Welcome

But I, by your great love, can come into your house; in reverence I bow down toward your holy temple.                                                                                                                                                                                   Psalm 5:7 NIV

                Why worship? Lately I have been spending a lot of time in prayer and study on the theme of worship. I have been delving into the reason and focus of worship. Now, we should know that worship is the time to bring our devotion to God. We express this devotion through musical praise, prayers, confession of sins, and through the study of God’s holy word. We also experience a deeper level of worship during our partaking of the sacrament of communion. Communion is a deeply spirit filled event where we connect with Christ as the host of the table, and with each other as the body of Christ. These are the acts of worship, but what is my role? What is your role? Those are the big questions.

                To the lay person out in the congregation, worship should be a time to connect deeply with God while we express our devotion in different ways. We need to be reminded that worship is not here to be entertainment, though worship should inspire us! When we pray, we are to seek God’s ultimate will, not merely what we want. And when we sing, our hearts should be set on offering our best to God with the gift of music, for we are reminded in Scripture that God loves to be praised through music. So these issues of worship must be reflected by those in leadership. And in our Reformed and Protestant tradition, the focal point of worship is the proclamation of God’s word. And I must say that my preaching has morphed in many ways over the years, from trying to preach a certain style taught in graduate school to preaching the way I preach now which is what is most comfortable for me; the style that allows me to stand up and share God’s word in a style that is more conversational than professorial. The style I use also depends upon the group gathered in front of me. First Presbyterian Casa Grande worships differently than Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in New York. Both are Presbyterian, just different contexts. A big aspect of preaching is how we go about giving our sermons and it really begins with the listener. Churches over the past 30 years have moved over to what we call a “seeker-style,” and the sermon might be the part of worship that is most “seeker-friendly.” Meaning, it is meant to convert or convince people of the need for Christ and be gentle in approach. The problem with that is it often leaves the average churchgoer stagnant after a while. And pastors often do not want to wrestle with tougher texts in seeker services because they might seem harsh etc. But sermons were never meant primarily to convert. Sermons were always intended to be for the edification of believers. The word is meant to feed and build up the body of Christ, not merely convince skeptics. This has become very important for me in the past year and so I have intentionally saturated my sermons with lots of Scripture so we might begin to really understand the word of God revealed to all of us. As you can see, lots of planning goes in to this “little thing” we call worship, whether prayers, music or the sermon. And as King David once said, better is one day in God’s house, than a thousand elsewhere. Ponder on this as you join us in worship. And God bless you and yours in the warm summertime!

See you in worship,

Pastor Ben