{"id":1613,"date":"2011-03-14T11:34:41","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T17:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/?p=1613"},"modified":"2011-03-14T11:34:41","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T17:34:41","slug":"teaching-acting-on-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/teaching-acting-on-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Corporate Worship Gathering is Not a Spectator Sport: Teaching and Acting on Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sometimes it takes a <a title=\"Ragamuffin Soul | Disrupt and Disturb\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ragamuffinsoul.com\/2011\/01\/move-the-why-my-first-keynote\/\" target=\"_blank\">little bit of disruption in our routine<\/a> that shakes us up, wakes us up, and calls us to act on what we believe<\/strong> and yesterday was no exception.<\/p>\n<p><strong>We spent the whole morning service praying at <a title=\"Living Word Free Lutheran Church\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lwflc.org\" target=\"_blank\">Living Word<\/a> yesterday<\/strong>.\u00a0 The songs were mixed in with times of prayer guided by our pastor.\u00a0 We had no sermon, just a short explanation of the day and why we were doing what we were doing.<\/p>\n<p>I had a little voice in my head telling me, \u201cBut you\u2019ve never done that before and it\u2019s going to make people uncomfortable!\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m glad I decided to say \u201cYes, it\u2019s good that we\u2019ve never done it before and yes it\u2019s good that we\u2019ll make people uncomfortable\u201d instead of listening and giving in to the fear of what people would think.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It was worth it<\/strong>.\u00a0 We spent about forty-five minutes in focused prayer including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Praise<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"How To Be An Offering \u2013 Confession\" href=\"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/confession\/\" target=\"_blank\">Confession<\/a><\/li>\n<li> Intercession<\/li>\n<li>Prayer for those who are unbelievers<\/li>\n<li>Thankfulness<\/li>\n<li>Our songs matched each section and at the end we responded with two songs of praise and sending.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I loved that we didn\u2019t just teach on prayer but <strong>we actually acted on it and practiced it<\/strong>. Sometimes our corporate worship gatherings tend to look more like seminars and concerts than times of corporate worship.\u00a0 We gather to listen to a teacher, maybe watch a video, hear a testimony, and sing some songs.\u00a0 We listen to the pastor pray and watch the worship team, special music, or choir \u201cperform<strong>.\u201d\u00a0 What we need to do is consistently come up with ways to keep the congregation engaged in active worship and send that attitude with them into their homes and families.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Our time of corporate worship through prayer was a beautiful, fruitful time, and we\u2019ve already heard a lot of positive feedback.\u00a0 I\u2019m already looking forward to when we\u2019ll do it again.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What have you done recently that has knocked folks a little out of their comfort zone and called them to put their faith into action? What has knocked you out of your comfort zone?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 5px 5px 0;float:left;height:50px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/teaching-acting-on-prayer\/\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"595\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes it takes a little bit of disruption in our routine that shakes us up, wakes us up, and calls us to act on what we believe and yesterday was no exception. We spent the whole morning service praying at Living Word yesterday.\u00a0 The songs were mixed in with times of prayer guided by our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-worship-leaders"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1614,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions\/1614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}