Ready For Worship

As a pastor I spend a lot of time preparing for a Sunday service.  I’m lucky at McKendree with a small but attentive worship team that works on the details of the bulletin and selects readings and hymns.  I spend weeks reading whatever I can to collect text, ideas, opinions and supportive material for the message.  I spend as much if not more time in the Bible itself looking for supportive verses for the key verse.

What do you do as a congregant?  I believe that the people in the pews should also prepare in advance.  I would concentrate on three elements. 

1)      Prayer.  Pray for your family, friends, the pastor, organist, the worship leader, local and world events.  Pray to listen to the whispers of God to settle your mood before service time.

2)      Read the Bible.  If you can find the target verse for Sunday’s service, read it ahead of time.  Read a Psalm, pick a book and read through it. Don’t worry if you don’t complete a book in a week, God’s patient.

3)      Cleanse.  Try and cleanse yourself of the stress of the week (or even the stress of the morning).  Come to service ready to pray, sing, and listen.

Remember that God is the object of worship.  If you spend most of the worship thinking of your problems of the day, or the grape juice stain on the altar carpet, try to re-center and lift those things up to God.  Hey, the problems will probably still be there, let’s take a break.

Be a participant, not a spectator.  Sing the songs with energy, pray from your heart.  Be an active listener. take notes, read along in your Bible.  Fight distraction, don’t focus on the baby, your neighbors cough or that weird hair on the pastors moustache.

Take the sermon with you.  Find the action in the message.  Embrace it. Live it. Share it.