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Read the Word

Do you have Scripture readings in your corporate gatherings? If not, you should! Paul encouraged young Timothy to “give attention” to the public reading of Scripture (1 Tim. 4:13). He also told the Colossians to circulate his letter, which he believed to be inspired Scripture, to other churches for public reading (Col. 4:15-16). Planning for Scripture readings is important. It’s helpful thematically to line up Scripture readings with the main sermon. If the sermon is from the New Testament, perhaps you can locate a reading from the Old Testament corresponding to the text. The most important thing is that Scripture is being read. It’s a command.

How can you prepare people for Scripture readings? Firstly, it’s important to teach on why Scripture is read in the corporate gathering. This will create a category of importance in people’s minds and will cause them to listen attentively and reflectively while it is happening. Secondly, you can help familiarize people with the passage by using social media. Think about utilizing Facebook or Twitter to inform people about the text that will be read. For example, you could say, “Prepare yourself for worship this Sunday by reading Isaiah 42!” If you’re a pastor maybe you could update your status to make a comment on the Scripture reading that will be done on Sunday. We have so many outlets to inform people in advance. Think creatively about how you can spread the word!

Sing the Word

To sing the Word is to sing back to God the very words of Scripture, and to proclaim in song the glorious truths of the gospel. In our songs, we are able to sing out the robust truths of Scripture in harmony with one another. What a beautiful picture and reality of what the gospel does as it unifies people at the cross! Yet, many people’s tongues stumble and stammer as they try to sing out songs that they don’t know, and sometimes cannot even sing. Value #1 – sing biblical truth. Value #2 – make sure normal people can actually sing it! Choose songs that are rich with biblical truth, pleasing to the ears, and simple enough to sing.

Now how can you help people prepare to sing together? Firstly, remind them of its importance. We are singing to God, AND to one another (Eph. 5:19). Members should feel the weight of what is happening when we join together in song. It’s a joyful celebration, and a somber reminder of our need to persevere in the faith by rooting ourselves in the promises of God. Secondly, teach the songs to people. Prepare them to know it, so they can properly sing it. A Sunday night prayer service is a great venue for this kind of teaching. Thirdly, use social media! Resources like Grooveshark and Spotify allow you to create playlists and share them with people. Make your playlist the songs that will be sung on Sunday and share your playlist on your Facebook page, or send out an email. Singing a new song on Sunday? Give people a heads up with a link to one of those really cheesy music videos on YouTube! Once again, think creatively about how you can spread the word on what people can expect. 


Pray the Word

Do you pray the words of Scripture? Do you pray according to the commands of Scripture? There is a great opportunity to teach people about the importance of praying God’s Words back to Him (e.g. the Psalms; Pauline prayers), and praying in line with what He tells us to pray for. Public prayer teaches your people how to pray. Does your gathering make room for prayers of confession and prayers of praise? Does intercession take place? You will prepare members for prayer by teaching them why you pray what you pray for. We are told to pray for those in authority over us (1 Tim. 2:1-2). We are encouraged to pray for the church around the world (Col. 4:3). We are told to confess our sins and pray for one another (James 5:16). As you weave these elements into your public prayers week after week, people will be ready and eager to pray along. Great resources to equip people to pray according to Scripture are books like Operation World and Don Carson’s A Call to Spiritual Reformation. When current global events are trending in people’s minds, pray for those things. Chances are that they have been praying for them already, and the congregation will feel the weight of this event as they bring it in prayer together on Sunday morning. Consider working through a list of countries or missionaries systematically so you can help people pray together for specific people and needs. When Sunday comes, they will have already been praying for it and will be ready to join together in supplication.

Preach the Word

As you preach the Word (Acts 2:42; 1 Tim 4:13; 2 Tim. 4:2), you will plan accordingly. Whether it’s a series in Philippians or a series on a specific topic, planning is important for the pastor and for the congregation. A pastor who waits until Friday to decide what he will preach, places his people at a severe disadvantage as compared to congregations that have time to ruminate on the text in advance. Pastor, for the sake of your church, plan to preach!

As you preach through books of the Bible, plan out your sermons so you can notify your people on what they can expect. Website or personal blog posts, social media, weekly bulletins and calendars all can be utilized to inform your people about what will be preached on in the coming weeks. Encourage your people to read in advance. Their daily quiet time can include the text that will be preached on Sunday. In their discipling relationship, encourage them to read through the passage and talk about it. When members are taught to immerse themselves in the text and talk about it during the week with fellow members, they will be more than ready to hear the Word preached on Sunday morning. Simply giving people notice of what they can expect can make the preaching and listening a worshipful experience of delight in God’s Word. To nurture this kind of culture in your church will create a holy hunger for Scripture and will bolster the preaching ministry of the church.

Calendars can also serve your people as they think about inviting non-Christian friends and family to church. As they look at the texts that will be preached, they can be strategic towards inviting them with a specific end in mind. 


See the Word

Lastly, prepare your people for the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, by giving them advance notice. If you don’t take communion every week, try to create a rhythm of when it will be observed so your people can be prepared. For instance, we take the Lord’s Supper the first Sunday of every month. Often an email goes out the week of, as we encourage people to prepare for this time. We serve our people well by helping them take this meal seriously and protecting them from approaching the Lord’s table in a nonchalant manner (1 Cor. 11:27-29). As biblical church membership is taught and understood in your church, baptism and communion should be regarded highly, as the church makes every effort to prioritize their time around these ordinances. You might encourage your congregation to plan vacations as not to interfere with these times. If they have two available weekends to make a trip, encourage them to be present when Communion takes place. When a new believer is baptized, teach them that they are witnessing and affirming that person’s profession of faith. And call them to support that new believer by being present in the worship gathering.

Planning together with your congregation for worship is important if we will create a culture of providers and not consumers. To inform your people, and even allow some of them into the planning process, will benefit all greatly as we seek to worship our Lord together.

Image: Wikimedia Commons user Trounce

Whether or not your agree with who should be responsible for picking songs in your church, I think there are some helpful things you should keep in mind if you are responsible for it in your church. He breaks it down to three main points, which we can use to question ourselves and help guide us as we make choices.

1. Singing is teaching

• Are the songs we sing helping us to teach and admonish one another?
• Do they allow the word of Christ to dwell in us richly? Songs taken directly from the scriptures allow us to easily store God’s word in our hearts.

2. Music is culture shaping

• Do the songs lead people to engage with The Word of God actively?
• Do they reflect a full spectrum of appropriate responses to God’s word? Which is to say do the songs only focus on happiness and joy, or do they cover the grief of our sin, and repentence (to name a few)?

3. The whole service serves the word

• Where do the songs encourage people to focus?
• When the sermon starts, have people been inspired by the music to be thinking about the passage that’s being preached?

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I want to argue that the Bible presents a completely different approach, as does the early church. Rather than hiding, or at least sheltering, within the safe confines of the tradition you believe to be the most Biblical, I believe we ought to be continually praying, privately and publicly, for any and all nearby Gospel-proclaiming churches.

Bible

Firstly, why, according to Biblical example? Where to begin, is the question here! There are many Biblical passages we could turn to that would be evidence for the nature of this practice. We shall deal with only three.

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he writes:

I have not stopped giving thanks for you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better.
(Ephesians 1:16-17)

We see here that Paul prays for the Ephesians, thanking God for their faith, and then petitioning God, through Jesus, to continue revealing Himself to the Ephesians. We are to pray that other local Christians would continue to deepen their love for God by seeking Him faithfully in His word. Our prayers for them ought to have this emphasis clearly expressed. This is an act of love from us to them.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he writes:

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now…
(Philippians 1:4-5)

We see here that Paul is joyous because the Philippians are united with him in the Gospel. Whether the Philippians were Baptist, Presbyterian or Independent Reformed Calvinists of Mongolia (IRCM) is not the point. If the true and Apostolic Gospel is shared amongst our neighbouring churches, we are brothers with them. To pray for those who are our partners in the Gospel is both a humble privilege and a Christian obligation – we must pray for those who may not be part of our local body but are part of the body of Christ, interacting with communities that perhaps we cannot reach.

In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians he writes:

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
(1 Thessalonians 1:3)

It is our duty, we see here, to pray for our brothers and sisters that they continue to produce Godly works and labour. Paul isn’t petitioning here, explicitly, but we can infer from his inclusion of their endurance that he wishes these works of faith and labours of love to continue, because of their hope in Christ. We, too, are to encourage our brothers in local congregations with such loving prayer. After all, we ought to crave their prayer for us in these ways.

Tradition

Secondly, why, according to tradition? This is an area less known, but let me show you from the Apostolic Fathers that churches did indeed pray for one another.

To take but one example, the Bishop Ignatius (c. 35-107) wrote letters on his journey to Rome, where he was destined for martyrdom. In his letter to the Ephesians he exhorts them to, ‘Pray for the church in Syria, from where I am being led to Rome in chains…’ This desire is noted in most of his letters, where he also includes phrases like, ‘The love of the Smyrnaeans and of the Ephesians greets you.’ He was clearly interested in the global church bearing each other in prayer before the throne of God, which is noted in his letter to the Philadelphians, where he commented, ‘Since it has been reported to me that in answer to your prayer and the compassion that you have…the church in Antioch in Syria is at peace…’ Obviously, the importance of prayer for the wider body was important to combat the heresies of the day. Likewise, therefore, ought we not to be praying for our brother’s’ steadfastness in the face of moral turpitude and spiritual waywardness today?

Nevertheless, similar refrains can be read in almost all the Church Fathers, who, in dialogue with each other (even those with whom they vehemently disagreed), prayed that the Lord would continue to bless them and their ministries.

The pattern was set by the Apostle Paul, and was transferred through the local churches as they continued to write and pray for one another. How much more are we, bereft in a sea of moral and spiritual confusion, in need of bolstering each other in the confines of passionate and petitionary prayer?

Unity

Thirdly, why, according to unity? The most persuasive argument for praying for other churches, however, despite the clear Biblical example set by Paul and the Church Fathers, is the case for unity.

In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul speaks of the local church as being a body. Each member of the local church has a role to play within that community, and the church is bereft without the faithful interaction of that body member. When a foot falls away, the body becomes lop-sided. However, the Church Militant (i.e. the Christian church as a whole currently alive on the earth) is made up of literally millions of local congregations in almost every country on this planet. The body of Christ is a body of bodies.

Together we unite to make one global body. Even though each local community is also a body, we are together united in Christ as the body of Christ. Therefore, as we are to pray for our own members in the above way, when one congregation falls away, the entire body suffers, as Paul says in Corinthians. Even for those of us independent-minded Baptists and non-Conformists, this is a lesson we need to remember: we are all part of the body of Christ. We all bear the responsibility of praying for, and encouraging, our brothers in Christ. That includes the church across the street, the church across the city and the church across the globe.

Therefore, I urge you, in your church prayers, make time to pray for a local church. Make time to seek God’s grace on them, that they would continue to marvel at His love for them, that they would continue to partner with you in the Gospel ministry wherever you are placed and that they would persevere in doing Gospel-works and labours of love, so that the global body of Christ can praise God with joy on the final day, that they were faithful, enduring to the end.