9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have…
How do we remember God’s story, week in and week out? Short answer: The service and all the stuff we do in the service. This is where we’re going over the next several weeks. The service itself tells a story.The stuff that we do tells the gospel story. When we preach, we preach from the Bible–the very Word of God,…
Let’s go back to the beginning. Jesus’ Bible, the Apostles’ Bible, is the Old Testament. Christian worship finds its roots deep in the Old Testament. From the beginning of the Scriptures, we see chosen people meeting God in sacred spaces. Now, when we survey the theology that undergirds what is happening in the tabernacle and the temple, I am struck…
Our primary point of contact with the church is the Sunday morning worship gathering. I’ve grown up in church, so I’ve sat through services almost every Sunday for 30 years, and in all of those we’ve sang, someone has preached, and sometimes other stuff happens, depending on the church and the service–prayers, offerings, recitation of creeds, baptisms, the Lord’s Supper,…