It is one of the realities of the Christian faith that skeptics love to criticize—the reality that there are a host of different denominations and a multitude of different expressions of Christian worship. But while believers have become accustomed to responding to this criticism with a sense of shame, I choose to see it in…
It has been quite a year—a year in which the Worship Round the World project has taken me far and wide. If my statistics are correct, I believe my feet have touched something like 24 different countries this year. I worshipped with local churches in 13 of them and enjoyed times of fellowship with Christians…
The son of King Jeroboam had fallen deathly ill. His father was understandably worried, concerned to know whether his child would live or die. He knew just where to go for a trustworthy answer. Yet he also knew that he could not go himself. He came up with a devious plan: he would send his…
It seems like a very long time ago that Tim Keesee and I announced a new project called Worship Round the World. In fact, in some ways, it was a very long time ago since it happened before any of us had ever heard of COVID and before any of us imagined that world travel…
Every now and again I like to share one of our worship services from Grace Fellowship Church. I do this to provide just one example of how a church applies the principles of Scripture to its public worship. If there is something you see here that would bless your church, you have permission to pilfer…
From time to time I like to share one of our worship services from Grace Fellowship Church. In that vein, here is how we worshiped on one October Sunday morning. This week’s cast of characters included Paul as the service leader and preacher, Allie as the lead worshiper, and Patrick as the elder who prayed…
God commands us to sing. Yet while some of God’s people are gifted singers, the plain fact is that others are not. In any congregation it’s likely that some have near-perfect pitch while others are functionally tone-deaf. Those who struggle to sing may be self-conscious, tempted to stay quiet or to do no more than…
Every now and again I like to share an example of one of our worship services from Grace Fellowship Church. I hope that by doing this others will begin to share their services as well so we can learn and benefit from one another. If there is something you see here that would bless your…
Though we are 2,000 years past the founding of the New Testament church, we are seemingly still confused about how we ought to worship God. There are many competing philosophies of worship, many disagreements about everything from its purpose to its God-ordained elements and methods. We know we must worship, but we so often don’t…
With due respect to my Reformed Presbyterian friends, I think it’s difficult to make the argument that singing in the local church must not be accompanied by instrumentation. But with due respect to everyone else, I think it’s equally difficult to make the argument that singing in the local church must be accompanied by instrumentation.…
I have mentioned a number of times that one key element of worship at Grace Fellowship Church is the Call to Worship. This call sometimes involves reading a passage of scripture, but other times combines several texts into a responsive or back-and-forth format. Here’s an example that might bless you this morning as you prepare…
I have mentioned before that one key element of worship at Grace Fellowship Church (and in traditional Protestant services) is the Call to Worship. Often our calls to worship involve simply reading a passage of the Bible, but other times we combine several texts in a kind of question and answer format. In this case…
An element of worship we treasure at Grace Fellowship Church is the Call to Worship. This is the element at the beginning of the service that is essentially a declaration that we are now beginning something special, something different from everything else we will experience through the week. As we explicitly call people to worship,…
You can’t read the first five books of the Old Testament and fail to conclude that God takes worship seriously. But then, you can’t observe the lay of the evangelical land today and fail to conclude that many churches do not take worship seriously. While granting there is a great and necessary difference between Old…
Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the annual (bi-annual as of 2021) G3 Conference in Atlanta. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed the event and, as always, my favorite part was meeting so many of you. On the opening day of the conference I participated in a Q&A session that included John MacArthur,…
A few weeks ago Jared Wilson wrote an article titled “3 Things to Be Careful About Saying at the Start of Your Service.” In his article he offered some common service-starting cliches that are “worth weighing in terms of their helpfulness to the congregation’s worship.” They were, “How’s everybody doing this morning?”; “I can’t hear…
From time to time I like to share one of our worship services from Grace Fellowship Church. In that vein, here is how we worshiped on one September Sunday morning. This week’s cast of characters included Steve as service leader, Paul as preacher, and Josh as lead worshiper. The band was composed of guitar, electric…
Sometimes I almost prefer not to tell who I am quoting. Sometimes people see the name and either tune out altogether, or they respond so enthusiastically they fail to exercise due discernment. But in this case, this quote is so good and helpful that I wanted to share it with you. I will even tell…
From time to time I like to share one of our worship services from Grace Fellowship Church. In that vein, here is how we worshiped on one August Sunday morning. This week’s cast of characters included Paul as service leader and preacher, Josh as lead worshiper, Gideon as our Scripture reader, and Steve as the…
I recently had the opportunity to ask Keith Getty a few questions about the church and hymnody and whatever else I wanted to talk about. I figured that’s an opportunity I ought to take. Here’s what I had to ask and what he had to say… What do you see as the “lay of the…