Worship Gathering
The Worship Ministry at First United Methodist Church fuels the mission of the church–to glorify God as we make disciples who are intentional about transformation, personal and global. When we come together in a worship setting, we praise God for what He has done and is doing in our lives, we share our hearts in prayer for one another and listen as He speaks through His Word and Sacraments. In worship God restores to us an eternal perspective that guides our day-to-day decisions and restores to us that joyful union that was ours before the fall.
Corporate worship has both a rhythm of revelation and response and a melody of joy and praise. With other Jesus followers we experience the presence of God through the Word, prayer and music, and then respond with our time, talents, gifts, and service. The Worship Ministry at First Church is dedicated to offering worship opportunities that leads to a life-changing encounter with the Holiness of God.
The Attitude of Authentic Worship
God is the absolute center of our worship. Not music, not style, not even the pastor! It's all about God. Without God life makes no sense. Not only does God desire our worship, He deserves our worship. His love is endless, His generosity limitless, and His grace boundless. In worship God draws us to Himself breaking through our rough exterior to find the frightened child inside. In worship God wraps His arms around the child and says "Welcome Home." It all starts by recognizing our need, His compassion, and .
Humility is the seed of gratitude. Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.
- Honesty
God requires that we worship Him in spirit and in truth. In a culture where appearances are everything, it is easy to approach worship like we approach everything else, by pleasing the crowd. We forget that God is more pleased with our purity than our professionalism.
Jesus defined worship according to the internal attitude of the heart expressed through the reality of His presence and the response of our hearts. In Jesus we see life as it was meant to be, but we also see reflected just how far we have fallen from that kind of life. The first step in recovery is recognizing we need help and the second is accepting it. In His grace, Jesus desires to cover our sin and walk with us toward recovery. In worship we come face to face with the reality that sin is destructive and accept the new Life in Christ.
- Truth
God has given us clear directives in His Word about our relationship with Him and the purpose of our lives. The Word is to be our guide in worship and life. Worship is a rhythm of revelation and response. God reveals Himself through His Word and we respond to that revelation. But when the Word of God is absent our response is empty and the results are self-serving. When the Word is celebrated in worship, then our response is authentic, life-changing and pleasing to God.
- Community
As a Community of Faith, our goal is to know Christ and live together by offering grace, forgiveness and love to one another. Paul reminds us that all of us need grace as much as we give it, so don't hold back! In community we practice living out the ideal of Christ by serving, giving and caring for one another. We are not just individual worshipers; our lives and worship are bound together by our shared commitment and faith in Jesus. As a community we unite to find God through the love, support and encouragement of others.
There is one driving passion behind our worship – Bring Glory to God in Christ (Phil 3:10). We must get over our obsession with finding the perfect style of worship which only serves to divides the body of Christ. Worship reflects both the unity and diversity of heaven. Worship is the song we sing back to God from a full and grateful heart. Yet any style of music, like hymns, gospel, praise, or chant, are all forms of worship when offered to God joyfully, humbly and above all, with love.
You walk in the double doors and down the hallway, headed toward Room 21 in which Chemistry 373 is to be taught during the second semester of your senior year. Your taking this class and earning either a grade of an A or a B will determine your future as a chemist being “set” by your being hired by the most prestigious of global companies or your having to “pound the pavement” searching for employment in a dwindling to almost nonexistent job market.
You have already bought the required textbook which is not only over a thousand pages but also present with you inside your backpack along with the necessary “writing utensils,” notebooks, and even the most updated laptop. As you sit down in the second row rather than the last two where many of your fellow classmates are sitting, you are eager, anticipatory, and prepared to learn. After all, chemistry is your major and learning how to use it in the outside world to benefit mankind is how you have been gifted and the vocation you have choosen for your adult life. You need this class and the training it can and will offer if you are willing to learn the subject matter contained in the massively large textbook; but you can’t learn much of it on your own. You can read much of the contents on your own; but as Casca says in Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar,” it ends up, even with your intelligence and knowledge of chemistry, being “Greek to you.”
You need a teacher.
You need someone whose subject knowledge is steeped in wisdom and the ability to “read between the lines” offering insightful and often-missed perceptions and perspectives that will not only enable usage of chemistry in the real world outside chemistry labs but also encourage growth in the field so that, when you “shuffle off the mortal coil” of chemists, your absence from the labs will be replaced by a secure and guaranteed eternal retirement.
You are ready to go!
You need a teacher.
You look at the clock at the front of the classroom: it reads 9 am…it reads 9:30 am…it reads 10:30 am…it reads 11:15 am….
You need a teachers.
Everything is in place.
…except the teacher….
The teacher never appears.
Everything needed and necessary is in place, except the teacher. The class is cancelled; you graduate with the appropriate degree; but the necessary explanations and insights that could only be offered by that one particular teacher are lost forever and your life as a chemist in labs and during your eternal retirement will be forever diminished.
As weak at this metaphor may be, the same scenario could be played out in a church if, on a Sunday morning, everything was in place except the preacher-teacher.
Consider the preacher-teacher not steeping “the words of his mouth and the meditations of his heart that are pleasing to God” in God’s Holy Word. Consider the absence of Holy Scripture in what, most in a congregation, call a sermon. Consider that “…when the Word of God is absent our response [during worship] is empty, and the results are self-serving.” But consider that “when the Word is celebrated in worship, then our response is authentic, life-changing, and pleasing to God.”
The choir director may choose the most beautiful and inspiring music; the secretary may type and prepare the most informative and scenic of bulletins; the children’s minister may prepare the most engaging and awesome of children’s sermons; and the prayer minister may compose the most comforting and peace-establishing prayer. All integral parts of a meanigful and praise and gratitude-filled worship service that has the potential, if you have “the eyes to see and the ears to hear,” of sending you “no longer thirsty and no longer hungry” into the world for a week until the next Sunday; but…
The sheep need the shepherd for direction; the would-be-servants need the pastor with the servant’s heart for inspiration; and the “students” sitting in the classroom called the sanctuary on a Sunday morning need the preacher-teacher for insight, wisdom, and knowledge in sharing God’s nature and personality so that we not only know Him better but can be encouraged to be His “salt and light” in our world while, according to Christ’s command, “we make disciples who make a difference.”
The music is beautiful, the bulletins informative, the time with the children delightful, and the prayers uplifting, but what would a worship service be without “God’s Word for my life in this place and at this time” being taught by a preacher-teacher who believes and teaches that “God has a purpose for each of our lives” and that “God is good, all the time; all the time, God is good.”
…consider that sometimes, as “life imitates art,” metaphors become reality; and chemists, who initially upon high school graduation wanted to become a teacher, are chosen and called and become preacher-teachers to the blessing of not only God but also their church, their sheep, their would-be-servants, and their “students.”