Palm Sunday Worship
Our church hosts an enormous, community-wide Easter celebration at MTSU every year. And over a thousand of us in the church work during that Easter service to make it possible. (John and I do Children's Ministry with four and five year olds.)
We normally have an Easter service for the workers on the Saturday night of Easter weekend. But we completely filled Murphy Center last Easter Sunday. I think Murphy Center holds approximately 12,000 people and our congregation has grown to between five and six thousand. So this year we are having two community Easter services. One Saturday night and one Sunday morning. Some of the volunteers will be working both services. So we had a special, Palm Sunday worship service last night for all the volunteers. It was amazing. I told John that I wish I could worship with that group of 1,000 people EVERY weekend! I always feel God and the Holy Spirit in our services. But there was something very special about last night.
I have to be honest. I have at times had mixed feelings about our MTSU Easter tradition. The community celebration is a production in some ways and I prefer less of a production personally. Part of that preference has to do with how I grew up and was taught to think of anything that was too "prepared" or "polished" as worldly (sinful). That conditioning still affects me at times. But because I work in the church office on a weekly basis, I also know the less visible, behind the scenes preparation of the staff, including everyone going to MTSU and praying over every nook and cranny, for every individual that God will bring on Easter -- that they will find and know Jesus and live transformed lives of following Him.
There will be many in attendance next weekend who are not saved. Easter may be the only day in the whole year when some people even think about going to church. Yeah, they may come to our Easter service to hear good music. But they will also hear the gospel. And a seed may be planted that will be watered in the days and weeks to follow. Last night I really felt a part of something bigger than ourselves; a collective desire to share Jesus with as many people as we can reach in our little community. And the group of worshippers last night are all willing to work in order to see this accomplished.
From time to time, our pastor says, "The dirty little secret about ministry is that, a lot of times, it feels like work." We turn locker rooms into nurseries. We leave MTSU cleaner than it is at any other time of the year. We move our entire campus over, from cribs to sound equipment, to MTSU and back. That takes a lot of work and a lot of workers. Allen always emphasizes that the ministry of Easter is much more about our individual efforts to minister than it will ever be about his sermon.
I told John as we were leaving that, even though I at times have my little "issues" about certain things (which he totally attributes to the odd spiritual environment I grew up in), I love our church and I know God placed me there. One of the signs (to me) that our growth is God's doing is that we are not growing more shallow in our faith as we get larger. And it's not becoming all about us. It's all about sharing what we have and finding ways to help others know Jesus -- even if it involves a lot of hard work. I felt that desire coming from so many hearts in worship last night.
I looked over at Dr. Jackson and Miss Betty last night and wondered what it must feel like for them to see what God has done with this congregation that started out as 25 people in a home Bible study-fellowship 27 or 28 years ago. Allen (their son) loves to tell the story about how embarrassed he was when they told him they were going to name the little church of thirty people "World Outreach Church." But they had big faith in God and they did not limit Him. God has blessed their efforts and I'm thankful this church was here for me when I needed a safe place to land.
I could never feel comfortable in a church where the true gospel was not preached. I don't want to hear humanistic sermons meant to make me feel good about myself. I want to be challenged to live a life of obedience, which is the evidence of my faith. I'm thankful to be a part of a church that is experiencing such growth, both numerically and spiritually. But I'm most thankful that the numeric growth is not the result of a watered down gospel.
We normally have an Easter service for the workers on the Saturday night of Easter weekend. But we completely filled Murphy Center last Easter Sunday. I think Murphy Center holds approximately 12,000 people and our congregation has grown to between five and six thousand. So this year we are having two community Easter services. One Saturday night and one Sunday morning. Some of the volunteers will be working both services. So we had a special, Palm Sunday worship service last night for all the volunteers. It was amazing. I told John that I wish I could worship with that group of 1,000 people EVERY weekend! I always feel God and the Holy Spirit in our services. But there was something very special about last night.
I have to be honest. I have at times had mixed feelings about our MTSU Easter tradition. The community celebration is a production in some ways and I prefer less of a production personally. Part of that preference has to do with how I grew up and was taught to think of anything that was too "prepared" or "polished" as worldly (sinful). That conditioning still affects me at times. But because I work in the church office on a weekly basis, I also know the less visible, behind the scenes preparation of the staff, including everyone going to MTSU and praying over every nook and cranny, for every individual that God will bring on Easter -- that they will find and know Jesus and live transformed lives of following Him.
There will be many in attendance next weekend who are not saved. Easter may be the only day in the whole year when some people even think about going to church. Yeah, they may come to our Easter service to hear good music. But they will also hear the gospel. And a seed may be planted that will be watered in the days and weeks to follow. Last night I really felt a part of something bigger than ourselves; a collective desire to share Jesus with as many people as we can reach in our little community. And the group of worshippers last night are all willing to work in order to see this accomplished.
From time to time, our pastor says, "The dirty little secret about ministry is that, a lot of times, it feels like work." We turn locker rooms into nurseries. We leave MTSU cleaner than it is at any other time of the year. We move our entire campus over, from cribs to sound equipment, to MTSU and back. That takes a lot of work and a lot of workers. Allen always emphasizes that the ministry of Easter is much more about our individual efforts to minister than it will ever be about his sermon.
I told John as we were leaving that, even though I at times have my little "issues" about certain things (which he totally attributes to the odd spiritual environment I grew up in), I love our church and I know God placed me there. One of the signs (to me) that our growth is God's doing is that we are not growing more shallow in our faith as we get larger. And it's not becoming all about us. It's all about sharing what we have and finding ways to help others know Jesus -- even if it involves a lot of hard work. I felt that desire coming from so many hearts in worship last night.
I looked over at Dr. Jackson and Miss Betty last night and wondered what it must feel like for them to see what God has done with this congregation that started out as 25 people in a home Bible study-fellowship 27 or 28 years ago. Allen (their son) loves to tell the story about how embarrassed he was when they told him they were going to name the little church of thirty people "World Outreach Church." But they had big faith in God and they did not limit Him. God has blessed their efforts and I'm thankful this church was here for me when I needed a safe place to land.
I could never feel comfortable in a church where the true gospel was not preached. I don't want to hear humanistic sermons meant to make me feel good about myself. I want to be challenged to live a life of obedience, which is the evidence of my faith. I'm thankful to be a part of a church that is experiencing such growth, both numerically and spiritually. But I'm most thankful that the numeric growth is not the result of a watered down gospel.
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