Worship Confessional – Sunday, September 20, 2009

Last Sunday we began a new series at OBC that is taking us through the life of Elijah. We’re asking the question “How big is our God?” and looking at the life of Elijah to see how God’s big-ness is displayed in different ways. I’ll do another post on this but one of the beautiful things about this series is that LifeChurch has already done an Elijah series and offers all of their graphics, videos and logos for free through their Open site. Ridiculously helpful! This is the second time we’ve used LC graphics and I’m so thankful that God has allowed them to release resources like that.

On Sunday we looked at what is probably the most well-known episode from Elijah’s life – the “high noon” showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel from 1 Kings 18 & 19. Our pastor, Earl Marshall, did a great job of setting the scene for this confrontation and explaining that this is really biblical theatre at its finest. There is the immediate of what is going on – Elijah versus the 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah – as well as the showdown between Yahweh and Baal. Behind these two layers there is also the third level of confrontation where the prophetic “word of the Lord” confronts each one of us as we read the story, hear the words of Elijah and see the display of God’s power.

Here’s what our service looked like -

“How big is our God?” – Sunday, September 20, 2009
1 Kings 18 & 19
God of Wonders – G
Psalm 96 – Responsive Reading
Holy, Holy, Holy – C -> D
Hosanna (United) – E
Communion
Wonderful Cross – D
Offering – E
Message – ‘Big enough to worship?’
You Are God Alone

Three things to hilight from this service -

1. I was off stage this week. I try to do that every 6-8 weeks and turn over rehearsal and leading to other very competent people who serve in our worship ministry. Lots of reasons for doing this but here’s a real easy one – if the only time I was off stage were the weeks that I was on vacation, I’d spend too much vacation time worrying about whether or not Sunday morning went okay. By doing this several times a year I’m able to do consistent development with our leaders, musicians and AV teams. And – believe it or not! – everything went just fine (actually, better than fine) on Sunday without me being on stage leading our people.
2. We did an extended opening on Sunday. Moving right from ‘God of Wonders’ in to the Psalm 96 responsive reading (both of those elements had really nice energy and created some good momentum at the beginning of the service) I came up on stage and spoke very briefly about what it means that God is holy. We sing or say that word and have an understanding of the other-ness or uniqueness of God and how He is set apart but it sometimes can be a word that is too ‘big’ for us to really grasp. I encouraged our congregation to remember that in every attribute, every characteristic, God is holy, set apart, like no other. The love of God is unlike any other love – His love is holy. The grace of God is unlike any other grace – His grace is holy. Mercy, faithfulness, justice, on and on and on – in each of those, God is holy. Going from that into ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ moved things along nicely and helped establish our theme for the morning.
3. We had a great morning even if the services were a little “full” as things tend to be in September in church world. Not sure what we can do to ease the overflow of startup information during the first few weeks of the fall but I’d be interested in hearing how people balance the desire to have information communicated with the reality that we only have 80 or 85 minutes of gathering time when we meet. We are very focused in the kinds of things we hilight from the platform but there’s just lots of things that fall in to that category – mission-critical, church-wide, strategic, etc etc. All good things, just too many of them brought to peoples’ attention all at once.

So while I enjoyed being off stage for the singing part of our service, I’m looking forward to being back on this week and leading our church on Sunday morning. Lots more recaps and confessionals like this over at Fred McKinnon’s site. Check them out.