My journey as a pastor - Church

I began my new life in a Baptist church. And the Bible College I attended was baptistic in its view of church. They thought (and taught) that liturgy, having something written and repeated, was not spiritual. The irony is, the Baptist churches I attended did have a liturgy, they just called it ‘the order of service’ – you knew what was going to happen and when in each service. The church service was always: welcome, couple of hymns, offering, special music, and sermon. And you always knew exactly what the ushers would pray after receiving the offering! When I started attending the Alliance Church in Memphis, while the Sunday night service was a good bit more unpredictable because of the opportunities for unplanned “testifying”, it was pretty much the same thing. No church I ever attended had regular Scripture reading, and (Sunday) prayer was limited to a rather brief “Pastoral Prayer.”

So, when I began pastoring that’s what I went with. I was constantly working to incorporate a contemporary aspect to the service to promote worship, but I confess, I did not see the need to read the Scriptures each week and I have a feeling that my “pastoral prayers” were probably pretty weak. But God was working.

The Lord began showing me that the reading of the Scripture was an ancient practice. The Jews systematically read through the Scriptures. I don’t mean simply the passage someone was going to preach from that day. No, they read through The Law (first five books of the Bible) every year. They systematically read through the Prophets as well. The Apostles continued this practice. They commanded, “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture” and the early church was obedient to the apostolic charge. I slowly became convinced and convicted of this and established a Scripture reading program in which we publicly read through entire books of the Bible.

I still remember sitting in a Methodist Church in Jackson, MS when God spoke to me about prayer. They had a “time of prayer” and I was convicted: this was ancient and apostolic. I began to research this. The liturgical churches often had a Litany, “a series of petitions for use in church services, usually recited by the clergy and responded to in a recurring formula by the people.” That is,
Leader: We pray for our pastor and all the pastors in this area.
People: Lord, hear our prayer / or, Lord, have mercy
Then I found that liturgical worship was very old and I found the early prayers. Man, they prayed for everything. Every week. So I printed those prayers found in the four or five oldest liturgies and they became my pastoral prayers.

And speaking of Liturgy, when I discovered it wasn’t merely the “dead ritual of dead churches” but ancient and apostolic, I began to incorporate that as well. Every Communion service was now always observed as a liturgical service. Was this stuffy ritual that I resorted to because I was no longer operating under the Spirit? No, this was a purposeful effort to make this richer for us. Here is the congregation’s copy:
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Communion Service

Old Testament Reading

Pastor: Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
All: We praise You; we bless You; we worship You; we glorify You; we magnify You; we give thanks to You for Your great mercy. O Lord heavenly King, God the Father Almighty; O Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God,;  Lamb of God Who takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us. You Who sit at the right-hand of God the Father, receive our prayers. Have mercy upon us, for You only art holy, You only are the Lord, You only are glorious; with the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Prayer

Reading of the Gospel

Prayer

All: Hallelujah, The Lord is my strength and my praise and He is become my Salvation. Hallelujah

Reading of the Epistle

Sermon

Confession of Faith (The Nicene Creed)

Prayer
All: We believe You; we bless You; we adore You; and we praise Your Name forever: You through Whom is the Salvation of the world; through Whom is the Life of men; through Whom is the Resurrection of the dead. Amen!

Communion
Prayer
All: We believe, O Lord. We believe we have been redeemed by the breaking of the Body, and the pouring forth of the Blood; and we rely on this Sacrifice
The Lord's Prayer

Prayer of Thanksgiving
Benediction
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We were certainly an interesting church: We had contemporary worship led by the best praise team ever, we were reading through books of the Bible, had a definite time of prayer, and a teaching time as well! We had the form and we had the life.