New Hope@Worship 29 Mar 2009

Yes,it's Tuesday and I'm finally getting around to Sunday's recap. :)

The fifth Sunday of the 40 day preparation for Easter (AKA Lent) continued this week. An incredibly challenging passage of Scripture combined with a strong sense of urgency on my part and came together to bring us to the presence of God. I used a video before and after the message (Christ Daughtry - "What About Now?" and Steven Curtis Chapman "What Now?"), so there shouldn't have been any question where I felt the Holy Spirit was guiding us.

It really helped me to immerse myself in that passage each and every day. Added a lot of time, but was so worth it.

The musical part of our worship was:

Your Grace Is Enough
How Great Is Our God
Amazed (Lord I'm Amazed) (with a very sweet and special solo by Celeste)

Come Just As You Are



Some of the comments I received and the chatter I heard after were very encouraging. If a group of people seriously pursued God's heart-work... wow.

On Missions

When I think about how we as Southern Baptists do missions - I mean after I get past the incredible people we have placed on the mission field - there's always been something that bothered me. I've sort of narrowed it down to the fact that most Southern Baptists will never actually DO missions, even if they give to Lottie and Annie faithfully every year. Reading this today stirred me to wonder if others are coming to the same conclusion.

More often than not, when you say that a collection of churches is “partnering in missions,” you really mean that small churches give what little money they think they can afford to a larger church or a missions sending agency that will handle mobilization, screening, indoctrination, training, sending, and maintenance of missionaries on the field. This is not “partnering,” it’s outsourcing. Ernest Goodman

That's what we are doing. There's no attachment there - none of the formative benefits of doing missions. It's just a different box to check off on the do-gooder's guide to church.

We have to change. We have to get as many people in as many ways possible to be ON mission locally, regionally, and globally for Jesus.

Read the rest of the article and pray about how God would lead us all - small and large churches both - OUT and into missional work.

Ernest's last few words are where the SBC needs to go. Missions are too important to leave to the professionals.

A true missions network would not connect churches in order to do missions, it would connect churches who are doing missions.