Celebration...The Little Man In the Tree

Jesus Friend of Sinners

Theme: Jesus Friend of Sinners

Intro and explain
ahead of the crowd
Rock Star- Nickelback
Mediation 1
Preach
called by name
I still haven’t found what I am looking for- U2
Mediation 2
Name Calling
Preach
pay back time
Greatest Day- Take That
Mediation 3
Preaching
Altar Call
Worship

Wow what a week full of craziness but on Tuesday (3rd Feb) we had our celebration at college (thats our fortnightly service) and the theme was Jesus Friend of Sinners, we used the passage about Zaccheus. It was pleasure and honur to lead the creative parts of the service. It has really been the first time since I left the States that I have really been involved in creatively leading worship. So when I suggested our call to worship being Nickelback people were understandably ready for something different. I did however love the service because I really felt by leaving the worship to the very end that the whole community worshipped at the same place because we had led them there. The mediations were diary entries imagining the full story of Zaccheus we used some "holy imagination". The guys that put that together were amazing. Piers did a great job at pulling together the whole worship service together. And the altar call at the end were people wrote down something bad they had done and picked up a receipt which were amazing. Piers did raise a great point that we as Christians get so obsessed with the eternal element and forget that Jesus said to Zaccheus "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." But did he mean salvation of the soul for entirety.
Well yes of course he did, but he also meant so much more, he meant salvation of his past, present and future. And its the present we sometimes forget as a church. Its the previous grace that Wesley spoke so much of that we see here as well. A great point I would say.