Worship is the indispensable ingredient in our life together. It connects us to God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. It provides the guidance and spiritual growth needed to achieve our commitment to love God and our neighbors. It binds us to each other in the presence of God and challenges us to love, to serve and to forgive. Many in our congregation have experienced their most powerful and spiritual moments during our worship together. Worship is the foundation of our life as a congregation.
How might our worship together be enhanced by the new Home Church vision to engage, to heal and to transform our world and our lives? Already our pastors have begun to preach on these subjects during our traditional worship service. Are there other ways that we might shape our worship together to focus on engaging, healing and transforming our life together?
The congregation expressed a willingness to experiment with new forms of worship during many of the congregational meetings. Perhaps we could consider alternative worship services that were focused on one or all of these visions for our church. Perhaps we could develop Sunday school classes that focused on studying the Bible’s teachings on each of these vision challenges. Perhaps we could incorporate worship in all of our outreach programs. Perhaps we could take worship to our neighbors where they live.
We are empowered by the new Vision to shape and expand our worship in ways that support engaging, healing and transforming ourselves and our community. We are open to experimenting with new ways to hear God’s call to us in different places and with new people.
Let’s search together for those new worship practices that illuminate God’s presence in our own lives, that engage and heal our communities and our neighbors, and that transform our actions into love for each other and the world in which we live.
—Steve Strawsburg, “Home is…” Congregational Visioning Team member