It Sounds Like a Party!

It was just as the first set of songs in the worship service started that I made my way into the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee ... that blessed morning sacrament that has carried many a preacher through the long hours of a Sunday morning. Adding cream, I looked down and saw a child watching me. As I said good morning, he seemed to be listening to the worship music coming from the other side of the walls. He looked up at me and said, “Pastor Brett, it sounds like a party in there!” And then with a big smile he walked through the door and into the music, almost as if the worship on the other side was calling him forth.

That was an important moment for me. I realized in a very real way that worship has the potential of leading me into a powerful place of joy and celebration in the presence of God. If I listened closely and came to worship with an open heart and mind, I too could join the celebration. I realized that so often I came to worship with a busy mind (always thinking about what is coming next), a critical attitude (always looking for what I don’t like or for what went wrong), a hurried pace, or a tired spirit … and I was the pastor! What if I entered worship with the heart and mind of this child … walking into a celebration? 

This is an important question for all of us. If people were to watch us worship or to hear us from the other side of the wall, what would they say of us? Would our faces show the joy of celebration, our voices sing with life and spirit? Would the welcome we share with others convey the radical hospitality of Jesus? Would our worship make others want to come to the party, too? Even more, would they know that they are God’s guests of honor? I am not making the case for loud, boisterous, or fast paced music (although there is a time and place for these) or any particular worship style. However we do it, worship can be done with joy-filled hearts and spirits ... and it can feel so inviting.

There is one thing I didn’t tell you about the child who followed the music through the door that day. His older brother had just died that week. We had conducted his funeral in that same room and here, that Sunday, the child was being called forth not into death, but into life … to a party! Each week people will enter our worship spaces and they too will be invited to bring their pain and their brokenness and enter the party of new life. As they come to the doors and see our faces may they too have the sense that there is a celebration going on in there … and be drawn in as God’s guests of honor! 

Together we are the hands and the feet of Christ!

Brett