This week we continued with our summer series of Blockbuster Message. We are nearing the end of this series, and it has been a great series with many positive benefits.
Our senior pastor was back after a time of being away, and we focused on the reality of evil in the world today. Our movie example was the recent Sherlock Holmes moves as we tackled the message that evil is just an illusion. The Bible paints a very different picture – that evil is very much real and something to be aware of. But we also took time to remember that our victory as Christians is found fully in Christ who has already won the victory.
Click through to find out how we celebrated and remembered together.We began with welcome, announcements, and a time of greeting. As usual, we asked people to share something they were thankful for from the past week as the Bible teaches that worship begins and flows out of a thankful and grateful heart.
We moved to a ministry spotlight moment about a local free medical clinic that is about to open. A number of people in our church have been very much involved with this, and they are moving toward their opening date.
Our call to worship focused on whether or not we expect God to speak to us and reveal Himself to us when we gather or Sunday, or do we just do it because it’s what we do. Do we come expecting to encounter our amazing God or not? Our Scripture focus was Psalm 95:1-3.
We then sang a combo of As It Is in Heaven (Maher) and then part of Everlasting God (Brown/Riley). During an instrumental part of Everlasting God, we read from Isaiah 40. We then went into a time of confession prayer and Scripture from Colossians 1:13-14. We followed that up with another song combo of How Great Is Our God (Tomlin/Reeves/Cash) and How Great Thou Art (Wesley/Hine). After that the congregation read together a portion of David’s prayer found in 1 Chronicles 29:10-13.
We then moved into the offering and showed another video intro piece related to the series during the offering.
We then moved to the message time with our senior pastor speaking from Matthew 24:1-14,24; John 8:42-47; and Hebrews 2:14-16. We included a time of discussion as well which has been very popular during this series.
We then showed the original “That’s My King” video from Igniter Media before moving into another song combo.
It was a morning of song combos that seemed to work out well. Our final combo was I Will Rise (Giglio/Tomlin/Reeves/Maher) and Sing to the King (Foote). The transition between these two was a little more difficult since they are not in the same key, but we modified the end a little bit so we could go right into Sing to the King. I really wanted to avoid having to do an extended intro and instead just build on the energy present by moving right to singing. The team was a little skeptical, but we worked hard at it, and it worked out well. Way to go, team!
Originally, we would have ended the service at this point with verses from Psalm 97:9,10,12. We did read the verses, but then had the people sit down for a special announcement. Our senior pastor has accepted a call for a new season of ministry in Minnesota, and we wanted to let people know about that.
It was a good morning together. It was great to be able to declare and celebrate Christ as the victor and the power of God over all things. We also began the service with a live prelude of Song of Hope (Robbie Seay Band). This is a song our teens learned at the recent conference they attended, and we are going to teach it to the broader congregation. It has actually been one I’ve thought about before, but haven’t had the time or opportunity to teach it.
Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to leave a comment about the morning.
To find out what other churches did this morning, be sure to check out Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.
