Submitted by Pastor LayneIt was a great morning at church today! Our morning service included two dramas, the second one, Company's Coming, featured actors Rob, Jenny and Jocelyn participating (L-R in the photo below). In future we might remember this as drama Sunday at FCF!
The first drama was extra special to me as it featured the Church drama debut of two of our kids: Noelle and Tyson. And, as if that's not enough, it also included a cute and unscheduled walk-on performance by Steven (pictured to the right) .
God taught us something this morning, when Steven, one of our newest and youngest members (3 years) debuted in the drama after an earlier appearance of singing and dancing in front of the stage during the opening song set. As Steven sang and danced, I wondered what people were thinking and feeling. I tried to explain to an apologetic Karen, Steven's Mom, that I was the one who needed to apologize, because I had encouraged Steven to continue dancing after he said yes to the question: Are you dancing for Jesus Steven (I asked Karen's permission to include this on our Church blog)?
But Karen still apologized and gave me permission to include all this on the Church blog, Her apology went something like: Sorry about that, this is all so new to Steven. He loves it and just wants to experience everything!
I confess that Karen's apology distracted me while listening to Pastor Mike’s sermon. As I contemplated the singing-dancing-drama-debuting Steven I think God grabbed my attention while Mike talked about including all people and stopping to listen for God all the time.
My conclusions: I think God was teaching us about who he wants us to be as we watched this boy freely worship. God was inviting each of us in our own ways to focus him and perform for an audience of One during our worship services, something I was not able to do as successfully as Steven this morning. Karen's apology reminded me of Jesus love for children and how Jesus tells us that we can only enter his life-filled kingdom like a child.
Karen, there’s no need to apologize for this morning, God taught us a lot through Steven. He was a living example of how to stop and listen for God!
1 comment:
Paul speaks of being "undignified" in his worship. David is criticized (by his wife, no less) for dancing in front of the servant girls. Freedom in worship has long been alien to most of God's people, which surely grieves him. Perhaps our problem is that we are so self-conscious at church, when we should go there in particular to be God-conscious. That's what the "audience of One" thing is all about. It's a matter of pride and ego really - and only the Holy Spirit working in us can resolve it.
Conrad captured this in the drawing he did for our Kingdom of God series last year. He shows Jesus singing with a guitar in the market square and a young child dancing freely and unselfconsciously before Him. This to Conrad was the Kingdom of God, and I for one was significantly helped by this image.
Our current Living Faith series is working on this a bit - the focus on things like centering prayer, and even lectio divina, are trying to take us out of our self-consciousness into a beautiful and glorious awareness of God as the center of our worship. Baby steps, perhaps, but if we're really to understand worship, then we must start with God at the center.
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