Preparation for Worship

This Sunday our monthly fellowship dinner follows the morning service.

What did the early church do when it gathered? According to Acts 13, the gathered church worshiped:

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers,

Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene,

Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting,

the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul

for the work to which I have called them.”

Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

- Acts 13:1–3

While our circumstances and role in God’s plan is different, Antioch’s church is exemplary to us in many respects. Like them, we worship. Like them, the Word is crucial to our strength and health (see “prophets,” “teachers,” and the church listening to the Holy Spirit). Like them, we seek to reproduce ourselves in gospel proclamation and missionary work. Like them, we are dependent upon prayer for God’s grace and blessing upon our work for Christ. We can’t emulate Antioch on every point (and Christ doesn’t want us to), but they do provide us a good example of healthy church life: gatherings marked by Word-centered, prayer-saturated, devoted worship.

Sunday School

In Adult Sunday School, I will teach on the major themes and theological ideas of Exodus. The adult class will meet in the fellowship hall again.

Cathy Wagner will teach the

children’s class in the sanctuary.

The teen

class, taught by Chad Childs, will continue its study of church history.

Worship Service

This Sunday, we will close out verses 11-16 of Ephesians 4. We have been carefully studying the mission and maturity of the church from this passage. The text is a network of themes: maturity, unity, and the ministry of the Word. Here we learn what we are supposed to be, what we’re to be doing, and the purpose for ministry together. The passage corrects so many of the misunderstandings in American Christianity concerning the nature of Christ’s church. Here we see that church is not supposed a place you go to hear preaching, as it is a fellowship of saints helping each other grow through the grace of Christ, by the power of the Spirit, through the instrument of the Word of God.

Call to Worship: Acts 13:1-3

Hymn 202 [Majesty] Good Christian Men, Rejoice

Hymn 196 [Majesty] Angels We Have Heard on High The world’s biggest ever birth announcement happened one cool evening on the outskirts of tiny Bethlehem to a group of lowly shepherds. In Ephesians 4, we see how God’s inspired Word is the way Christ makes his church build itself up. This carol also points to the Word of God, namely the good news sung from heaven to sinful men. The news eventually changes their life (cf. Luke 2:20). This is the what the Word of God, the good news from heaven, does to men. Those who have heard it tell others what God has told them. In this favorite French carol’s third stanza we hear the voice of the shepherds speaking to us: Come to Bethlehem and see, him whose birth the angels sing; come, adore on bended knee Christ the Lord, the newborn King: Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Prayer & Offering

Ministry of Music: Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming

Prayer of Confession & Assurance

Congregational Reading: 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

Hymn 193 [Majesty] Angels, from the Realms of Glory

Sermon: Speaking the Truth in Love from Ephesians 4:15-16

Hymn 223 [Majesty] Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne

Prayer

Benediction

After the morning service, we’ll gather for the fellowship meal. A challenge from the word of God will follow. Adult choir members, please plan to stay afterward the meal for practice. 

Read what Morse writes about the importance of godly leaders depending on God, and then apply that to the whole church

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Some facts about teens and digital media

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