At the top of our weekly Sunday bulletin you'll find these words: "We reserve the right to change the order of service as the Spirit leads." I'm going somewhere with this so follow the journey.As with most chuches there are certain elements that make up our Sunday worship time. There are things that we do pretty much every Sunday. We have a time of welcome and greeting where we get to exchange handshakes and hugs with each other. We have a time of singing which will include at different times hymns, choruses and contemporary praise & worship songs. We like to call it "blended worship." We receive tithes and offerings. There is our pastoral prayer time. There's the reading of Scripture. We also take time to go through some announcements.
I have the privilegde of being very involved with the order of service each week, and each week I begin with what I call a "blank page." Even though the elements of the service may not change much from one Sunday to the next, where they actually happen during the service is up for change each time. But because I try to be sensitive to the "flow" of the service there are certain things I don't like to do. For example, I like to put the announcements at the front or the back of the service, before we start singing, or after the message is done. Once we've sung some songs and are in that place where singing to God takes us, I don't like to interject announcements until after the message. That's just me.
This Sunday we had everything in the order we set, and things began to happen. Two members of our praise team were involved with a car problem and were running late.We also had some choir members with issues that put them behind schedule. It was messin' with our plans.
Thanks to a worship leader who wasn't rattled, a pastor who was ready to go with the flow, and a general sense of God's sovereignty among those involved in the worship ministries that day, service went on and God was honored.
This may seem like a small thing, but for me it was a reminder that God can and will work in us and through us regardless of what's happening around us. The next time it may be a bigger thing. No problem. We reserve the right to change anything, even our very lives, as the Spirit leads.
