Yesterday was another great day at Living Word. As I mentioned before, Pastor Wade and I have had a heart to get people to have more of a heart and attitude of worship during worship services, so we’ve started meeting weekly to plan and evaluate services and to change the format of the service slightly. Yesterday was the first major change. I thought it was very, very good. Wade took us through Psalm 2 as a call to worship and boy, that really focused my heart. My hope and prayer was that others’ hearts were focused as well. After the call to worship we then worshiped through song, Scripture reading, offerings and hearing the teaching of God’s Word. It was a good morning.
Songs:
- Everlasting God (Brown - used as a “gathering” type song)
- All Hail the Pow’r of Jesus Name (from hymncharts.com - great resource if you’ve never used it before)
- Your Name (Baloche/Brown)
- Enough (Tomlin/Giglio)
- Speak, O Lord (Getty/Townend - used to prepare our hearts to hear the teaching from God’s Word)
A personal sidenote - does anyone else’s kids have a really hard time on Sundays? :-) Our daughter made it through church really well, but without her usual nap she was not a happy camper after church! We had to leave lunch early to get her home! She’s worth rushing out the door, though! 
Two thoughts from today have been going through my mind over and over. The first is from a meeting I had with our Pastor. He said:
Life’s too short for mediocrity.
Good to remember and very challenging, isn’t it? Is God satisfied with mediocrity in our lives? Read Revelation 3:15-17 (and the rest of the Bible for that matter) to find out the answer to that question.
As I was editing an article on finances for a newsletter that goes out monthly, I read this:
(speaking of the precision needed for Apollo 13’s last burn to make it back to Earth) He asked what the degree of error was that they were working with to which they answered two degrees. He further explained that, at only a two degree difference, they would miss the earth by 120 miles by the time they landed. You might be asking what this story has to do with marriage and money? We have all been taught different ways of managing our money and have developed different spending habits. When we first get married, we may only be two degrees different from our spouse in the way we think, however, five, fifteen or twenty years later we are 120 miles apart in how we think and act in regards to our finances.
Wow! Isn’t that true of every area of our marriage as well? If you do not prepare properly and think things like, “Well, we disagree slightly on this one thing but it’s no big deal,” it could be a huge deal in the long run.
Yesterday was a great day at Living Word yet again! For the first time in I don’t know how many years, I had Easter Sunday off. That was a very strange experience, yet refreshing at the same time. We sang many great Easter hymns:
- He Lives
- Rejoice, the Lord Is King
- Oh For a Thousand Tongues (this threw me off guard a bit, because it wasn’t the traditional hymn we are familiar with, it was a song from around 1980. I didn’t know it, but it was a good song nonetheless.)
- Because He Lives
We had a small, eclectic ensemble of instruments that accompanied two of the hymns and it really sounded quite good. It was great to get some young people involved as well!
Pastor Wade’s teaching was great once again. He asked three questions that really made you think:
- Did the Resurrection really happen?
- Why did (does) the Resurrection matter?
- Is the Resurrection yours?
He also asked the question, “If the Resurrection hadn’t happened, would your life look any different?” When you really stop and think about it, that’s a challenging and convicting question. Would it?
We had a fantastic time with family as well yesterday and Layla (our daughter) was in a great, happy mood most of the day. That was wonderful as we were a little concerned how she’d do away from home all day and with all sorts of people. She did great!
I hope you had a joy-filled Easter full of worship of our Risen Savior and precious time with family.
One of the things that can keep a congregation from worshiping God is being distracted by unprepared musicians or teachers. What are some things that keep us from getting more skillful at our instrument or voice technique?
- Lack of desire to get better. This can come from thinking that you’re already good enough or it can come from believing that it doesn’t matter to do things with skill and that “God accepts us just the way we are.” While that is true, it is a Biblical concept to play with skill and also a Biblical concept to do things to the best of our abilities, doing everything we do for the Glory of Jesus. There is always room for improvement and it is so important that we are life long learners. If you are struggling with a lack of desire to get better, you might want to take a listen to this great message from Ken Boer and Pat Sczebel.
- Not practicing. So many worship team members think that it’s okay to just show up for rehearsal without preparation and then show up for the service without practicing. Why do we expect the pastor to spend literally hours upon hours preparing for the message but we’re fine with the musicians putting in only practice with the team but not any personal preparation? Not only does practicing make you a better player or singer, it’s makes you less of a distraction during a meeting because you are confident at what you’re doing and can look like you’re enjoying yourself and worshiping God instead of being buried in the music.
- Not listening to a variety of styles and genres, or just plain not listening to anything. It is so important that we constantly listen to music for inspiration and examples. Listen to new songs, listen to old songs, listen to rock songs, listen to jazz songs, listen to chant, listen to everything you can listen to (as long as it does not focus your mind away from God with its message.) Pick out your specific instrument or listen closely to how the vocals blend.
- Along with that, we limit our skill by declaring that we only like a particular style of worship. It is just as dangerous to proclaim that we can only worship “contemporary” music as well as proclaiming that we can only worship with hymns. Take in both and take in a lot of both.
Can you think of any more skill lids?
Hello everyone!
I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.5 and am having some minor issues with the design side of things. I’ve been meaning to redesign the site for a long time anyway, so this will force me to, but in the meantime, the content is all the same, things just look a little different for now. Let me know if you happen to run into any other problems!