songs and truth we had just sung. Maybe they needed to continue expressing worship, maybe they needed to confess, or maybe they needed to express dependence on God for something happening in their life.

At the end of Jesus Messiah, we had scripture from 2 Timothy 1:10, John 11:25, Revelation 4:8-9, and 1 Timothy 6:15-17 as a response to what we had just sung, that Jesus is Lord of all. Interesting side note, having the congregation say the word “Amen” after singing, praying, or reading Scripture is a way for everyone to express their agreement with and belief in what has just been done.

We then took time to recognize and pray for the graduates and invited people to be praying for them during this time of transition.

During the offering, we showed a video from the Skit Guys (our church really likes them) about some bad examples of what it means to serve like Jesus. Check it out.

I think we’ve all experienced something like this before.

The message drew attention to what the Bible teaches about serving and the example Jesus set in serving through washing the disciples feet.

As we concluded the message, we took time to do two special things. One was to recognize and thank those who have been faithfully serving as part of the ministries and life of the church. The other was to recognize and thank a young man who has been serving as our youth intern for the last two years. He has demonstrated what it means to serve like Jesus, and that was recognized by the church family.

We had scheduled to sing a closing song, and did so in the first service, but not in the second service. It just didn’t seem to be necessary to do so in the context of where the service was at that point in time.

We closed with again using the prayer from Mother Teresa of Calcutta about serving that we have been saying together throughout the series. I think it’s great when we can say and do things together as a church in worship.

As I mentioned, we involved youth in a more significant way on this Sunday. One of those ways was in our worship team. I typically involve youth on a regular basis, but we ended up putting a bunch of them together at the same time instead of interspersing with more experienced adults. It was a lot of work and a longer practice time, but it was well worth it. I enjoy involving youth in music, they did a great job.

Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to leave a comment.

To find out what other churches did this past week, be sure to check out Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.