Good Church Service

September 20, 2004

Category: Church

Yesterday when I went to church, I came away feeling the best I had felt in a while. The service was just so nice. We did things in the service that I’m not sure I’ve ever done.

For instance, we had a “commissioning” service for all the teachers and leaders for the coming school year. It was a simple responsive reading which led the leaders (standing up) through a commitment of integrity, study, and example. It also integrated the congregation through a commitment of support for the leaders.

The other thing we did was a simple prayer technique taught to us by our new pastor. During the congregational prayer, he requested that every time he said (approximately), “Lord Jesus, lover of all,” and we said, “Bring healing and bring peace.” So during his prayer, he proceeded to pray for the people in our church that were hurting. He would follow his short prayer for each person with his phrase and we would repeat with ours. What an awesome experience!

In general, I just had the feeling that things were in control and there was purpose to our worship service. It wasn’t that everything was different, in fact most of it was the same, but there was a thread that tied everything together so strongly.

I look forward to learning more and becoming closer to the community at church through the leadership of our new pastor.

Posted by pablohart on September 20, 2004 10:57 PM

Comments

I agree, Paul. It was a great service. We talked about that in our worship planning meeting this morning. It feels good to get it "right." It does seem that people are wanting to get back to their faith roots - even back to our Jewish faith heritage. People in our age bracket (20s-30s) also like the feeling that the components of the service work well together, that they all mean something, that we're not just doing church.

Posted by manda at September 21, 2004 3:36 PM

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