How the Gospel Shapes Our Gathering, Part 3

Here is part 3 of this excellent series on how the gospel shapes our gathering as a church. Philosophically, this is right in line with my thinking as I plan our services every week. We even use a song catalog and track when we've sung our songs so that we don't fall into a rut of singing stuff too frequently, or miss out on good songs (this catalog was started well before I came to our church thanks to good leadership before me!) I work to have us sing the BEST of the traditional hymns and modern gospel-focused music. As the author says in a future article, "In our case, we aimed to identify about 150 (this is about our number too) songs that we wanted our people to sing. These songs had to have singable tunes and worthy lyrics. I wanted some of the songs to stretch us, but I also intended for most of the songs to stay within our cultural and musical wheelhouse. We could add and subtract here and there, but a defined catalog of songs for our church was the goal."

As you look at our gatherings you can see the call/praise > confession > assurance > a prayer/song of illumination > preaching > response> benediction pattern in our weekly services for the past several years. I believe our people have bene greatly enriched by this.

I love the clarity of what is written here and will use it in the future to help train those who help plan our gatherings.

You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.