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Pastor · Sunday Schedule · FBC
News
2002
From the Pastor
"Come To Me"
What draws people to worship? Is it the music, the preaching, the way the service flows and entertains? I don't think so. I think it mostly has to do with an honest searching. People want to understand their lives in the context of the Divine. They want to be with God. They want to know how God fits into their lives.
People come to worship because they want to understand their lives in the larger picture. They come because the pieces of their lives don't always fit together. They come because huge weights have been placed on their shoulders and they need help. They come because the world is torn to pieces and they need hope. They come because life has been good to them and they need some avenue for expressing their gratitude. They come because as good as life has been to them they are aware of how fragile everything can be.
They come because they are struggling. They come because there are so many mysteries as to why everything happens the way it does.
They come because for all they have they are afraid it will all be taken away. They come because they are genuinely asking, am I doing what God wants me to do? Is there something more? Is there something I should be paying attention to that I might be ignoring?
They come because deep inside themselves there is a desire for greater wholeness and they know that wholeness cannot simply be achieved but must be received. They come because they are drawn. They feel the pull of it. They are beckoned. They come because even if the music is sung off key and the preacher goes on too long, they needed that time apart from the rest of life to sit and pray and be with God.
I never assume a trivial reason for someone being in worship. When I look out across the congregation on Sunday morning I feel a deep respect for how serious people are in their searching and conversation with God. For some it may be a last hope, for others it is as important as breathing to be in worship on Sunday mornings. It is a disciplined part of their walk with Christ. I believe we are never more human than when we are in worship and when we love one another.
Worship should never be thought of as something we have to sell people on or coax them into or convince them of. The gateway to worship is an invitation to explore your life in relationship with God and to be with God in the company of others who God asks you to love. Worship is being with God in the company of one another.
Worship is a choice that is made by you as you begin to listen to your own life but in that listening whether it is panic or turmoil or simple gratitude, it is God calling you out of the stuff of your life to sit with Him, come be with Him, worship Him, and in the end enjoy Him forever.
Dr. David W. Andersen
            
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