4 May 2009 249 views One Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Hello out there.  This Sunday was great… and I wasn’t even there! :)  I joined about 25 men in our church for a Men’s Retreat during the weekend.  We left Friday afternoon and got back Sunday evening; we had an awesome time as men seeking God and drawing closer together.

Meanwhile, back at Laurelwood things went smoothly and without any glitches.  I have spent over a year now intentionally training and raising up other worship leaders within our church body.  There are now 5 people on my worship team who have led a service and 3 of those 5 could do an entire service without me there.  It is so exciting to see people stepping up and to empower them and free them into ministry.  It takes a lot more work to raise up other people (simply because I’m a control freak and it’s “easier for me to do it myself”)… but the rewards are so awesome and we’re starting to see the fruits of it at Laurelwood.

So, Angie Parr planned the service, led and executed the whole thing; and everyone I talked to said she did an awesome job!  Also, we had a lay leader in our church preach because Pastor Mike was at the Men’s Retreat too.  And we had another lay person lead communion… how cool to see the Body of Christ stepping up and working together.  It’s so awesome to see that Sunday church can happen when the Church gets involved.  Praise God!

Here’s what Angie did on Sunday:

• Call to Worship
• Beautiful One (Tim Hughes)
• Indescribable (Laura Story, but done like the Tomlin cover)
• Communion (with songs sung while the servers pass out the elements)
• Once Again (Matt Redman)
• The Wonderful Cross (Tomlin arr. of hymn)
• Bless That Wonderful Name (Old Gospel Spiritual I used to sing growing up in a Foursquare Church… I have no idea who wrote it; I can’t even find it on CCLI)
• Mission Focus: Testimony of “Serve Day”
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Always (United; great song that not enough people know about.  We started doing this song at Youth Group and it has really crossed over well for our people on Sunday.  Click the link to hear it on youtube)
• Message: “Peace in the Valley” – Psalm 23 (Steve Tompert)
• Always (ended with the whole song; kind of a reprise)

For more Weekend Reviews, you can check out Fred McKinnon’s blog