Worshiping Together: 7/11/10

We’re continuing in our “Blockbuster Messages” series. After the craziness of the previous weekend (July 3/4 – July 4th is a BIG deal in our community and everything going on presented some challenges), it was good to be back to a more relatively normal Sunday schedule.

This past week, our senior pastor began his annual vacation/study leave weeks that he takes each July. That means that I got to speak this past week, and our youth pastor will do so next week.

We didn’t focus on the message from a particular movie this week, but instead took some time to teach about how we live as Christ-followers without being impacted by the messages of the world. We wanted to help people understand how to process and filter the messages on their own since there won’t always be someone standing up to explain how the message of a movie/show either conflicts or lines up with Scripture. It was a good midpoint to take in the series.We began with welcome and announcements and our greeting time. We then moved into a missions spotlight. We had a team recently spend some time with some ministry partners in Mexico, and wanted to hear about their trip.

We then moved to the call to worship and first set off songs. We did three songs to start with, including Hosanna (Baloche/Brown), Jesus Messiah (Tomlin/Carson/Cash/Reeves) and Show Us Who You Are (Proctor). We wanted to focus on declaring who Christ was and express our desire to see and hear Him. This morning, I shared leadership with one of our team members. He did the call to worship and lead through most of the songs.

We did hit one speed bump with the last song in that we had a hard time getting into it. Lots of times when we hit a hiccup, we’ve been able to recover. But we did something for the first time since I’ve been serving as worship pastor here. We actually started the song over. It was the right call, and well received by the people. It didn’t put a huge damper on things. In fact, I had a couple of people comment that they appreciated that. Once I realized we weren’t going to be able to pull it back in, I just simply stopped the song, and as I started the intro again, simply said that the message of the song was important enough that we were going to start over so we wouldn’t miss what we were singing.

Following that we took a few moment for scripture (Titus 2:11-14) and reflection.

We then moved to the offering and during the offering showed another video piece related to the series.

We then moved into the message. It was kind of a bible marathon. The topic was such that I didn’t feel lead to one particular passage, but more themes that play out in Scripture again and again. The main thrust was that to live in this world as a Christ-follower without being impact by the world’s message that we needed to be hearing God’s voice over the world’s voice, to remember our identity and freedom in Christ, and to live in the power of Christ at work in us.

We then showed an older video piece from the folks at Igniter Media called “The Crowd or the Cross.”

We then gave time for confession (Eph. 1:7-8) before moving into communion.

We were going to close the service with I Will Rise (Tomlin/Giglio/Reeves/Maher), but we were so far behind at that point in time (a number of factors contribute), that I chose to move right to the closing at the end of the communion. I don’t know if that was the absolute best choice, but it seemed that people were beginning to disengage and I was conscious of our children’s workers who were already having to fill extra time. Those choices are always hard, but it seemed the right call at the time.

As we closed, our youth pastor lead the congregation in prayer for a group of teens and leaders who were returning for a major youth conference (he had to come back early), and then gave a benediction from Philippians 1:9-11.

Despite some of the “challenges”, it was a good morning. It seemed that God was speaking to our church, and I was glad to be able to be a part of that.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope that you have a great week.

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