Journey of Worship

Posts Tagged ‘Sunday Setlist’

We began a new series this week that will take us through Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter. The series, called “Do You Believe?” is designed to help us again consider the claims Christ made about Himself and the evidence that proves those claims. In hearing the truth about Christ, we have to occasionally stop and ask ourselves, do we believe? Because if we believe, it will affect how we live, what we think, and what we do.

For the people who walked with Jesus during the final weeks of His earthly life, they discovered some amazing things about Him as He spoke and demonstrated God’s glory. Those same things can be as significant for us today. In this first week, we looked at the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John 11 and His declaration that He is the resurrection and the life. Read the rest of this entry »

We concluded our “Be People of the Word” series this Sunday in Deut. 6:1-25. There were a number of threads that weaved through the morning as we focused on taking advantage of teachable moments, especially as parents, to help people see God as the giver of life in all situations. There was also a tie-in with Sanctity of Life.

Because we had some extra elements in the service (focus on Sanctity of Life, interview about the formation of a Crisis Pregnancy Center, special prayer time, and baby dedications), we had a little less singing. Even so, we took the time we had to help people focus on remembering the God who is always worthy of praise because of His faithfulness, power, daily blessing of physical life, and eternal blessing of spiritual life in Jesus. It seemed that people really connected and engaged with the themes and expressions that we did together this Sunday. Click through to watch a video and for more information. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re in the third week of the “Be People of the Word” series as we focused on the value and benefits of the what the Bible offers us as an owner’s manual for life. We tackled Psalm 119 (all of it), and approached it be first focusing on the blessing of obedience that comes from studying the Word and then presenting a number of “tips” based off of the main themes in Psalm 119.

We began with Welcome and Announcements, and then as part of the Call to Worship, I took a teachable moment focused on why we sing when we gather (because we are instructed to and because it helps us to remember and declare the truth of who God is and what He has done). I mentioned that the songs we sing are from Scripture, some of them exactly, and that the reason we often put verses on the screen during musical interludes was to help people connect the songs with their Scriptural basis. I then read a medley of Scriptures (Col 1:19, John 3:35, Phil 2:9-11, Eph 1:21, Col 1:16, Rom 14:9, Col 2:10, John 1:16). Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since I’ve done a post about our Sunday worship services. Not intentionally, it’s just that when things get busy, some things don’t get the attention they did before. Blogging happens to be one of those things. Which is probably why I’ve had a whole bunch of posts over the last few days – getting some stuff out that’s been waiting.

Anyway, with the new year, we started a new series called “Be People of the Word.” Each year, our senior pastor wants to focus people back on the importance of the Word and prayer in our spiritual journey.

This week we focused on what it means to be truly blessed and the role the Word of God plays in that. I tried video-taping the service this week, so click to check out the video and for more info. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re into our Christmas series for 2009 called “Catch the Christmas Spirit.” This year, we are focusing on helping people remember and capture the true meaning and spirit of this time of year. As soon as Halloween is over, we are thrust into the season of red, green, and sales.

The rush to get the right stuff for the right people is all that many people know and experience at this time of year. But, when we settle for that, we settle for a cheap substitute of what this time of the year is really about.

In Isaiah 9:1-7, God promised an amazing gift for the people. If we can catch the true Christmas spirit, our holiday celebration will not be the same, and neither will we. Click for service flow. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re into our Christmas series for 2009 called “Catch the Christmas Spirit.” This year, we are focusing on helping people remember and capture the true meaning and spirit of this time of year. As soon as Halloween is over, we are thrust into the season of red, green, and sales.

The rush to get the right stuff for the right people is all that many people know and experience at this time of year. But, when we settle for that, we settle for a cheap substitute of what this time of the year is really about.

In Isaiah 9:1-7, God promised an amazing gift for the people. If we can catch the true Christmas spirit, our holiday celebration will not be the same, and neither will we.

Click to find out about the first two weeks of the series.

Read the rest of this entry »

We finished up the final week of our three week mini-series on Generous Living this week. The thrust was that generosity inspires more generosity, and we tied that in with a strong thanksgiving theme. A thankful heart is a generous heart. As we are thankful and grateful to the Lord for all He provides and does, we are more likely to want to be generous since we recognize that all we have comes from His graciousness.

It was a great time of being together and giving thanks. May we not only give thanks at this time of the year, but may we always be thankful people. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. (Psalm 100:4) Read the rest of this entry »

We continued our November mini-series “Generous Living” this week as we continue to explore issues of stewardship and generosity as we do each November. These can be difficult topics to handle well and hard topics for people to hear in the church. But they are biblical topics that are very important for people who want to live a Christ-honoring life in every way. Perhaps we’ve made them hard issues because we’ve handled them poorly in the past. Our approach isn’t so much to beat the drum to just give more, but to live a life of generosity toward others in our day.

This week we looked at the topic “How Much Is Enough?” It’s a significant question without a necessarily clear answer. We jumped into 2 Corinthians 8:1-5 and following to take a look at how generosity was displayed among the early church, and what principles might be significant for us today in the United States.   Read the rest of this entry »

We began a new mini-series this week called “Generous Living.” Each November we take some time to focus on stewardship and missions. Our desire is not to “encourage” people to simply give more money to the church or to missions work, but to help them consider and grow in the joy of generosity in how they spend their time, what they invest in, how they respond to people in need, and what they do with financial resources.

It’s not an easy topic always, or one that people want to be reminded of, but it is one that I think is at the core of what it means to be a Christ-follower in any time period. We’ll be spending time in the book of Matthew and 2 Corinthians as we seek to grow and excel in the grace of giving. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few years, our church has typically focused on two things during the month of November: missions and stewardship. To kick off that emphasis this year, we had a dramatic presentation of the life of the founder of our denomination (the Christian and Missionary Alliance).

A.B. Simpson lived a full and passionate life in pursuit of Jesus Christ and the call God placed on him. His learnings, discoveries, and passion formed the basis for what it known today as the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Click the link to read more about the service.

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