Worship – Life and Faith

Exploring The Habits of The Christian Life: Listening To Sermons

There is much on the Interwebs that speaks of how best to listen to sermons, even books have been written on the topic. However, as I work my way through the book Habits of Grace by David Mathis I am struck by the simplicity and meaning in listening to a sermon.

When we think of listening often we imagine ourselves not talking, and that’s about it. But, of course, listening requires more of us than simply shutting our mouths. It requires intentionality in actually hearing what someone is saying to us. It means we need to stop and focus, it means we need to take the time to hear someone out before chiming in with our own thoughts on the conversation at hand.

In a section on listening Mathis speaks of the grace that comes when we take time to actually listen to a sermon. The preaching of the Word is God speaking to his particular people in a particular location, and so listening is an important skill in this instance. But the symbolism of this act of listening is deeper than perhaps we’ve thought of before.

While preaching can get a bad rap, it is one of the ongoing activities of the Christian faith where God speaks to us through another human. And while the rest of our week may be filled with different activities, conversations about faith even, there comes a time where the faithful gather and seek to listen together to God’s Word. There are plenty of hours in the week to do other things that pertain to our life and faith, but for 30 minutes a week Christians gather to close their mouths and listen to the preaching of the Bible. This is fascinating act, a symbolic act, by believers around the world as they seek to encounter Jesus more deeply and in a powerful way. And even then, many are restless and sleepy for those 30 minutes too.

The other aspect to this is the fact that it is Christians gathered together. There is a corporate and communal aspect to the worship of God in church each week. It is not an individualistic activity, despite people not knowing one-another too deeply at times. It is the Christian community of a particular location getting together to hear from God together. Another sign of the unity that comes through Christ. And as Mathis writes,

“But preaching is not just about Jesus; it is his way of being personally present with his church. Good preaching brings the church into an encounter with her Groom by the Holy Spirit. As Jason Meyer writes, “The ministry of the word in Scripture is stewarding and heralding God’s word in such a way that people encounter God through his word. In faithful Christian preaching, we not only hear about Jesus, but we meet him.”

As Calvin once wrote about the purpose of preaching, “…to offer and set forth Christ to us, and in him the treasures of heavenly grace.”

While we may find preaching tedious at times I appreciate the fact that God has set this as one of the ways he gives us grace. In all our other activities of faith, particularly on a Sunday morning, there is the giving and receiving of grace to God. Through songs, through prayers, through communion even, we are often speaking to God as well as hearing from him. Through the preaching of his word we actually take the time to be still and quiet before him, solely receiving from him.

I wonder if this affects our thinking about the sermon for this weekend?

Day 14 – You Are Relational

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42-47)

The God we worship is a relational God.

He could’ve done anything he liked and what he chose to do was create humanity in order to have a relationship with him. We see in the first book of the Bible that he not only creates the world and everything in it, but there is a particular emphasis on him creating humanity as the pinnacle of his creation. We as his creatures reflect the image of God. We carry within us, and possibly outside of us, aspects of God himself. In recognising this we find we are image bearers of God. We bear the image of God as we walk and talk, as we connect and commune with others.

God, being a relational God and creating us to be in relationship with him, therefore, puts into us something of that relational characteristic that he has.

We reflect God’s relational character in our lives.

Therefore, we find we have a yearning for relationships.

We seek after relationships with others, we seek their company, friendship, acceptance and love.

You're More Than A Number - You Are Relational

The explosion of social media in recent years highlights the fact that we want to tell others about ourselves, and probably highlights our voyeuristic tendency to want to see what others are up to as well. But, it seems that we want to be in relationship with others, and seek that relationship in a variety of places. Whether it is face-to-face or online there is a yearning and desire for relationship in our lives. Some find these fulfilling relationships in positive places, others fall into the arms of harm and pain, suffering as they seek to find the relationship they desire.

This creation narrative in the opening chapter of the bible (Genesis 1:26-28) reminds us we are not accidents and that we are made for one-another. Not all relationships need to be physical or sexual, but they do need to be person to person, seeking to love one-another because that is what we are created to so. This kind of relationship is not simply between one person to another either. It is relationship with groups of people, with a community.

Thankfully, God in his infinite wisdom provides a community for believers that is to meet aspects of this relational need.

God has designed a community in the form of his people, the Church.

When we think of church we may not have great things to say about it. We may think of it as only a meeting place for singing songs, praying prayers, and hearing someone speak to us. Church is meant to be much more than a place to gather for 90 minutes on a Sunday. The church is to be a place where we find God-fashioned community.

In Acts 2:42-47 we see the early church, those who had contact with Jesus in his lifetime and witnessed his presence in physical form, came together with other believers in community. As part of that coming together they had meals together, prayed together, heard teaching together, and simply hung out with one-another. This was the germinating church, the church in its infancy as believers came together, bonded together, and were in community.

This is God’s people living together as God’s people.

In today’s Western society we can look around and see that our churches and communities of faith are not expressing themselves in the same way. Due to cultural and societal factors this doesn’t occur as it did in first-century Palestine. But as God has designed it we are made to commune with one-another on a regular basis, as an expression of our love for God and love for one-another.

In the book of Hebrews 10:24-25 we are encouraged to not stop meeting together but continue to do so in love and worship.

“…let us watch out for one another to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other…”

This is not only an expression of church but an expression of worship through community.

Just as we are made for relationship with God and with each other we are also made to express our relationships through community. Together with a group of people we play an important role in helping people know they are loved by God and others.

FOR REFLECTION

What relationships are most important to you?
How does knowing you were made for relationship and community affect your view of others?
In what ways can you contribute to a local church so that others know the love of God?

This is part of a devotional series called You’re More Than A Number. To understand the purpose of these posts then please read the series introduction. If you’d like these delivered to your inbox, please sign up to follow this blog or my FB page.

Why Your Church Service Is Awesome

640px-Lancaster_Baptist_Church_Main_Auditorium — Photo: Wiki Commons

In the last 6-9 months I’ve had the opportunity to visit a variety of churches and sit through a number of services “on the other side of the pew”. Since I’m no longer on staff at church I get to observe and participate in services like never before. This experience is great and painful all at the same time.

Today’s post is simply a list of points that have struck me while reflecting on services I’ve been to recently. In other words, it’s a list of points that I think make your service awesome.

Your worship or service leader is genuinely interested in welcoming me as a visitor. Because your service leader is so good I now know their name, I know what’s happening in the service, and what to expect in the coming hour. This is very good to know and I appreciate this information.
Your time of singing is an appropriate length and there has been thought put into the song choices. The words of the songs and the number of people singing in the service gives a good indication that your “song picker” knows what it means to gather as a church. They evidently know that the words of songs are important and there is a focus on the gospel and the theme of the whole service, particularly the sermon. While I know there are plenty of people who all have different preferences for songs you’ve been able to focus on the essentials in the choosing.
Your announcements are given by a real person, who tells me their name and highlights 2-3 points from the bulletin that are important for the church. I appreciate that it’s a real person up the front delivering the important announcements in good time. This shows me that you know it’s important to communicate with the church and also lets me know what I should take note of among all the other newsletter items.
Your pastoral prayer is spoken on behalf of the church for believers and non-believers around the world, throughout this country, and also for those within the church. In some ways the pastoral prayer can be a tricky one because there are so many options to pray for. Yet, the person who is praying this in your service has thought deeply about how to pray for people around the world. This gives the impression that your church is focused on the whole world and has a global worldview. Praying for your country and for those within the congregation also allows me to see that you care about your community, both inside and outside the church. It is in this prayer that the focus of the church is most readily shown.
You have a bible reading. This is brilliant. Not only do you have a bible reading but the one who speaks these words over the congregation introduces the text in such a way that if I didn’t know where to find the particular passage I am led by the reader to it. This is either through the mentioning of the page number, where it is in the bible (OT or NT), or being directed to the table of contents page at the front of the bible itself. Thank you for taking the time to do this, I know it must feel weird if you’ve always been around a bible but it is helpful to see you thinking about others. With this your reader has also given me ample time to get to the passage and is happy to stay silent while people “page flick” to the right spot.
You have a preacher who actually reads, explains, and applies the bible. Your service is awesome when this happens. It is one of the main reasons for gathering together on a Sunday, to hear the Word preached, and your service has a preacher willing to do so. This is excellent. Not only that, but they introduce themselves and seem genuinely concerned with wanting to get across what the bible is teaching. I’m not too concerned about how long your preacher goes for if he’s teaching and applying the bible, it’s just good for them to be doing so.
You have people in your congregation willing to talk after the service. To have a welcoming team or people who are on the look out is great. I appreciate that. To have people in your congregation who are willing to turn around and say “hello” off their own bat is even better. This makes your church look like a friendly and welcoming place, somewhere I’d think about coming back to.

So, is your church an awesome church?