Really pretty day and lots of visitors. We are working on starting at 10:45 sharp so our performance meets visitor expectations based on what we say on our website and sign. Of course that means that we lose some regular members for a few minutes until they wander over. :)
Today's message was another in the "i Life" series. I'm trying to help people see that how they see the world from an individual perspective isn't correct. The only true perspective is from God's point of view. "iHurt" was crafted to do just that - recognize that everybody hurts, admit we need help and that help can only be found in Jesus - then give our lives to Him and let Him redeem the hurt and fit us for service to Him.
The songs were chosen to reinforce those concepts.
"How Great Is Our God"
"God with Us"
"Nothing But the Blood"
"In Christ Alone"
"Step By Step"
We were able to work a duet of "A Living Prayer" in before the message, and I played the video of REM's "Everybody Hurts" during the fellowship time before the service. I hope that one day we get to the point musically where we can use secular songs prior to worship to help tie culture to redemption through Jesus. Obviously you have to make sure it is redemptive, but speaking as Paul did on Mars Hill "as your poets say..." really can be effective.
Audio is up but the first 5 minutes was cut. Gremlins.
I just realized today that the audio probably was dead for a couple minutes. It's because of the video "Cardboard testimonies" we played at the end.
The point was that despite our hurts, God can redeem them for good.
We did How Great Is Our God today also. I thought it was getting overplayed a while back, and we actually hadn't done it for a while, but today it just seemed to fit in with the service and the message really well. I was blessed by it's powerful words.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's just right. I really wanted to use it to begin from the POV of Who we were approaching since I was headed into an "i-centric" beginning of the message.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment.
David