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Dear Church Family, In the corporate worship of the church, the pastoral prayer (called “the long prayer” in some traditions) has fallen on hard times. If there are any prayers publicly offered in worship services today, they are often limited to opening and closing prayers for the service and the sermon. Thus, whether intentional or not, prayer can come to be seen as a merely perfunctory transitional element in the worship service. Yet, the prayers of God’s people, along w

Dear Church Family, One of the elements of worship that is often overlooked, or perhaps taken for granted, is the giving and receiving of offerings for the support of the gospel ministry of the church. Some people see the giving of offerings as a sort of due which one gives because they are a member of the ‘club.’ While this may be the historic practice in some churches (thinking of giving to the church as a sort of ‘due’), that is not the case in the Scripture. We do not g

Dear Church Family, For many people, singing is one of the most affective parts of worship. By its very nature, music affects our emotions unlike many other things. When the people of God sing together, they join in one voice giving expression to both the content and the affections of their faith in a unique way. Perhaps this is why, for many, when they think about worship they think only about singing and music. The Uniqueness of Singing Indeed, singing is a unique ele

Dear Church Family, In the last several pastoral reflections, we have been examining the various parts of our corporate worship service. After discussing some of the foundational principles of worship and what it means to prepare for worship, last time we looked at the salutation and response (these previous reflections are available online at the blog linked above). This week, we come to the call to worship and the invocation. As we saw in our examination of the salutati