Journey of Worship

For 125 years, the denomination Genesis is a part of has been proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ by being light all around the world. We’re taking time last week, this past weekend, and next week to remember, celebrate, and be challenged in this.

This week, we took some time to tell stories and to celebrate what God is doing through different people connected with Genesis as they seek to be light. The stories each have God in the middle of them, and are only the tip of the iceberg of ways people can and are being light.

And it is all because of who Jesus Christ is. Without the truth and foundation of Jesus, there would be no reason to be light. But because of who He is, we have every reason to proclaim His great name. How cool is that?

So, here’s what we did together to celebrate being light… Continue Reading…

This weekend we concluded the Is It In You? series by focusing on everyone’s favorite church topic – the stewardship of our treasures. Over the past few weeks we’ve been reviewing the basic elements that must be present in a healthy disciple. Part of that is what we call DNA, and part of that is how time, talents, and treasures play into being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

As much as we may like to “ignore” that our spiritual life has a financial aspect to it, it does. God provides a whole lot of instruction on the role the treasures of our life are to play and why it matters in being a healthy disciple. While, yes, teaching in this area has often been abused and poorly handled, it can’t be ignored, either. The role our treasures play, our attitude toward them, and what we do with them is very indicative of where we are as a disciple and in our view of the sufficiency of God.

This morning, we tackled this topic in a balanced and biblical way. One of the themes we drew out during the worship aspect was a reminder of who God is and His supremacy over all things (even our finances) because often fear of the future and the unknown drives us to take control of our finances instead of surrendering fully to God.

Here’s what we did together… Continue Reading…

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Worshiping Together recap. It’s not because I haven’t been involved with our corporate worship gatherings, because I have. I’ve had a lot of things on my plate, and just haven’t taken the time, or had the motivation, to sit down and write the posts. But I realize the value of doing this, so am going to try and be more intentional moving forward.

This past weekend, we continued with our new year series Is It In YOU? where we’ve been reviewing our three essentials of being a healthy disciple in the start of a new year. This is pretty core to our approach to ministry. These next three weeks are the second part where we are looking at how the essential elements of stewardship play into that – time, talents, and treasures. With the realization that it’s not the best 2 out of 3, but the essential of all of them.

Time was our focus. Part of being a disciple is having a clear understanding of time and what it means to prioritize availability for mission. The question isn’t so much about if we have time, but what we do with the time we have.

Here’s what we did together… Continue Reading…

As we get underway into 2013, our series for the new year is called Is It In You? The focus is to again visit the core elements of what it means to be a disciple. Without these basic elements, we are not fully who God intends us to be. These elements are the ones we are building our strategy and disciplemaking around, and so we wanted to revisit them as the new year begins to make sure we are all on the same page.

Last week we looked at the aspect of Divine Truth, that Christ is the Word and is the foundation of everything we do. The second element that we looked at this week is that of Nurturing Relationships. Based out of Hebrews 10, these are the essential relationships in our spiritual life where we are encouraged and built up by others. Without these relationships, we flounder and, quite frankly, suffer.

We concluded the service by inviting people to take intentional steps forward in developing and maintaining nurturing relationships in 2013.

Here’s what we did together… Continue Reading…

First off, sorry for not posting more over these last few weeks. It has been a busy season, seemingly more so this year than before due to transitions, trips, and receiving the news that my wife’s mother has cancer. In the midst of all that’s been going, we are aware of God’s presence and leading, but there hasn’t been as much time for other “stuff,” if you know what I mean.

For our last service of 2012 at Genesis Church, we decided to do something a bit different. Recognizing how people are often worn out at the end of a year or still wondering what all the hoop-la of celebrating is about, we wanted to lead our people in pausing. To take a moment to Selah.

Not pausing to simply rest and recreate, but pausing to consider, or reconsider, who God is. Do we believe He is who He says He is? Does that matter to us? Are we able to hear God speaking? God has much to say to us – both in encouragement and in challenge – and sometimes we just need to stop, listen, and meditate on what He is saying.

So, that’s what we did. We built intentional times of quiet (real quite, not “quiet” with musical underscore) at strategic points to allow people to listen. We invited people to turn their eyes and hearts again toward God, whether these past weeks and months have been a joyous time, or a time of wondering, sadness, and uncertainty.

Here’s what we did together… Continue Reading…

It was upon a midnight clear 2000 years ago that God became man born in the flesh. It was on that night that a group of shepherds encountered the glory of God and the good news of the Messiah’s birth. They discovered something significant and proclaimed what they had seen. Because of the good news, they were changed.

The shepherds were our focus this week as we move through the Christmas story, taking at look at some of the characters and how they were changed because of what happened. The shepherds, in many ways, reflect what should happen to each of us when we encounter the good news and receive the joy of the truth of God. A life forever changed.

Here’s what we did together… Continue Reading…