To-Do List - by Ben Barnes

I’ve been looking over my calendar this week.  Did you know there are only fifty-two Sundays in a year?  It’s true.  We have fifty-two times together as a church family every year.  In those services, we spend roughly seven hours praying together.  There are somewhere between fifteen and twenty hours of singing (and roughly five solid days of band practice).  Believe it or not, there are probably close to five hours of silence.  The usher passes by your row no less than a hundred times.  We stand up and sit down no less than 250 times.

Part of my job here at Redeemer is to try to turn all of the things we do into something a lot less like a list and something much more like corporate worship, or our body, worshipping together.  My goal on Sunday mornings is to help create a worshipful environment and plan services that draw us in to the throne of God.  And my hope is that each week, as we scatter from our services, we have been able to worship and not just check off items on a list.  

The bottom line would be this… coming to services to check off an item on your list of things to do on Sunday probably isn’t going to help you worship.  Preparing your heart and your mind for worship are much better ways to make sure you’re ready to worship.  Praying for the service, spending time in the word, bringing others with you to share the service… all things that can certainly help make your Sunday morning a worship experience more than a to-do list.