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Worship Ministry January 2019

Church Family,
I pray this new year finds you well. God did so many great things through our church in 2018, and we cannot wait to see what’s in store for 2019. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was involved in our Christmas Worship Program. We could not have done it without our praise band, praise team, choir, and production team. I am so thankful for every single person who helped make our Christmas Program a special event. I also want to thank everyone who came out to participate and worship with us. I know there were so many things you could have done with your evening, so thank you if you came to be a part! It was a great night and I am so grateful for everyone was a part.

Moving on into 2019, I want to share three prayers that I have for our Church Family this new year, and I hope you would pray these things with me as well. I know there are so many things we could pray for, and so many things that we do pray for. But the sake of space, and I’ll share just a few:

1) I pray that worshipping God would be our main priority. I pray that worship would be the goal of my heart, all day, every day. I don't mean only on Sunday mornings. Should we make worship a priority on Sunday mornings? Absolutely. Should worship slide down our priority list during the rest of the week? Absolutely not. Whether we are alone, whether we are together, whether we are at work, or whether we are with our families, I pray we would worship the one who gives us all of these things. God is good, all the time, and he deserves our worship all of the time.

2) I pray that we would pray more. I pray that I would pray more. I pray that you would pray more. I pray that we would see every meal, every goodnight story with our children, every morning coffee, as a chance to come to God in prayer. I pray that we would pray more than once a day. I’m really excited that our Church focus for 2019 is prayer, if even that I would pray more myself, with my family. How much should we pray? I can’t give an exact amount of time we should spend in    prayer. But I know that I should pray more than I am, and we should all pray more than we are. Join me, and let’s just pray more!

3) I pray that we would worship God in a fresh way on Sunday mornings. Does this mean that we will worship God in a new way? No. Does it mean that we will worship God in a different way? No. But I also believe that God is the ultimate creator of all things. So, my prayer is that God would create something new in us as we come to worship together on Sunday morning. Let’s set our expectations high. Let’s set our standard high. I believe that God will do more than we ask or imagine. Let’s expect Him to do just that.

I can’t wait to see what God has in store for us this year.
I love you all and I will see you on Sunday!

In Christ,
Jared

Worship November 2018

Church Family,
It’s been an exciting time of ministry at Oakhill, and I pray that this Fall season has found you refreshed and excited to see God continue to move in our lives and in our church! I want to thank everyone who took the time to come out to our Family Night of Worship last month. We weren't able to have the event outside due to weather, but I am thankful that the rain didn’t keep us down, and we were still able to enjoy fellowship and worship together inside! I especially want to thank Darrell Ommart and Doughboy BBQ, as well as Lolly’s Pops for providing all the food and drink. I am excited to continue this event with our church family in the future!

This month, I want to challenge us with a question: How do we handle distractions in worship? I don’t mean distractions as in the person behind you singing off key, or the person next to you constantly checking their cellphone during worship. By distractions, I mean the stress, the thoughts, and the outside situations that we bring into worship with us. Maybe you had a bad week. Maybe your child smarted off to you right as you walked into church and your wondering how you’re going to handle the situation once you get home. The stressful situations that we bring into worship are endless. And they can be distractions. So how do we handle them? A lot of times, we want to forget them. We want to do our best to completely put them out of our minds so that we can solely focus on God. But let’s be honest, we’re human, and that’s hard to do. And if I’m honest, even as a worship leader, sometimes it’s hard to tune out stress in my life to lead worship on Sunday morning.

So maybe running from these distractions is hard to do. So why run from them? Why forget about them? Let me encourage you to not forget about these distractions, but to bring them to God in worship. Offer them to God. After all, God is all things to us. He is the ultimate healer. He is the ultimate peace-maker. He’s the ultimate wisdom-giver. He desires to be close to us, as we come close to Him. So, in worship, don’t take your stress and your distractions further from God. Bring them close. Bring your heart, and all the baggage that comes with it.  Lean in. There’s nothing quite like the presence of God. And in the presence of God, things change. Richard Foster said, “If we don’t leave worship looking more like Jesus, then is has not been true worship. To stand before the Holy One is to change.” You are loved by Jesus. The details of your life are in the hands of Jesus. And He is worthy of our worship. I’ll see you on Sunday! I can’t wait to worship together.