Update... 27th September

I wasn’t present at the last Church Council meeting, so I am still catching up with things.
However, one of the items that was presented (and some have contacted me about), is the matter of moving to one Sunday Service due to the lack of resources to run 2 services. Currently we are averaging a combined attendance of 60. As was expected, numbers have dropped since we were in lock down.
I am not pushing any agenda of my own on this, only God’s agenda. Remember that since before the pandemic, God gave me Isaiah 43:19, “For I am about to do a new thing.” God has been doing some new things in our church since the pandemic. We have had to think and act differently in a number of ways, including in our worship patterns. So we are faced with the challenge of not looking so much to our own preferences in music and style and times of worship, but rather what God would want and what would best lift up the name of Jesus in our midst.
Worship has always been a bit of a contentious issue in the church, going as far back as Genesis 4 (verses 3-5), with a squabble about an offering to God. The actual word “worship” was first mentioned in Genesis 22:5. So it is nothing new. Music is a great communicator, but music for music’s sake is not worship. Music is a wonderful means of human expression, but God wants us to engage our hearts. We have some beautiful music and liturgies in the church, both traditional and contemporary, but as marvellous and grand and brilliantly theological they may be (God gave them to us anyway), He wants our hearts. As someone has said, “The heart tips it from music to worship.”
All that I ask at this stage, is that you pray and consider this as a possibility. Change can be scary for all of us. We will listen to you and discuss this in council. I don’t see this as a business decision, but an opportunity to be led by the Holy Spirit as to how He would want us to worship and lift up the name of Jesus in Scripture, song and sacrament into the future. Please be praying:
“Jesus be the centre of my life...From beginning to the end it will always be, it’s always been You Jesus,.. Jesus be the centre of Your Church. Jesus be the centre of your Church And every knee will bow And every tongue shall confess You Jesus... From my heart to the Heavens, Jesus be the centre, It’s all about You, Yes it’s all about You.” (Darlene Zschech)
 
BC
Brenton Chomel - Chairman