This week we continued in the “Improving Our Serve” series as we focused on what it means to serve even when people don’t accept or receive the service well. The title was “Serving Buzzards and Crows”, and it raised some eyebrows since it was Mother’s Day. We spent time in 1 Peter 2:11-12 and 1 Peter 3:15-16.
The challenge with May in our church is that during this month there are so many different elements to coordinate. It can create some challenges in creating a smooth flow of worship that allows people to hear from God and respond to Him. Honestly, I felt that this week’s service was a bit “bumpy,” but others have said that it all seemed to work. I’ve learned that when I think it’s not so great, God still uses our faithful offerings to draw people to His presence.
We began with our normal blend of welcome and announcements and a greeting time. We asked people to share the nicest thing about their mother with one another while greeting. We also used a video during the pre-service time (something we don’t normally do) with a bunch of funny quotes and sayings about things mother’s have done and taught us.
We then moved to our primary Mother’s Day element of the service. Our senior pastor said some things about the value and importance of moms, and then we had our kids do a special song for moms about moms. They did a good job, and it was definitely something that people appreciated. Afterwards, we had a time of special prayer focused on moms.
We kicked off the musical portion of our worship time with a call to worship from Phil. 4:4 where Paul calls us to rejoice no matter what circumstance we find ourselves in. This was written while he was in jail and is a reflection of his life. As we serve and take the name of Jesus to others, there will be times when the circumstances aren’t so great, but we are still to rejoice in who God is.
Our singing consisted of Hear Our Praises (Morgan), Blessed Be Your Name (Redman), and Unashamed Love (Heibert). It has been a while since we had done Hear Our Praises, but it seemed to go well. We included a time of prayer and personal worship between Blessed Be Your Name and Unashamed Love. In one of those “what happened?” moments, in the second service we somehow got all messed up with Unashamed Love and were creating new ways to put the song parts together. Fortunately, we know the song well and were able to roll with the “new” arrangement.
We then moved to our offering and a ministry spotlight. A group is working to start a Crisis Pregnancy Center, and Mother’s Day seemed like a good day to get an update on how that was going and how people could be involved.
Our series character, Skip, made another video appearance as he tried to serve people who didn’t want to be served. That video will be posted later in the week. It was a lot of fun to shoot and edit.
After the message, we moved to communion. During communion, we had a young teen girl sing a song while the bread and juice were being passed out. It’s good to provide opportunities for young people to experience using musical gifts in the context of a service.
Following communion, we sang Nothing But the Blood (Redman) as a response and ended with the corporate prayer by Mother Teresa we are using during the series. It’s great to hear people respond together in song and spoken word as we seek to honor and worship the Lord together.
As I mentioned, we have so many things that come to the plate in the month of May in our church, that we tend to do a little less music in many of these services due to time constraints. It can be challenging to get all the elements to work together. I personally found this Sunday a little challenging, too, as we were battling unknown gremlins with our sound system and I discovered that there were some basic detail oriented things that I had not adequately cared for or communicated. It had been a rough week for me, too, so I didn’t feel as prepared as I like to be. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, it worked and people heard the truth of God and were able to worship together.
Thanks for stopping by. To find out what other churches did on Mother’s Day, be sure to check out Sunday Setlists on The Worship Community.
See you next week.
