What a weekend we've had! Gary and I braved the roads yesterday morning and made it to church but quickly recognized that the roads were not in good enough condition to have the whole congregation roaming about. I hope that the unexpected time off was relaxing for each of you but I can't wait to see you again next Sunday!
I was thinking, this afternoon, about how appropriate it was that if we had to miss a week of corporate worship, it would happend during our "Bible and the Bush" series. One of the biggest struggles that Tracy and I had while in Burkina was the abscence of coprorate worship. We met regulalry with local Dagara to share Christ with them and help them to begin churches but we didn't have fully formed churches to worship with. Beyond that, Sunday was market day which was the biggest day in their week for buying, selling and socializing. Sunday was, unfortunately, the one day of the week that we absolutely could never have success in a village. No one was around on Sundays. As a result of that schedule, we almost never had the privilege of worshipping together with other believers on Sundays which forced us to be creative about worship. We had recorded messages mailed to us, Bible studies we went through and other attempts that we made to facilitate worship. It was a constant battle to find opportunities to worship God outside of our traditional method of corporate worship.
So, for this week's MMMM, I want to pose a question to each of you. Do you know how to worship when corporate worship as we know it, is removed? What do you do on a day like yesterday when the regular worship we are accustumed to is not available?
I'll share with you what I do and then I'll enjoy listening to each of you share your own practice. As a family we have a shortened time of family worship. It was interesting today to listen to Grace who was very dissapointed that we had to miss worship. She was glad we could worship together as a family. Of course we condensed the time for the sake of Grace and Kessed, but singing together and sharing a lesson from the Bible are easy to do and help teach them the importance of worship, even if we aren't at the church building. Secondly, and this is something that I do as a regular practice, I podcast a number of sermons. This is necessary because, as a pastor, I don't generally get to listen to Bible teaching because I'm usually doing the teaching. I need to find ways to be challenged by the Word as it is preached by others. Men like Mark Driscoll, John Piper, John MacArthur and others challenge me to walk more intimately with God.
Now it's your turn. How do you worship when corporate worship simply isn't a possibility?
PS: Please pray for the Youth Pastor Team this week. We have narrowed our search down to three candidates and we completed a phone interview with one candidate last week. Tonight, Monday night, we have two more phone interviews, after which we must go through the difficult process of determining which one should be brought in for face to face interviews. Your prayers will help facilitate that process. Have a great week!
Posted on
Monday, February 18, 2008
by Micah Fries