2009: A Year for Worship

We started out the evening looking for aliens - 90 of them to be exact. They were hidden all over the church and the person who found the most was given the "Silver Alien" award. The winner of The Way's first Silver Alien award was Emily Robertson. She found some crazy amount like 38-40 or something (even though she had some helpers). The idea behind this (and other) hide and seek games came from Matthew 13 where it says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” We talked about how when it comes to worship we need to be obsessed with finding God. We had some discussions about what we all think of when we think of worship and what we think worship looks like. When thinking about worship (and other spiritual disciplines as well) it can be helpful to compare it to a house. You start off with a foundation which builds on our love for God, our desire to honor Him, the obsession of wanting to be with Him. Then you work on the structure of the house and this is sort of like the "why" we worship. We always need to be checking the why to make sure it is for the right reasons. Otherwise you could have some major problems. Like a house could have water damage, mold or termites if the structure is not kept in check. And as you grow in your faith the "why" you worship could grow and expand, just like adding additions to the structure of your house. The cosmetics of the house is like the "how" we worship. This can always be changing as we grow and change. We may try something for awhile and then not feel like it is affective anymore and try something else. The evening was great and included some Pew-Ball, Sardines, Movies, a ball drop at midnight (except the ball was a computer monitor, and the drop was off of the building), and all kinds of junk food. There was a lot of fun had by all and to go along with all of the fun we had some serious discussions about worship, a gag gift exchange where you had to use the gift you ended up with to describe worship, a prayer/quiet room, and about 25 minutes of intense worship through song.

~ Charles.