Preparing For Worship: March 1, 2009

So how's it going? Is this blog helpful? Does it help get us a bigger picture of what the corporate experience of "church" should be? Is it helping us to see that we play an active roll in the worship "service?" (that's why it's called a "service" in the first place...)

If I can be an encouragement to you at all, I notice many of you actively participating in our times of corporate worship. I can see it in your faces, and I can see it when we're studying the Word together, and in the crowded hallway in between services.

For those of you still thinking about breaking out of your shell, hopefully you are encouraged by those you worship with, and will grow into that sort of active edification church-goer we're talking about.

I think it's time to look ahead even further. Time to look outside what happens at 9:00 and 10:30 on Sunday mornings. Time to look at how we can be active participants in the corporate LIVING experience. How we can take the same energy, love, concern, and service into our community. How can we "enjoy the favor of all the people" like the early church did in Acts?

I won't go into specifics right now, as there is nothing official on the calendar as of yet, but just start to think of what God could do through our body of believers if we took church outside of 28042 Ave. Stanford, Unit D, and put it into Valencia, and the Santa Clarita valley at large.

Now on to this Sunday!

We are celebrating the Lord's Supper this Sunday, and continuing on in our study of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. So CLICK HERE to read the passage and prepare to study it together. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your ears to hear the truth and power in this passage that reminds us that we need to store up treasure not here on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves steal; but to store it up in heaven where it will endure forever.

We'll start the service with a few songs that draw us together in unity to praise the Lord: "How Good and Pleasant" and "Come Thou Fount."

Then Pastor Todd will come and lead us in prayer for our morning, that it might be a pleasing offering to the Lord.

We'll sing some more and remember the greatness and majesty of God as we sing "Indescribable" and then remind ourselves of how that same majesty reached down in the form of his son to redeem us as we sing "Majesty."

Pastor Todd will then come and teach us, and we'll have the opportunity to respond with the Lord's Supper, and set this special time aside to remember him, and the work of the cross. While we share communion, we'll sing "The Power of the Cross" and then we'll close our time with "Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross" as a reminder that in our Christian lives we never "move beyond" the cross, that we must always be found at its foot. This is the theme of one of our books of the month: The Cross Centered Life by CJ Mahaney.

Anyway, that's what's going on; happy preparation!