What Do You Get from Church?
I ask what you get out of church? What are the results of attending a weekly service?
Psalm 119:125 – Teach Me
How can we join with the voice of this wonderful poet in praise and worship of God?
Psalm 119:88 – Grant Me Life
This passage emphasizes that life and blessings come from God, encouraging gratitude and community contributions, reflecting God’s love and purpose through mutual building up.
Worship Is All About God
Bad Ideas I Learned from Good Leaders #3 “But that’s true!” some of you are thinking. And you’re right. The statement is true. Its usage can be a bad idea. I’ve rarely heard this statement from someone who was actually trying to make worship about God. To those of you who use it in that…
Books | Christianity | Worship
A Morbid and Boring Christianity
The quote above comes from chapter 1 of S. J. Hill’s book, What’s God Really Like?, and I’d like to spend some time with this, looking at it from different angles. The first angle is one of worship. I was in a church committee meeting some years back where a room full of people were…
Is Your Worship a Joy
As I’ve been setting up a series of posts on thinking about God, I’ve discussed a little bit what our theology can do, and what it cannot. For example, in a video yesterday, I talked about how our theological knowledge cannot save us. Yet at the same time it can mess us up. I was…
Toward a Strategy of Worship
Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking a great deal about strategy in connection with Christian living. It started when I was invited to preach the Sunday after Veterans Day, which was also the Sunday after the election. I used the first chapter of Colossians to talk about our identity and the means that…
Sunday School: History and Feasts
I’m going to be teaching my home Sunday School class for the next four weeks, and it happens that the topics are all from the Israelite feasts. Tomorrow I’ll be talking about Passover, the next week about the Feast of Weeks, then the Day of Atonement, and finally the Feast of Booths. I’m using the…
Thoughts from the Energion Tuesday Night Hangout: Stewardship and Worship
I enjoyed interviewing three different Energion authors last night. The first was Rev. Steve Kindle who talked about stewardship and the importance of starting from an understanding that everything belongs to God. Steve provided some practical steps that a church can use in caring for all of God’s creation. Steve’s book goes into this somewhat…
Church as a Social Occasion
Or perhaps as the social occasion. Thom Rainer has a post titled Seven Things Church Members Should Say to Guests in a Worship Service. It comes complete with a header picture of people who, to me, look like they’re forcing excessive smiles. I probably see it that way because I’m an introvert. I suppose that…