Worship Fully!

The focus of our service today as we continued in our Advent Conspiracy series was "Worship Fully". In order to allow our congregation more time to worship we did some things differently and sort of "flipped" our services, giving more space and attention to a longer time of worship after the sermon. Sometimes I think that shaking up our routine helps us to pay more attention.

We started with the video from Sermon Spice "The Gift of Worship" and then Bill began to play "O Come Let Us Adore Him" on the piano while I issued a simple invitation to give God the gift of our presence this morning and to worship fully. I talked for a few minutes about how the temptation might be to do good things FOR God and walk right by opportunities to simply be with God. I shared the story of Mary and Martha from Luke 10 and urged them to pay attention to that "one thing". Another thing I did differently was to let them decide when to stand up, sit down, etc. I urged them to respond to God with their bodies, kneeling, raising their hands, standing or sitting quietly as they felt moved to do so. I wanted them to CHOOSE how to respond to God.

Here's the order:

Invitation to Worship

Special: "Christmas Offering"

Worship:

Here I Am to Worship

Amazed

Sermon by Richard - he did a GREAT job leading us through the story of the woman who annointed Jesus' feet with her tears and precious oil....who worshiped unashamedly and in great humility. He reminded us that key ingredients of worship are humility and a lack of self consciousness. Then he challenged us to WORSHIP! And we did....

Worship Set #2:

Still

Christmas Offering

Revelation Song

Sing to the King

Today was an interesting day. In both services we made tons of mental errors, more than I can remember in a long, long time. But obviously God does not need our perfection to move because people worshipped more extravegently than I've seen in a long time. Thank God it is NOT up to me! Hands were raised, tears were shed, people stood and joined in as they chose to give their gift of worship to our King. Even the band struggled to keep playing as they were overcome by the presence of God.

God touched me deeply as we worshiped together today and I am humbly grateful for His beautiful presence and power and glory.

I am also thankful for the family I worship with each week at The Brook. There is not a more beautiful sight than to see people worshiping God with all their hearts. It's one of the biggest blessings of being a worship leader! There's nothing like the view!

So how was YOUR Sunday?

**This post is a part of Sunday Setlist over at www.fredmckinnon.com. Go check it out!**

Comments

[kim Bontrager]

thanks for writing about your worship experience. It's so encouraging to me to read how other leaders make decisions, work things through, and then find God working in spite of themselves. :) Thanks!

[Johnny Sierra]

Great setlist! Here I am to Worship a classic! I am so glad to that despite our weakness and failure God can still turn it around!

[Janaki]

I am so grateful that God moves despite our errors. I have had many of those in my experiences leading worship. We also did Here I am to Worship this week.

[steffanie oltmans]

It sounds like you had a great time of worship. God is so awesome.