Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Planning”
Our Bible verse for today: “When you come to appear before Me, who requires this of you – this trampling of My courts? Stop bringing useless offerings. Your incense is detestable to Me.” Isaiah 1:12-13 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Don’t let your plan interfere with your worship.”
For the most part, planning a worship service is a good thing. Actually, it’s a necessary thing. Although on occasions worship can be and should be spontaneous, for the most part regularly scheduled group worship services need to have good planning and structure.
But sometimes planning creates problems too. For one thing, if worship leaders are too fixated on a particular plan or structure they can inhibit the moving of the Holy Spirit among a congregation. But also, over time, a plan repeated over and over again can quickly become mindless habit, and that then can lead people to simply go through the motions of worship without really engaging with God at the heart level. I was raised in one of the most highly structured and ritualized denominations there is and so I have experienced many worship services that were virtual carbon copies of each other – week, after week, after week. Eventually I came to wonder how much actual “worship” was really taking place.
In the opening chapter of the book of Isaiah, God had the prophet address two worship-related issues with the people of Israel. One was that many people were living like the devil six days a week but then coming to the Temple on the Sabbath, going through the rituals of worship, and then walking out the door and returning to their sinful lives. It was like what the singer and songwriter Jimmy Buffet once sang about, “There’s a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning!”
But the second issue Isaiah addressed is more to my point and it is that for many of the people, worship had become a matter of mindless routine. It was the same thing over and over again and they were just going through the motions and putting a check in the box.
Sometimes our religious plans do that to us. That’s why variety is important, both in our public worship and in our private time with the Lord. At Oak Hill Baptist Church we make it a point to use different kinds of music (traditional hymns and contemporary praise); and we sometimes incorporate dramas; and interpretive dance; and also video clips, testimonies, and more.
We have a different person open the service each week with Bible reading and prayer; we also have a time of informal fellowship (meet and greet) when people freely wander around the sanctuary shaking hands, hugging, greeting, and laughing. That portion of the service is sometimes a loud and chaotic mess but it’s a happy mess that is joyful and loving. I personally think God is probably smiling warmly as He watches it unfold as part of the worship service.
Planning worship is important, but so is flexibility and variety. That’s true in our private relationship with the Lord as well as in group worship. We need to mix it up in order to keep it fresh. Don’t let your “plan” interfere with your worship.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 