I don\u2019t know how many churches I\u2019ve been in.\u00a0 Surely the number is in the hundreds.\u00a0 Mostly, but not exclusively, Baptist.\u00a0 They have been large, medium, and small; red, yellow, black, and white; city, suburb, small town, and open country;\u00a0 alive, dying, and dead (with delayed funerals).\u00a0 In most, I have worshipped, at least at some point in the service.\u00a0 In many, I have preached. Some time ago, I was invited to preach in a Texas town so small, few Texans had ever even heard of it.\u00a0 In fact, as I crossed a river, and saw the city limit sign, there were very few houses, even fewer places of business, and no school.\u00a0 But there was a beautiful church building, with many cars on the parking lot (and even more pick-up trucks). By 11:00am, the auditorium, which probably could seat two to three hundred people, was comfortably full. When the choir (not praise team) entered, they were led by the men (almost as many as women) and seated behind the orchestra (yes, they had a ten-piece orchestra). The music was electric, worshipful, dynamic, and it seemed from where I sat, that everyone was singing.\u00a0 The thirty-four-member choir was powerful, and all were happy (Deliver me from frowning musicians). While I still don\u2019t know where all those people came from, I\u2019m glad they were there, and it appeared that they were glad to be there.\u00a0 My sermon was well received (It\u2019s really hard to preach after bad music).\u00a0 It seemed that most of the audience wanted to speak to my wife and I after the service.\u00a0 When we finally got in our car, I remembered the words of Paul in Philemon 7, \u201cthe\u00a0hearts of the saints have been refreshed.\u201d\u00a0 Then my wife, asked, \u201cCan we move out here, so we can go to this church every Sunday?\u201d\u00a0 My question was – why can\u2019t every church worship like this one?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don\u2019t know how many churches I\u2019ve been in.\u00a0 Surely the number is in the hundreds.\u00a0 Mostly, but not exclusively, Baptist.\u00a0 They have been large, medium, and small; red, yellow, black, and white; city, suburb, small town, and open country;\u00a0 alive, dying, and dead (with delayed funerals).\u00a0 In most, I have worshipped, at least at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3087,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3086\/revisions\/3087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}