Last Sunday evening I was due to lead the extended praise session that we have at church. Those of you that have stuck with this blog for a little while will know that the week before didn’t go according to plan as I ended up in hospital on Thursday night and for a moment I was a little unsure if they would let me out on Friday [if you don’t get out by the weekend then you’re there until Monday when the doctors start doing routine rounds again]. Anyway, I got out and as I wasn’t feeling too bad I was able to turn up on Sunday night, maybe a little short of breath but I was there.
The extended praise bit works like this. Normal service, usually cut short by a little bit to enable us to tag on an extra bit to praise God. It’s not usually all singing, there’s often group prayer and some other stuff that goes into it, but for the one I did it was nine songs back to back.
Let everything that has breath
How can I keep from singing (also known as ‘Endless song’ to my amusement)
Indescribable
How deep the Father’s love for us
I kneel down (thanks for that Lingamish)
Thank you for saving me
Amazing grace (my chains are gone)
When I was lost
Sing to the Lord
As people left and some came forward from the balcony we sang ‘Let everything that has breath’ and then before ‘How can I keep from singing’ I introduced the time along these lines…
“What’s going to happen is the band will play straight through all the songs. There won’t be periods of quiet, instead, if you want to stop singing and pray, well, stop singing and pray. If you want to sit and sing, or kneel and pray then that’s fine. It really doesn’t matter, this time is about praising God and it’s not for me to dictate how you do that.”
I mentioned a bit about being really pleased to be there. You know when you’re not physically fit and things are a bit of a struggle it’s really good to be surrounded by so many Christians singing and praising God.
Things went well. To show how well you need to understand that the church I attend is a slightly reserved, middle class, bible teaching type church. We’re not prone to extremes or moving outside of normal.
I looked up during ‘I kneel down to see most of the congregation praying and a good proportion on their knees. That really doesn’t happen much.
Then afterwards one of our ministers came up to me and said something like ‘about half way through that I wanted to come and give you a hug, I’ve never been so close to dancing in church’. (I may have exaggerated slightly in my head over the course of the week, but that was the gist of his comments).
Two things:
I really wish that kind of thing wasn’t so unusual. God’s great, we should be dancing a whole lot more.
I’m really thankful that God was able to use me and gave me the strength to do the service. I was shattered afterwards, emotionally and physically, but it was wonderful.
