Service Report: Feb 4th
A little background about our church.
My wife and I, and our two kids moved from San Diego to our current church in Northwest Ohio to become Pastor last April. The church had previously been pastored for 20 years by a man who also pastored two other churches, and was stretched very thin. The church had hovered between 18 and 30 as far back as records show and didn't have many "indicators" of an "uptrend".
I am in no way criticising the former Pastor as he worked hard and loved the people. I am still friends with him today.
My desire for the church is for it to not just be an insulated community of a few faithful who get together a couple times a week to fulfill our supposed Christian duties of listening to a boring sermon, giving a little in the offering, and going home no different than anyone else. I want us to become a force for the kingdom of God, reaching out to hurting people, seeing, the sick healed, the addicted delivered, and broken relationships restored.
I believe if Christians are no different than non-Christians there is no reason to be a Christian.
Well, since moving here our services have been good, but not particularly noteworthy. The church we came from while far from perfect had great moves of God and strong response to the preaching. While God has moved in the services it has seemed muted and not as often as I expect.
The people seem to respond well to my style of teaching and have often told me how much they are learning. I am glad they are increasing in knowledge of the Bible, but if that is all that happens I will feel like a failure. If the only result is more learning, and no transformed life, again the value is questionable in my eyes.
I know that the only way anything is going to happen in our church is by prayer. Biblically, historically, and experientially I am well aware that without prayer, all of our work is fruitless. But if I am honest I pray far too little. I want to pray but find myself busying myself with other things that are "good" but not nearly as consequential. I tell myself it is because I work two jobs (besides being a Pastor), but the excuse falls flat.
I catch myself finding plenty of time to work on the church website (which was terrible when we arrived), to work on a sermon, to play a game of go (a fascinating strategy game from Japan and China), to read up on cryptocurrency, or a host of other things.
Lately, I have been making an attempt to refocus on prayer and being consistent. I have done better, but still have a long way to go.
I have been feeling the move of the spirit more and more almost every service. The people in the congregation have commented on how they are feeling a new excitement in the church and about where the church is going.
-------Actual Service Report Starts Here---------------
In our worship service, I have been preaching a series on significant characters of the Bible. We have worked our way to the book of Judges and I was planning on preaching the second sermon on Gideon. Last week we talked about the call of Gideon, and this week I intended to preach about God's plan for Gideon.
Every time I worked on the sermon I couldn't seem to make any real progress. Of course, I knew I could just write a sermon but I really try to not ever preach something that I know just came from me, and not from God. Everything I was writing felt like it came from me so I kept deleting it.
This morning, Sunday AM I was working on it and getting nowhere.
Finally, I was reviewing the Sunday School lesson for the morning (We have a Sunday School lesson at 10, and then a Worship service at 11). The lesson was on the miracle of Pentecost and as I was going over it I started feeling the anointing. As I was praying about the lesson I felt the Lord tell me to preach the worship service sermon on the same topic. I am not usually one to preach without notes, but I could not refuse the Lord.
Just before the service started I noticed a visitor walk in, which is sadly rather rare for us. I went back and greeted her, and it was obvious she was definitely going through something. I later found out her 29-year-old husband had just passed away. I partially began to question my sermon as it seemed a little more focused towards our church, but knew I couldn't question God.
As we are a small church, I also play keyboard and am on the rotation to lead songs and this was my Sunday to lead. I had practiced what felt like enough and wasn't nervous about the songs at all. They were songs I was familiar with and that I was fairly confident playing.
The first song ("What a Day That Will Be") was terrible. I started singing the harmony part and couldn't find the melody until the chorus. I made several mistakes but felt the Lord tell me he was just keeping me humble. Thanks, God. :-)
The next song went okay, but during the third song ("At the Cross") the presence of God began to move very strongly. I often tell our church that I would rather have a worshiper who could usher in the presence of God that a talented musician who could impress us with their ability. Well, today I proved I meant it. I had to remind myself to see today's worship as a success.
I began by reading the 2nd chapter of Acts, the birth of the church. I gave a little bit of historical background and mostly focused on comparing most supposed church to the first-century church. Obviously most come up far short. As I was describing just a few of the things that would be characteristic of any modern day "book of acts church" God's presence again to move strongly on many.
The main point of the sermon was the importance of Prayer. The day of Pentecost came on the heels of a 7 or 10 day (depends on who you ask) prayer meeting. All the great revivals have come as a direct result of deep fervent committed prayer. I encouraged all of us to commit ourselves to focused prayer to see our church transformed into what God wants us to be. We had a good time of passionate corporate prayer at the close of the service and left feeling encouraged, and inspired.
My wife and I took lady visitor and her two boys out to eat after service and felt like we were able to minister to her.
All in all a great day of church.