Introduction What goes through your mind as you enter the church building? Are you looking forward to approaching the throne of God? Or Are you looking to be uplifted and entertained? Too many people today go to worship for the wrong reason and with the wrong mindset.   Now Performing… C ongregations today see themselves as the audience rather than the participants. If they aren’t preaching or leading the singing, they consider themselves the audience. They go with a need to be uplifted; made to feel good about themselves so that when they leave the service, they feel better than when they came in. On the surface, that’s not a bad thing. After a week long of trudging through life with job, family, and whatever the news is giving us, we look forward to heading to worship to be encouraged by the message and the general atmosphere. They say they want to be edified but it’s more of a physical desire than a spiritual one. If you look at the megachurches or even the ...

                                                       Introduction We've been looking at the subjects of worship and the church; what is the church, how does one become a member, etc. This week we will look at the acts of worship; the service itself. Since I have broken this down in previous articles I'll provide links for those articles and you can take your time in reading all of them. There are six total as I included "The Invitation" as part of the service. The Acts of Worship Here are the series of articles which include of the acts of worship... Let Us Sing Let Us Pray Let Us Partake (The Lord's Supper) We Give (The Collection) Let Us Study (Preaching the Gospel) The Lord's Invitation Conclusion I hope you've taken the time to read of all of these articles. You will note that this is all that is done in worship to God. If you congregation doe...

Acts of Worship, Pt. 4 Introduction The next act of worship we will look at is The Collection. Whenever the discussion of money is mentioned or giving as part of the service, people tend to sour at the idea. You might hear people say, “All they want is our money.” It is the one thing that people have a problem with aside from the concept of baptism for salvation. Let’s look at some ideas. Raising Funds One of the main reasons that people rankle at the idea of putting money in the plate during Sunday Service is that they feel that their money won’t be put to good use. They feel that members of the church will use the money to line their own pockets rather than pay for things that are needed. It’s one thing to give money to a local charity; something that they know the money is going to a good cause such as, the American Heart Association or Muscular Dystrophy. Even when people buy Girl Scout Cookies, they don’t see it as helping the Girl Scouts but rather buying the...

Acts of Worship: Pt. 1 Series Introduction In this series we are going to look at the worship service of assembled Christians and see what the scriptures say in regards to each of the acts of worship. The service of our Lord requires us to: Sing, Pray, partake of the Lord’s Supper, give of our means (Collection), and preach the gospel. We’ll also look at The Lord’s Invitation; a responsibility given to us by God. Part 1: Introduction People often wonder why singing is part of the worship service. Others wonder why some use mechanical instruments, while others do not. Is one right and the other wrong or does God really care? We’ll look at these ideas and others in this article. Why Sing? Why do we sing in the first place? The notion of singing has been around for centuries. Men would sing songs as they entered into battle to uplift their spirits and be united in the same cause. High Schools and Colleges have what are known as “Fight Songs” w...