Took me long enough.
Well, here is a quick rundown. I don’t think there will be many of these in the next while. Amy and I will be partnering and building relationships with a new bunch of people (church). A month from now, or so, we will begin to attend Rawdon Street Baptist Church. A much smaller community than where we currently are. Not a hip emerging community or anything like that, but a real place, with people living lives. My friend Shawn is the lead pastor at Rawdon. I really respect the guy and look forward to serving under his pastoring under Christ.
So… here we go.
I lead at our satellite (not really a satellite, much more of a church plant) in Waterford. Small church (50 or so adherants) with a big heart and which could have a massive impact in their neighbourhood with a more committed, full-time leadership team.
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Service Order:
{WORSHIP IN SONG}
Song of the Redeemed Charlie Hall
God Is Great Hillsong
{FELLOWSHIP} (we have a break in our look forward/read your Bible/sing time to get up and talk for 15 minutes or so. INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY>>> nice!)
{WORSHIP IN SONG}
Enough Tomlin?
{OFFERING}
I Stand Amazed (How Marvelous) old hymn
{MESSAGE} (Josh spoke on Jesus’s call to discipleship rather than simply conversion>>> nice!)
{RESPONSE}
Song of the Redeemed (reprise)
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Song of the Redeemed opened up our corporate time together. It was a new song to our community and we played it as a band to sort of introduce the theme of the morning. The theme being… us as Christ followers redeemed not because of our works or a prayer we prayed when we were 9 or whatever, but by the blood of Christ… Really, we aren’t even redeemed by choosing to be Christ followers. That is our response after recognizing the fact, isn’t it… I digress.
We played the song very uptempo and rockin’. I personally really enjoy singing that song. It really allows me to sing LOUD, which I love. And I think we did alright, considering we learned the song as a band just that morning. (Band consisting of, Marco on bass, Kurt on drums, me on guitar and vocals.)
We followed Song of the Redeemed with God Is Great… and we butchered it. I could not sing in key, I could not play the right chords and as a band we just were not together, but the people gathered still sang, because they knew the song. We had repeated it for about 3 weeks at that point. So I am glad it did not all ride on us nailing the song as a band. The song itself is just a straightforward, praise God becuase He is God sort of song. Holy is the Lord, sing it loud, sing it proud.
Next, we had our community time. No one felt like moving for the most part. Everyone just stayed in their seats and chatted quietly. That happens sometimes. On other mornings it is hard to get people back into their orderly rows of chairs and get things rolling again.
When it was time to get moving again with the “show” I just started playing a quiet finger-picked intro to Enough and everyone quickly joined in and sang along. Beautiful song. Classic.
Then Josh came up and prayed with the children and sent them on their way to kids church where they coloured two of every creature, or something.
Then as a church before Josh came to deliver his sermon we sang I Stand Amazed (How Marvelous). I took my time leading this one. We repeated verses and choruses. A wonderful hymn that everyone sings out on. That is one of the many beautiful things about this congregation. THEY SING. When they know a song, they don’t hold back. On most mornings they are way louder than our similar gathering of 250 or so people back in Brantford. I love it. We ended acappella and I prayed and Josh came and PREACHED, HARD!!! It was a convicting sermon for me anyway.
Josh concluded and prayed and left time for people to meet quietly with God and assess whether they were actively walking with their Saviour or were resting on their past decisions and prayers of conversion. During this time I began to quietly play the chords to the chorus of Song of the Redeemed Then I broke into the chorus lyrics and powerfully but slowly and invited the gathered people to join me in the confession. “We sing to You the song of the redeemed. You beautify our hearts and make us clean. You rescue us from death and set us free. We sing to You the song of the redeemed”. Then we repeated for a little while in chant together, “We are Yours, We are Yours” and let that sit and sink in. I don’t remember if I prayed at the end. I think so. I think I prayed a prayer to send us out and See for real what God would have us do as we walk hand in hand with our Saviour. To see who Jesus would like to heal and serve this week. Then we concluded our time together with Josh coming up to deliver some announcements and dismiss the church.
So that is my first Worship Confessional. I my have flew past some stuff that may have been important. I don’t know. Basically, I was trying to keep things concise. Also I was trying to stay balance as far as technical approach, spiritual and worshiping intent, and congregation involvement. So there.
