A few months ago I planned a special worship evening. I felt that our congregation weren’t really engaging in the Sunday morning sung worship, and as a worship leader I felt it my responsibility to step up and offer a time of extended worship to try and break through the tiredness of ritualised repetitive Sunday mornings and stoke the fires of love.
Below is what I planned for the service.
Here’s the invitation I put in the notices: You are warmly invited to join us for about an hour on Friday evening as we engage in intimate meditative worship to prepare our hearts and minds to fix on God’s leading this weekend. There will be space to investigate fresh worship expressions inspired by both Old and New Testaments, and opportunities to minister to each other through prayer. Renew yourself in his presence and praise away the clouds! Open to everyone, but come prepared to engage. There are no back row seats available!
I had about 25-30 songs ready, and with a small group of musicians with me we led people through five or so songs before encouraging them to move around the hall and visit one of the focus areas. After a period of reflection inspired by A3 print-outs in each focus area, we’d come back together for another set of songs. The service would continue to alternate.
Focus area one – Personal prayer: Laminated prayer prompts regarding the pursuit of God, challenging matters of the heart and personal sacrifice in our devotion.
Prayer card 1 (seeking)
Prayer card 2 (submission)
Prayer card 3 (relation)
Prayer card 4 (listening)
Prayer card 5 (priorities)
Focus area two – Loving each other: Pens, paper, envelopes and postbox for people to write encouraging letters or prayers. Membership book to be handy.
Encouragement card
Focus area three – Communion: Breads from around the world signify that different cultures and ages are unified in worship of Christ. Invite people to go and share communion with other people. Note to self: Consider getting a bottle of wine and replacing the label with “Jesus Vineyard, 33AD” (I didn’t do this in the end, what with the Church’s position on actual wine.
Communion card
Focus area four – Spiritual gifts: It is no good to sit back and let church happen around us.
Spiritual gifts card
Using gifts card
Gift explanation
Focus area five – Anointing of the Holy Spirit: [Exodus 30:22] speaks of a Holy anointing oil. With this oil God’s tent and all the furniture of it were to be anointed; it was to be used also in the consecration of the priests. I actually made up some of the oil as detailed in Exodus, and drew attention to it as biblical apothecary!
Priesthood of all believers card
Holy anointing oil card
Focus area six – About the cross: An area to focus on Jesus and the cross. Contemplation of the sufferings of Christ during his crucifixion. I’ve got a friend who managed to make me a replica cruxifiction nail for people to examine.
Jesus loves you card
The nails of the crucifixion card
Despite overrunning by about an hour the feedback from the evening was very positive, and the diaconet have asked me to do another! People were a bit unsure about moving around to begin with, but were soon reading through the texts and thinking about the above.
You’re welcome to use any of the above, just drop me an email and let me know how you got on!