Tuesday 28 May 2013

Vision for Worship

Our vision for worship at the Countess is

All of us for all of Him

Learning to live lives as worship. Stopping to see God at work in the regular, even in the small things. There may be both joys and trials, but in either if we look we can see how God makes the ordinary extraordinary.

Paying attention to rhythms, we learn to God-orientate our lives. Inevitably that involves becoming sensitive to God's heart, thus to justice and poverty issues in whatever context we are in. We get involved, we serve, not because we ought - but because we worship. Full stop.

We are invited to come close to God, to gaze on Him. We desire to be intimate with the ultimate.

So our corporate gatherings (currently our Sunday mornings) become an overflow of these lives of worship. Leading these then becomes about facilitating expression of this - in whatever ways make sense. Three key phrases are helpful here:
  • Providing 'stop points' - enabling us to pause, to reflect, to take in, providing moments of decision and surrender
  • Encouraging us to 'Enter in' - bringing the trials and joys of the week into the arena before God
  • Helping us to 'Gaze on God' - using music, words, art, post-its ... whatever we find helpful.
Hopefully the poster on this page in some way charts out this thinking.

It doesn't need us all to be extroverts, but it does bid us to come open and desiring, allowing things from the week to bubble up as we gather together.


Monday 27 May 2013

Meaningless Offerings

Which is more likely to be the life of true worship? The guy who wanders the slum praying for insight, and is led to open a school and feeding station for children in a dis-used local pub, or the person who attends the prim & proper organised worship week by week?

[OUT] How is your worship worked out through your life week by week?

Sunday 19 May 2013

Hope II

The OT Law can helpfully be understood as a hard boundary over which God's people should not cross. Kind of like the walls of a play-pen - outside is simply unsafe, so best stay inside.

Monday 13 May 2013

Hope

The OT prophets contain all kinds of passages dropped in, sometimes in the middle, sometimes towards the end, that speak of HOPE. Hope that one day God will act, will change things, will correct wrongs, will restore.