The Worship Service Part 1

This week, I begin a three-part column on the worship service. I will comment on various components of our worship services, lifting up the discipline of silence as a key tool to our experience of God. Worship is first and foremost about God. When the Christian community gathers to worship each Sunday morning at Grace Presbyterian Church, we are to give God our best in praise, adoration, and reverence. God is God. We are God’s creation.

Silence is a most significant tool to plumb the depths of worship. That is, how we quiet our minds and hearts in order to be focused on God is important. Silence is the discipline that we can use to encounter the holy and awesome God. Silence is an attitude of heart and mind that attempts to get in touch with God. Silence is the discipline to unlock the worship experience for something bigger than us.

We Gather as the People of God

• A “Musical Call to Worship” focuses us on the reason we have gathered. We are in God’s presence. The service is not about us. It is about God. We are aware of the transcendent. We are being lifted up into an experience bigger than ourselves.
• The Greeting, Announcements, and Invitation to Discipleship occurs. This is significant for the “body life” of our church family.
• The “Call to Worship” and a “Hymn” pull us into the realization that God is with us and will speak to us.
• We participate in a “Confession of Sin,” private and corporate, an “Assurance of Pardon,” and “Exchange of the Peace”. Why? According to Scripture, we are depraved through sin and only in Jesus Christ and his forgiveness can we discover our true identity as persons created in the image of God. We need God to forgive us. We need to be reminded that our sins do have consequences and that our lives are ultimately bankrupt without the loving and forgiving salvation of Jesus Christ in our lives who gives us peace.
• A Response Hymn concludes the We Gather as the People of God

On our Interim Pastor journey with you, I remain faithfully yours,

Steve

The Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh

Interim Pastor

My friends, the Season of Lent began on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025.

Lent is a 40-day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Maundy Thursday. It’s a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter. During Lent, we seek the Lord in prayer by reading Biblical texts; we serve by giving alms; and we practice self-control through fasting. We are called not only to abstain from luxuries during Lent, but to a true inner conversion of heart as we seek to follow God’s will more faithfully. We recall the waters of baptism in which we were baptized into Christ’s death, died to sin and evil, and began new life in Christ. We are also to share God’s gifts through sharing our time, talent, and treasure for the betterment of the common good. St. John Chrysostom writes: “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs” (Adapted from Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2446).

It is my prayer for all of us to take seriously this time of Lent for lament, confession, repentance, and forgiveness. Sin is devastating in our personal lives as well as church life.

I hope you are enjoying the Henri J. M. Nouwen Lenten Devotional, The Way, the Truth, and Life. The scripture for Ash Wednesday was Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a right spirit within me.” Nouwen makes these points:

• Close the many doors and windows of your heart which you flee from God;
• Close the many doors and windows of your heart which you give entry to words and sounds coming not from God, but from people who are angry, disillusioned, and broken buy what is happening to them or around them; and
• Be reminded that Jesus is the Way of life, faith, hope, mercy, grace, and love.

I’m challenged and I hope you are as well, to make this Lenten Season a matter of your heart being cleansed and made more like Jesus’ heart.

Let’s not allow the Evil One to sow seeds of division, judgment, insecurity, and discontent in our individual lives or our church life at Grace.

On our Interim Pastor journey with you, I remain faithfully yours,

Steve

The Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh

Interim Pastor

My friends, the Season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025. Join us for Ashes and Communion, “on the go”, near the Coffee Bar by the Great Room from 7:00am-8:30am. A traditional service of Ashes and Communion will be held in the Sanctuary that evening at 7:00 pm.

As I continue to reflect on the Annual Meeting last Sunday, I’m taken by the joy and fellowship that occurred around tables. And thanks to Chris Alexander and her team for preparing such a great meal. The meeting was informative and hopeful for Grace’s future. Good stuff happening here.

As I mentioned in last week’s “A Word from Our Interim Pastor”, it’s hard to believe that I have started my second year with you as our Interim Pastor. In fact, I’m in my fourteenth month, but who’s counting. God is in our midst and has been so since our chartering in 1909. Let me cite some of our accomplishments in 2024:

• We completed the Five Steps in our Interim Pastor Journey;
• Our worship services brought us into a deeper experience with God;
• Education opportunities strengthened our walk with Jesus;
• Small group experiences for us to give and receive support, encouragement, knowledge about Christianity and one another, prayer, and fellowship in community;
• Service projects;
• Mission trips;
• The Cuba partnership;
• The Session approved the 2025 Strategic Plan;
• The election of the Pastor Nominating Committee, and
• Grace is a founding church of Justice Together.

Your Session on Monday night, February 17, began discussing how Grace can be courageous in addressing the immigration and refugee crisis in America, Kansas, and Sedgwick County. The Session is considering several ways which will include education opportunities with experts and writing Senators Marshall and Moran as well as Congressman Estes.

In conclusion, I cannot state strongly enough how excited Janet and I are to be a part of the Grace Presbyterian Church family in such a time as this. Yes, Grace is an amazing congregation to serve.

On our Interim Pastor journey with you, I remain faithfully yours,

Steve

The Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh

Interim Pastor

My theme verse for all forty-three years of my ministry as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is Philippians 1:3-6:

“I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your  sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”

It’s hard to believe that I have started my second year with you as our Interim Pastor. In fact, I’m in my fourteenth month, but who’s counting. God is in our midst and has been so since our chartering in 1909. Let me cite some of our accomplishments in 2024:

• We completed the Five Steps in our Interim Pastor Journey;
• Our worship services brought us into a deeper experience with God;
• Education opportunities strengthened our walk with Jesus;
• Small group experiences for us to give and receive support, encouragement, knowledge about Christianity and one another, prayer, and fellowship in community;
• Service projects;
• Mission trips;
• The Session approved the 2025 Strategic Plan;
• The election of the Pastor Nominating Committee; and
• Grace is a founding church of Justice Together

Your Session on Monday night, February 17, began discussing how Grace can be courageous in addressing the immigration and refugee crisis in America, Kansas, and Sedgwick County. The Session is considering several ways, which will include education opportunities with experts and writing Senators Marshall and Moran as well as Congressman Estes.

In conclusion, I cannot state strongly enough how excited Janet and I are to be a part of the Grace Presbyterian Church family in such a time as this. Yes, Grace is an amazing congregation to serve.

On our Interim Pastor journey with you, I remain faithfully yours,

Steve

The Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh

Interim Pastor

Like many Christian pastors, ministers, bloggers, authors, podcasters, and congregants, I believe that the Church must be more courageous. Human rights and dignity are at stake. And the Church is not the building. The Church is the millions of Christians that make up the body of Christ. Yes, Christians are Republican, Democrat, and Independent in party affiliation. But the mark of a Christian is not a particular party platform. The mark of a Christian is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit, and most certainly love.

What might a courageous Christian look like?

• A person who values their personal faith convictions more than their allegiance to a political party.
• Men and women who will say that bigotry wrapped in religion is still bigotry.
• Christians, saying that Christianity was never supposed to be about power or America being first.
• A person who asserts that diversity, equity, and inclusion is at the heart of everything Jesus was doing when he was here and continues to do through his followers today.
• Men and women who will say, “No more,” to a Jesus-less Christianity.

I believe, along with other pastors, ministers, bloggers, authors, podcasters, and congregants that the American Church is at a turning point. That turning point is to shed irrelevance, uselessness, prejudice, selfishness, and moral bankruptcy and begin the rebirth of being the living, loving, and forgiving presence of Jesus.

Can we, the Christians of Grace Presbyterian Church, defend the millions of vulnerable people who are being sacrificed on the altar of hateful people’s phobias, privileged people’s convenience, or fearful people’s cowardice?

My thanks to John Pavlovitz, who in his February 12, 2025, blog informed my thinking, reflection, and convictions in this column.

On the journey of Christian discipleship and spiritual formation with you, I remain faithfully yours,

Steve

The Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh, Interim Pastor