Last week we considered what it means for us to be a people in covenant. We have agreed to be church here together because we have agreed to be God’s people together. That is our covenant, our agreement and we offer it to each other and we honor it because of our covenant with Jesus Christ who is the reason we gather together as church. We are covenant people who worship together. Today, I want us to think together about what it means for us to be a worshiping people.

When we worship, we pay honor to God. The word worship is actually a combination of two words, worth which describes value, and the suffix –ship which describes a desirable quality, such as leadership. In other words, God has the quality of high worth. We gather together to sing and pray together because God is worthy of our honor.

What do we do when we worship God? I agree with the writer who says, “The worship service is for God’s people. It should be designed to aid God’s people in approaching God with honor, praising God with joy, receiving God with faith, hearing God with certainty, and obeying God with eagerness. When nonbelievers come (and we should go out into the highways and byways to bring them into our services) they come as guests given the privilege of observing a group of people who really believe God is present, who really love each other, who really live in grace and freedom, and who really act transformed and content” (www.freemethodistchurch.ofr/magazine/articles/Mar-Apr, p1).

When we gather to worship God, our emotional needs may be met as we meet family and friends here and enjoy their company and as we get to know people better. We may hear music that excites and soothes us, a sermon that inspires and energizes us for the week, and we may discover the opportunity to give and share our resources with each other and as far from here as the Gulf Coast of the United States and every other place of great need in the world. But the purpose of worship is so that we can come together to praise and honor God, and every thing that comes from our worship and service is a gift from God.

I know it is not true for everyone, but I do not remember not going to church. It is just what my family did. So, I do not remember the first worship service I ever attended. I have no memory of the first time my parents made me come in from my Saturday play, so that we could begin the Saturday night ritual of getting bathed, getting my hair fixed up, laying out my clothes, and watching my father polish my shoes, and watching my parents distribute the offering money all in preparation for Sunday school and church the next day. It was never mere habit, it remains more than a discipline, worship is the food that feeds my soul and I cannot imagine not being in worship regularly.

I do not remember the first time I was taken to church, but I do remember the first church song I ever learned. It is a song of affirmation, and love, and protection. It was taught to me by a loving church. I bet many of you learned it too. It is in our hymnal, but we can sing the first verse without looking at the words; join me:

“Jesus loves me this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong,
They are week, but he is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me; yes Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me; the Bible tells me so.”
(Chalice Hymnal, #113)

We sing that song and tell that story as we open our doors wide, and open our hearts wider because we live in a time of great interest in all things spiritual, it may even be a time of great awakening.

Did you read the late August issue of Newsweek? The one with the cover article 17 pages long dealing with “Spirituality in America”? Among the articles is the result of a survey of just over 1000 people conducted by Newsweek and Belief net. The question that I found most interesting is this one: Why do you practice religion?

Among the responses to the is the reason we come to service here. People said they practice their faith to forge a personal relationship with God, to help become a better person and live a moral life; to find peace and happiness; to connect with something larger than yourself; to give your life meaning and structure, and to be part of a community (Newsweek August 29/September 5, 2005; p.48).

Worship in this time needs to address the needs of a man not unlike we are. He is rooted in a kind of religious experience, but he is looking for something deeper. He calls himself Brother Maynard and this is the church he is looking for:

He is longing for a church that is low-key with worship that is both intellectual and emotional; and that allows for a church with deep interpersonal relationships; he wants his work in the church, and his spiritual journey to be affirmed, he is exhausted by leaders who push their people with more and more rules about what it means to be holy, and leaving the feeling that one is never quite good enough to be in the church.

He is looking for a church that has a structure that allows for leadership from laypeople, he wants a church that can speak to the culture around it; and that is outwardly focused, and yet does not look at evangelism as just one more means to put extra bodies in the pews, but as a means of helping people know Christ for themselves. He is looking for a church that understands traditions such as Advent and Lent, that is comfortable with the sacraments, and that knows the value of story (www.emergingchurch.info/reflection/brothermaynard/index.htm). It sounds like Brother Maynard may be looking for the Disciples.

There is a spiritual awakening happening as people look beyond themselves to find meaning in their lives. As people look for spiritual community, the church of Jesus Christ needs to be ready to teach and preach and help people find their place in the community of faith.

We understand that we are all invited to bring all of who we are to worship – our deepest emotions, our best thoughts, our five senses. We see these stained glass windows, this room, and each other. We hear the word as it is spoken and sung, we touch each other with Christian affection, we smell the scents and aromas of each other, and we taste the bread and cup. When the Brother Maynards of the world come to us, we can help them get to know a people who abide in the presence of God.

As we worship, we remember that God has kept us and watched over us, we mourn the terrible loss of life and we celebrate that more lives have been saved than lost in Katrina’s aftermath. As we remember we feel in our own spirits the mercies of God and so we worship God. And as we worship we present our selves, our whole selves to God. Why would we bring less than our best selves to worship? That is why people saved their best clothes for Sunday morning, it was a way to show respect for the one being worshiped. Paul says we are to give ourselves to God, body, mind, soul as a living sacrifice. We sacrifice when we give something valuable for something even more valuable. Stories are emerging from Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama refusing to be rescued so that people in even more need might be saved first. They were not unconcerned about their lives, they were simply willing to wait, to give up their seat on a boat so that someone older, younger, sicker, could go first. That is sacrifice.

When we give our lives to God, our lives become sacred. And if our lives are sacred, we bring the best we can to honor God now. The past has brought us here. I am grateful for these last twenty five years of ministry. And I am grateful for what came before.

I thank God for United Christian Church, my home church whose old building had a sign at the top of the threshold to the sanctuary that said, “Enter to Worship – Depart to Serve”. It taught me that to worship God is to be present at church and present to the needs of people everywhere. I would not be who I am without Sunday school teachers and youth leaders, including Dick Wing from First Community Church here; and Delhaven Christian Church where I was a student associate. That is one of the places that I learned about worship leadership, pastoral care, and ministry to youth and families, both highly functioning and deeply dysfunctional. And I am grateful for First Christian Church in Lynwood where I did my first interim in a congregation that still exists but was in deep decline at the time. My favorite seminary professor, Ron Osborn advised me when I was there, “Toni, it’s good to get the hard one out of the way first”. I am grateful for Faith United, where I served as an elder and Sunday School teacher, and for Bethany Christian Church in Lincoln, Nebraska where I was the interim and learned after years on the General Staff how to preach regularly, and how to prepare for weddings and funerals. The past has brought us here. And the future calls us; we do not know what it holds, but I refuse to be fearful and anxious about it. As we seek a community in the presence of God, we have this present moment and God is here with us and it and we are in a holy time. Let’s present ourselves to as vital people as we worship God.

As we present ourselves, we are urged to let ourselves be transformed, deeply changed by the renewal of our minds. Worship helps us seek community in the presence of God and it helps us to be a community transformed by the presence of God. When we gather for worship, we follow an order of worship, in some places it is called the liturgy, and that word simply means, “the work of the people.” Transformed people do the work of worship with joy. In fact transformed ministry and worship is reflected in the title of this sermon. The title comes from an article I read [in Leadership magazine] some months ago.

The article tells the story of a man who had been a youth pastor at two or three congregations. When he was called to be the lead pastor of a congregation, he told the search committee that he was at heart a youth pastor and he would always be a youth pastor. So when he accepted the call, he did what he called YM4BP – Youth Ministry for Big People. What is that? If you have been to church camp or other youth events, you know that some of the best, some of the most meaningful experiences of your life happen there. Lasting friendships are made there, calls to ministry are heard and answered, leadership is developed there, and worship can be life changing. Youth Ministry for Big People does not leave us unchanged and doing what we have always done. It renews our minds and transforms our lives. It causes deep changes in us as we gather together. We are not called to mindless conformity, doing worship and ministry in ways that fit an uncomfortable mold and yet do not feed us. Let’s be youthful, no matter how old we are, and bring some freshness and life to worship and ministry here. So what is Youth Ministry for Big People?

Youth Ministry for Big People is fun. There is joy in honoring God, that is why we laugh and sing together and care for each other. It is faith forming, my own faith was deepened so that I responded to a call to ministry as a young person. My faith is still being formed, and I pray yours is too. We do not ever want to get so settled that we cannot hear what new thing God is saying to us. That is why Youth Ministry for Big People is challenging; we are stretched in our church and worship life to listen to God, to respond to God, to ask what shall I do, to pray for an answer, and to commit ourselves to the task when the answer comes. And there is something about the way God has been the good news in us that makes us want to share the good news with others. You want to know the secret to church growth? There is none. It comes when people share their joy, when they develop and practice and nurture the disciplines of the faith – study, prayer, giving, worship and service, outreach and invitation and hospitality. It happens when they not only know the good news, but share the good news with others.

Worship is about coming to God with our lives as an offering and with our minds renewed and fixed on all of the possibilities and power given to us by God to discern, to learn, to imagine, to do the will of God. When we do, we will see the new heaven and the new earth, we will be brought together to lead changed lives and to in turn change the community. Imagine a church filled with passionate excited people, helping people live lives with renewed spiritual and emotional and physical health.

Many of us may have grown up in the church, but more and more of the people who we know, and more and more of the people who will find there way here did not, or they are looking for a church different than the one they have known. They will come to check us out. They will need a word from a church that invites them into the community of joy, that helps form their faith, that asks them to commit to God, and to share the good news of the love of God in Jesus Christ. They will look to us to show them how, and I believe we will can do it.

For a long time now, I have spent part of each Saturday night doing the things that get me ready for church. So I still make sure I am cleaned up, and that my clothes are in order, my shoes are polished, my hair is combed, and my offering is ready, all so that I can present myself to the community of faith and to God for worship. And that first church song I learned still moves me with its simple truth --

Yes, Jesus still loves us, the Bible still witnesses to his love; little ones still belong to him, and big ones do too. Our weakness is made strong in his strength and that is reason to honor and worship God. “I appeal to you therefore brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12.1).

To God be the glory. Amen.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor