Day 24: Wednesday 10th April pray for our Sunday service preaching and leading.

I hope you’ve been really blessed recently on our Sunday mornings. They have been wonderful times of worship and sharing together. However, behind the scenes there are hours and hours of preparation which has taken place to make everything work as smoothly as it can and that God is Glorified.

Preaching

I want to pray particularly today for our preaching team. Its hard preaching, it takes hours and hours of prayer and bible reading and study to produce even the smallest talk and I know everyone involved works so hard.

At Community Church Blackburn we’re quite a young preaching team. None of us has gone to seminary or bible college. None of us are professional academics or communicators. However, we all love Jesus, we want to see His kingdom come and want God to work more and more in the church.

Please pray for strength and depth in our preaching team. Please pray first, that through the power of the Holy spirit, we get better at preaching Gods words.

Please pray that we are gracious, loving, humble, gentle and wise but bold and uncompromising about the truth of God’s word.

Please pray that we are discerning about what we say and have a close ear to what Gods saying.

Please pray that there will be a prophetic edge but also a pastoral heart to our preaching and God uses it to change lives and make things new.

Please pray to help us preach the truth of scripture and not our own opinions.

Pray that God gives us a heart to ravage the scriptures as I once heard someone say.

Please pray that we are diligent and wise in the way we handle scripture.
 
Please pray that as a team iron sharpens iron and we are willing and able to receive feedback form each other and the rest of the congregation.

Please pray that we move closer to God in our own lives and live our sermons as well as just preaching them.

Please pray that Jesus is the centre and totally glorified in our preaching.

Leading/Anchoring

The other role that takes place on a Sunday morning which is critical to our service is the lead/ anchor role. The role is to introduce and hold the meeting together and do the notices etc... However, this role is also an extremely important function in a spiritual sense.

The model of the early church was that one would bring a hymn, one would be tongue, one would bring a revelation etc which we want more and more to happen in our services. We really want full body ministry and for there to be freedom 😊

The lead anchors role is to weigh these words and activities then with spiritual discernment administer or bring these to the meeting in an orderly way that Glorifies God ensuring the church is built up.

This is a tough job, is a huge responsibility and sometime will involve gently explaining to someone that a word, picture etc… may not be for now. Which as our church continues to grow will happen more and more.

Please pray for all those that lead services that God gives them discernment, keep them close to Jesus and fill them with the Holy Spirit.

Helpful Bible Verses

2 Timothy 4:2

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.

Matthew 4:23

And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.

James 3:1-2

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.

1 Corinthians 14:26 
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 What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.