Well today I did something I haven’t yet done at Faith.  Worship today was just me and my guitar.  Interesting that today was also my two year anniversary, wow two years I’ve been doing this.  Vacation was great but it is good to be back.

We changed things up today and had all of the music up front as well as communion.  Yes, communion BEFORE the sermon and this is what my brother in law had to say about it on his twitter.

Communion before the sermon? But now my religious routine has been interrupted. Now i must focus on meaning!

As church leadership we should really find opportunities to change things up so that everything does not just become routine.  When things become routine we tend to forget why we do them.  Breaking routine forces us to think about why we do something.  In the case of communion, our church has ALWAYS done communion after the sermon, not for any particular reason we just have.  The funny thing is we’ll have some people who will have a real problem with how we did it.  Like may things in our (american) church services there are many things that we do that are cultural and not biblical.  Now I’m not saying that we are doing things that are unbiblical, it’s just that there is no mandate at how we should do our services.  No “thou shalt sing for 30 minutes, preach for 45 and have 15 minutes of announcements, also don’t forget to greet one another.”  These are all good things but they tend to be huge issues if changed.

To Church Leaders:  Changing things up is good but be prepared to explain why you did it differently and the benefit you see in changing things up.  And the big things is extend a lot of grace.

To Church Congregations:  Understand and be able to differentiate between things that are biblical and things that are cultural.  Changes from things that are biblical should not be tolerated, changes from things that are simply cultural (although you may not like it) are okay.  And again the biggest thing is to extend a lot of grace to your church leadership.

Song list from today.

Hosanna (Praise is Rising)

We Won’t Stay Silent

Everlasting God

Saviour King

Better is One Day

My Tribute

Mighty to Save