Preparing For Worship: May 31, 2009

This Sunday is going to be a very exciting morning as we have got a TON of stuff going on that you're going to really enjoy.

First, DON'T eat breakfast before you come to church this Sunday, unless you don't like PANCAKES!  We're going to be cooking up the best flapjacks this side of the I-5 freeway, and we need you to help us eat 'em!  The hotcakes will be frying all morning so if you're a 1st service kinda person, enjoy some after you're dismissed, and you 2nd service people might wanna come a little early!

Second, we are commissioning and praying for nine of our people that are going out on short-term mission trips this Summer.  I don't have all the details on me at the moment, but come and see who's going where, and find out how you can support them as they go and serve.

Third (phew!), we will be celebrating some baptisms together!  This is a great time for our church family to rejoice with those who are taking this important step of obedience and publicly declaring their faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, and committing to follow him and serve him.

As usual, we'll be singing together and lifting our voices as an offering to our God.  We're gonna start with "How Good and Pleasant" and go right into "Indescribable" at the beginning.  These two songs help get our brains on the right track for the morning, first by acknowledging that we are gathered in love and unity to praise the Lord, and then by proclaiming his greatness as we see it all around us in his creation.

Pastor Todd will come and pray for the morning, and direct all the cool happenings that I mentioned above.  After we finish baptisms, we'll come back and respond together in song by shouting out "How Great Thou Art!" and "I Stand in Awe."

As we wrapped up the last text in the Sermon on the Mount last week, Pastor Todd will help us figure out what to DO with all of that teaching and wisdom that Jesus has outlined to us in the past number of months.  A proverbial "So WHAT??" message.  Maybe take some time to revisit the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety and try to let it soak in so you'll be ready to apply what you've learned in your everyday life.

We'll sing one more song after the sermon: "Mighty To Save" which reminds us of our call to be Christ's compassion and love to the world, that they might see we're singing for the glory of our risen King!

That's what's going on; see you then!

Preparing For Worship: May 17, 2009 "Hymn Sunday"

This Sunday I have something very special planned for our worship singing time together:  We are going to have a mini "Church History Experience."  Let me explain. My generation has been the one to solidify the contemporary "worship team" environment in many churches across the world, and for many who have come to church for the first time in the last ten years, wouldn't know anything different.  

The fact is, the church worship team is still a very recent development in church history.  From the 1800s up until the late 1980s and early 1990s, most churches sang their hymns not with a band made up of drums, bass, guitars, and keyboards, but with an organ or piano, and a choir.  The congregation used to read and sing along with lyrics that weren't projected onto a big screen, but that were printed in their hymnals! 

The choir was really the driving force behind this style of congregational worship, and they really were the worship team of their time.  The choir would often perform special anthems on particular Sundays in the liturgical calendar, or as a call to worship. 

The shift from the choir to worship team setting took most of the 1990s to occur, and the debate has raged since the beginning of whether one style was better or more "right" than the other, but the worship team has proven that it is here to stay, and much of the 2000s has experienced this as the norm.

Wherever you may fall on the scale of preference or conviction in this area, I believe that it's important to know and appreciate where the church as we know it has come from.  The church is a living and changing organism, and no point in history exists in a vacuum, but is a result of ebb and flow, and action and reaction.

More importantly, God doesn't have a favorite musical style. He created music as a beautiful and many faceted gift that we are to offer back up to him in all its forms and styles.  It's like any external act or offering; God looks at the heart behind it, not necessarily at the thing itself.  So whether we're singing with an organ, a 60-piece orchestra, or drums and electric guitars; if the desire of our heart is to lift up and honor the name of the Lord, he will be pleased

So, this Sunday we are going to travel back to the time of hymnals and organs for our worship singing!  We don't have a choir (yet!), but maybe after this Sunday there will be enough interest...(hint hint).

We're going to sing hymns that we already sing here at Crossroads so you won't have to learn all new songs, but we're just going to sing them in a new (or old, depending on how you look at it!) way.

We'll start with "All Creatures of Our God and King" and "The Solid Rock" as our call to worship.  Pastor Todd will come and lead in prayer and have us greet each other and visitors.  I'll come and explain a little bit about the hymnals and how the printed music works, and I'm going to do a little experiement with what we in the music biz call "sight reading." :)

We'll sing "Immortal, Invisible God, Only Wise," and then Pastor Todd will come and preach to us from Matthew 7 about The Truth of Falsehood.

After the sermon, we'll sing one NEW hymn (meaning it's been written in the last decade or so), "In Christ Alone" reminding ourselves that our hope isn't in something as silly as mysic style, but it's in Christ who took the wrath of God for us that we might have eternal life!

Preparing For Worship: May 10, 2009

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers!  This is the time we get to publicly acknowledge and thank you for assuming the high call of motherhood.  

My brother will be here to play drums this Sunday, so my mom will get to come and have a Hoover-boys-Mother's-day-worship-service.  Happy Mother's day mom!

It'll be a morning of celebration and joy, as we remember the story of the Caananite woman in Matthew 15:21-28.  This is where Pastor Todd will be preaching from, so read through the passage so you're ready to dive in on Sunday!

Songs we'll song Sunday include:

Come Thou Fount as our call to worship, asking the Spirit to teach us and bless us as we worship together. Open The Eyes of My Heart Lord, which continues that same thought.  Then we get to sing some tunes about the great love of God as we think on the love that our mothers show to their children and families: Hallelujah(Your Love Makes Me Sing), and Your Love Oh Lord. After Pastor Todd preaches, we'll respond with Draw Me Close to close out the service.  

That's what's going on; happy prepping!

P.S. Just wanted to make sure you all know that any text in the blog that is blue and underlined is a link that you can click on to open a new page that I've linked to that text.  I recently had an experience with someone who was unfamiliar with links and was missing out on a lot of helpful content.

Preparing For Worship: May 3rd, 2009

At Crossroads we like to celebrate the Lord's Supper together on the first Sunday of each month, and it's always a wonderful time of reflection, thanksgiving, and hope. When Jesus gave his disciples the bread and the wine, he told them he wouldn't drink of the fruit of the vine again until we all drink it together in the new kingdom! What hope of celebration we have, that one day God will dwell in our midst, and we will celebrate in his presence forever! That's what I think about when we remember the cross; that on that horrific tree, our future was secured, and our hope anchored.

Pastor Todd will teach through Jesus' words in Matthew 7 which you can find HERE as you prepare your heart and mind to come to worship on Sunday.

As we begin our service this week, we'll start with a song that longs for that very presence of God I was describing earlier. This longing came from the mouth of David thousands of years ago, and we sing it as the desire of our hearts in line with his: "Better is One Day" in Your courts than thousands elsewhere!

Pastor Todd will come and welcome everyone, lead in prayer for the morning, and give us a moment to greet visitors and each other. Use this time to find a visitor (they're usually easy to spot) and make them feel welcome; a friendly handshake, invite them to sit by you, hand them a $20 (cash always makes me feel welcome), etc.

We'll continue singing then as we recall the work accomplished for us through "Nothing But The Blood of Jesus." It may be appropriate to mention here that we (as Christians) don't believe that there is some magical property found in the literal blood-fluids that ran through Jesus' veins. The Bible always uses the idea of Jesus' blood as the picture and symbol of his death, which is what the Father required for the payment of our sin. We often think and sing of the "blood" of Jesus and attribute different things and ideas to it, but we sing it as a symbol of his death.

We'll go right into "For You Are The Lord" which reminds us of Jesus' full deity, and that his death was so much more than a "selfless act" or an "inspirational event" in history, but that this man that hung on the tree is our Creator, our Redeemer, and our everlasting Lord, and that one day every tongue will confess that!

Pastor Todd will come and preach, and guide us to a time of communion. We'll pass the trays, and sing "The Power of the Cross" which is one of my favorite "cross songs" because it's so victorious. It doesn't languish in the physical agony Christ experienced (although it does validly recount it), but rather it looks to the ultimate work that was accomplished THROUGH the cross: Christ became sin FOR us, and took the Father's wrath on himself so we could stand FORGIVEN at the cross!

We'll finish with the song "Perfect Savior" with the chorus of that song being our benediction and motto as we go out into the world: until You come back again, may I forever proclaim redemption poured out for men through You, the pure, spotless Lamb! Yes, You are the Perfect Savior!

That's what's going on, happy preparation!