By David Shead
What is the “shape” of the corporate worship gathering?
Why don’t we just sing, and nothing else, when we gather for corporate worship?
We need to be careful that, in seeking to understand the importance of corporate singing, we don’t end up distorting our gatherings.
By David Shead
Why sing?
What is the place of singing in corporate worship?
Of all the things we normally do when we gather together for corporate worship (singing, prayer, Bible readings, teaching, etc.), singing is not more worship or more “worshipful” than the other elements. All are equally acts of corporate worship. This is why it’s theologically misleading to refer to the song leader as the “worship leader”.
However, there is a particular and important contribution that singing makes to our corporate worship (just as there is a particular and important contribution that our corporate prayers make, or our instruction from God’s word makes, etc.). What is singing’s particular contribution? Why sing?
There are a number of important reasons:
By David Shead
What is corporate worship?
“Worship” is the word that sums up the whole of life.
“Worship” describes the entire orientation of your life; your attitude of humble submission and service towards the thing or person that you most value in all of existence, whether that’s yourself (or another part of the creation like money, or leisure, etc.), or the true and living God.
By Des Smith
This Sunday is ‘Bring-a-friend-to-church Sunday’. You may think, ‘Why didn’t I hear about this before? This wasn’t advertised!’ That’s because every Sunday is bring-a-friend-to-church Sunday. Next week’s will be too and the week after that. The fact is, one of the best and easiest ways we can share the gospel with friends and family is simply to invite them to church.
This is not often how we think.
Universal Church Only – a vertical relationship.
From time to time, I will hear a believer say that they don’t have to be a member of particular local church – because they are ‘in Christ’.
Draw Near to God and to Others
Hebrews is helpful for anyone wanting to think about the importance of Church.
In Chapter 10 the author writes to Christians who were losing confidence – some were persecuted, some were leaving the faith to avoid suffering, and others were abandoning Christ because they wanted to fit in with the world around them. His advice? – draw near to God and draw near to others!
When you became a Christian, your membership in the church took both a universal and a local shape – a wide and narrow view if you like.
What is the difference?
Membership
In the world that we live in, ‘Membership’ is a fairly common idea. We have memberships to libraries, sports clubs, magazines or journals, road service organisations, schools, clubs, gyms, churches and much more.
We pay, to secure some benefit – be it the ability to borrow books, or to secure good seats to watch our favourite sport, or to receive the magazine that interests us, or guarantee help if the car breaks down, or help for the school to give our children a better education, or a vote in the club that we belong, or cheaper entry to be able to use exercise equipment. You get the drift!
In many ways, the benefits of ‘membership’ in our secular world mirrors ‘membership’ in a church, but not completely – there is a difference.
Inspired by Acts 15:1-21…
We had an issue! It was obvious that if we didn’t do something about it our church family would be divided.
It was such an exciting time for us being a new church. As we talked about Jesus, so many people put their trust in him – and people from all kinds of backgrounds.
What does the building of Israel’s great Temple have to do with us today? Listen to Des Smith as he explains why we should reflect on the faithfulness of King David and the people of Israel, as we think about our vision for 2019 and our preparedness to support this as we depend upon God to grow his kingdom.
Preacher: Des Smith
churchcentralonline.com 