Follow the Light

"Just follow the Light that shines through the darkest night. Just follow the Hope that brings vision to our sight. Just follow the dream that leads to the Prince of Peace. Wherever you are, look to the star and follow the Light." That says it all folks! A simple enough task right? If I know one thing with absolute certainty, it is that we as humans make "simple tasks," VERY DIFFICULT!
I've been listening over and over to the Christmas musical and so many things stick out to me each and every time, but one of the insistent ones at this time is, "just follow the Light." This makes so much sense, but yet we get so confused and allow ourselves to get, "Lost in Translation." We've been brainstorming and discussing in many meetings, "how do we help reach people?" "What do we do to reach the people that are here?" "What do we do to reach the un-churched?" And I think we get so caught up in pleasing everyone sometimes that we forget to do that simple thing, "just follow the Light!" Follow the Light! Follow our Lord, look at His life, see how He reached people? He spoke in parables often, He met with people that were, unseemly, or considered bad, lowly, unclean, etc. He communicated in many ways, he would draw pictures to help the disciples and others understand. He made things, "Come to Life!" They believed what He was saying because He made it believable!

As I've been explaining to people why we are doing the Christmas Musical/Cantata on Christmas Eve at 10 pm and for the community on Dec 18, I realized I kept using the phrase, "Make the story come to life." I was reading Mark Need's blog, and he was saying something that I had been thinking as well. I want to share it with you. (If I get a few words wrong I apologize Mark, I couldn't get it to "copy" into my blog. (I'm still learning, hehe!)

Words of Mark Need:
"As I continue to try to improve my preaching, I ran across a thought that struck me. The idea goes something like this: If you generalize about something you make it seem far away, but if you are very specific it seems close...We speak of God and Heaven and Salvation...Yet, they seem so far away. We speak of a God that did amazing things...years ago. We preach about a Heaven...in the skies. We accept a salvation...for the future. My aim is to narrow the gap. What is God doing, RIGHT NOW! Where is Heaven, RIGHT HERE! What does salvation mean for our lives, RIGHT HERE AND NOW!..For teachers and pastors, our aim continues to be that of offering a better glimpse of God at work in the people's lives...Not just long ago...Not in others' lives...Not in the future...but God at work and play, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!" (I didn't include everything in the post so I encourage you to look at the rest of his post and his blog. It will make you think! You can click on his link from my page.)

YES!!!!!!!!! That's it! We need to bring things to the HERE, the NOW! And make them come ALIVE!! I feel that it is our job to help come along with the pastor's and help "bring Heaven down to earth, " to use a Granger phrase. We are all a team, and we have all been, "called" to help make disciples. So, here is my question.
How do we continue to make our services, traditional and contemporary, bring Heaven down to earth, and make the gospel come ALIVE?
I would love to hear all of your ideas and see us get a good discussion going so that we can start acting. To close with another phrase from the Granger conference, so that we can, "Stop Talking... and Start Doing!"
God Bless You All, I look forward to hearing from you1
Heidi:)

"The Best Life Ever" Use of Time, Talent, & Treasure

As we get ready for this week we focus on the, "Use of Time," as I said in my e-mail to the praise team, we need to remember as the hymn says that we need Him every hour. We need to remember Him in everything we do and take the time to stop and remember that we can, "stop the merry-go-round and get off!" He will help us if we choose to let Him.
I would like to ask for ideas for the upcoming sundays, because I know that He is leading you, just as much as He is leading me. Here are the upcoming dates, themes and scriptures:
Nov. 2 - Use of Talent - (also emphasizing Spiritual Gifts) I Cor. 12:4-6 and I Peter 4:10 - music so far, "Father, Spirit, Jesus" "I'm Not Ashamed" the Cherub choir will be helping for this sunday.
Nov. 9 - Use of Treasure - 2 Cor. 9:1-7 and texts on contentment
Nov. 16 - Thanks Be To God! All church Thanksgiving Event - Psalm 100- We will be having one service melding both traditional and contemporary together for this service from 10:10 am-11:30 am. The Thanksgiving Dinner will follow the service.
Nov. 23 - Christ the King Sunday - Matthew 25:31-46 "A Kingdom of Service"

I will add Advent Season soon. And for those of you that weren't at rehearsal on Sunday I need you to check your calendars for either Dec. 17 or 18. We are looking at doing a community service of the Christmas Cantata/Musical and then doing it for the 10:00 pm Chritmas Eve service.

I am eager to hear your ideas and I leave you with this question to ponder.
How can we reach people? In and out of our church, what can we use? Music, video, drama, readings, testimonies, the arts, etc. Let me know your ideas on these services.

God Bless!!

Music for Team/Rehearsal

This coming sunday we will be singing: Better Is One Day, Everything Glorious, Your Love Oh Lord, Your Love Is Extravagant, and Because Of Your Love. The theme for this week is "The Best Life Ever: The Life You've Only Imagined" Scripture-I Corinthians 13
If you have time please read through the scripture, listen and read through the words of the songs and think about how we need to help bring across the message of love that God has asked us to share and by doing that WE WILL have the "Best Life Ever." It is better to live in our Lord's house and to follow as he has instructed. As the scripture says, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbal." As a vocalist and (an accidental musician) this phrase really resonates with me because if we aren't communicating in love as we help lead worship than what we are putting out there is like that loud gong or annoying cymbal. I know we are always going to have complaints about some things, that some are not going to understand or like a new style of worship, but that is human nature and a natural occurence. We work very hard at what we are doing and what we do comes from our hearts and that comes through to people. God's message is "resonating" with me and I truly feel and have been told by people that His message is coming through on sunday mornings. So when we come face to face with negativity or naysayers we must do as we are called to do and "turn the other cheek" and continue to spread His message of Love throughout our church and community!
We pray Lord, that we continue to keep true to Your message and let not our words be heard but that You be heard through us! Amen!

Concerns

Hey Everybody! I wanted to address some of your concerns about using a blog for our ministry. First if there are things that you would like to talk privately with me please feel free to do that by calling, e-mailing, or speaking face to face with me. There are times that emails don't get to people or it's more difficult to have a group discussion by email. I am hoping that we are able to use this as a place to open up healthy discussion for our ministy. You are always welcome to post something as anonymous, that is not a problem. I truly feel that this can be helpful if we work at it. Thanks for your concerns, because it means you are at least paying attention! :) Heidi

Praise Team

Hey everyone! I'm going to get started at trying this blog thing! Now I know I'm probably not using it correctly yet because I'm using it as an information center first. But i'm also hoping that we can start using it as a place to discuss our thoughts and ideas about contemporary worship and how to reach out to more of the community.
Practice on Sunday was a new start to practice we were able to use sound as we practiced and we are going to be teaching some of you how to work on the sound board so that we can work on our sound at practice rather than sunday morning. I felt we made a step in the right direction. We have lots of things to talk about and discuss but at least we're starting. I'll be back to write more later this evening.

God Bless,
Heidi:)

we're not quite there yet :)

hey everyone, it's kara. we're trying to get Heidi plugged in to the wonderful world of blogging, so strap on your helmets. it could be a bumpy ride.

[see, I can post things like this because Heidi doesn't know how to delete them yet. Yay me!]