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Episode 006: To The Table

Episode 006- To The Table

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SHOW NOTES

The Table for me was the end of a long journey to discover the roots of my faith… I wanted to give my kids more of the faith than I had when I was their age…

Tradition is a troubling word for charismatics…but when I began to talk about historical rootedness and the many reasons for coming back to the Table, the eyes of our church were opened and we found ourselves embracing it…

The beautiful thing about the Lord’s Table is that it is a promise of an encounter with the risen Christ that does not depend on an individual…

Frequency does not mean a loss of intimacy; in fact, intimacy requires frequency…

It should be easier for charismatics to come to the Table with faith and expectation, but people are nervous about superstition… part of the way we got around that was that we said “We’re not going to make statements about HOW God meets us [at the Table]; we just know THAT he does…”

Past, present, and future come together for us at the Table… it is a place of proclamation, that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again!

One pushback I got from the congregation was “Where is the altar call?” What I’ve discovered is that this leads to better altar calls… I tell pastor friends that we have the biggest altar calls we’ve ever had, because we have people confess sins and receive forgiveness… we have thousands of people answering the altar call every Sunday… and so when I call for salvation and healing, their hearts are already tender…

We didn’t have to give up our evangelistic fervor to do Communion…

This has profoundly changed my preaching for the better… no matter what we’re tackling, I have to end with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus…

Our church has grown and increased and has seen disciple-shaping go to a deeper level since we’ve done this… if you’ll do this wisely with a lot of explanation, inviting people in, they will follow you…

Millennials are more fascinated with historical rootedness than we think… the under-30 crowd are living in a world now where nothing makes sense… they’re looking for something that has stood the test of time…

Questions for you and your team
1) Do your worship services demonstrate a sense of historical rootedness? Why or why not?
2) Pastor Glenn mentioned that Communion embodies a sense of “remembrance”, “encounter”, and “hope”. Which do you feel your services emphasize the most? How could communion reshape those services?
3) How do you think taking weekly Communion would change your worship and preaching?
4) What practical steps can you take to begin moving in that direction?

Episode 002: Worship in the Church Pt. 2

We were joined by Pastors Jon Egan and Dr. Pete Sanchez for the second part of a conversation on worship. We talked about topics ranging from what worship is, to choosing songs for a worship service. Listen in on the conversation now!

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Don’t forget that you can take part in these conversations at the Essential Church Conference in September. Register now at NewLifeConference.com

Show Notes:
ECP Show Notes – EPISODE 002

“If God is who he says he is…when people come to the Sunday morning service they ought to understand that this could be a transformational moment…”

“Leaders need to spend more time agreeing on what worship is…if we don’t know what it is, our people won’t know…”

“Worship is responding to all that God is (that is, it’s revelation) with all that we are…”

“What I hope will happen at a gathering is what I know could happen at a gathering…that when the singers sing [together] deliverance comes…the key is unity on what worship is…”

“[Part of] what makes the church a troubling mess on Sunday morning is how many different types of people are sitting with us…God is doing something uniquely different in each of these people…so you have to be sensitive to what God is doing in all groups…”

“Songs are the greatest unifier that we have been given…in a world that is so individualistic…singing together is so humbling…you can’t sing with passion and keep your guard up…”

“God is trying to create a new humanity by the power of his Spirit…so when we gather…we are glimpsing the end of all things and also experiencing it is the present which prophetically puts it into motion…”

“Congregational worship is God showing us [together] the way home…”

“Worship allows us to sing about the morning while living at midnight…”

“When we get to the Table, there are no ‘roles’ anymore…we are just the people of God, consuming Him and being consumed by Him…it’s been a remarkable thing…it’s been revival…”

Questions for You and Your Team

1) What’s your team’s concept of what is happening when your church gathers for corporate worship? How can that be strengthened or enriched?

2) How well do you do at continually reinforcing the “why” of corporate worship for your people?

3) To what extent do the songs you choose for worship speak to the great, unseen, corporate realities the Scriptures speak of?

Episode 001: Worship in the Church Pt. 1

We were joined by Pastors Jon Egan and Dr. Pete Sanchez for a conversation on worship. We talked about topics ranging from what worship is, to choosing songs for a worship service. Listen in on the conversation now!

Play

Stop

Don’t forget that you can take part in these conversations at the Essential Church Conference in September. Register now at NewLifeConference.com

ECP Show Notes – EPISODE 001

“In my study of church history I realized that lot of heresy came from good men who tried to say good things about God but the Church decided it was not good enough… a lot of our songs are good but not quite good enough…”

“Unless you’re fighting about [good theology] you’re probably not thinking enough about it…”

“In a day when words are being dumbed down…we are [through worship] teaching people the grammar of our faith…”

“In the early days we wrote [our songs] from the Scriptures…it was easy for a young songwriter like me to look there for content…”

“The book that’s influenced me the most is Augustine’s Confessions…[Augustine] talked to God in a way that I want to talk to God…”

“Music comes from a creative God originally…God sung or spoke words into creation, and God’s words have a transformational impact…when we sing these songs, we’re being marked by the very same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead…”

“We don’t just sing what we believe, we sing ourselves into believing…we sing and it causes us to believe…”

“It’s important for a worship leader to understand that they need to submit to the house…are we in unity?…that’s something I always consider”

“The other thing I think about is the people…what do our people need to sing?”

“The way I look at it is that an opening song should be disruptive to the pattern they came in with…a good call to worship should disrupt that pattern”

“A senior pastor’s role is not to frustrate the prophetic creativity of worship pastors…at the same time the worship pastor should give back to the senior pastor the ability to say no from time to time…together they share the responsibility of Sunday in a profound way…”

Questions for you and your team:

1) Do the songs you choose for your worship sets have theological depth? How can you improve this?

2) What’s your church’s working belief about what happens to people during a worship service? How does this influence your worship culture?

3) What’s your team’s “grid” for choosing a set list?

4) How can the relationship between the senior teaching pastor and the worship leader on your team become more creative and trusting?

Resources

Augustine: The Confessions
A. W. Tozer: The Pursuit of God