Weekend of Worship

We had a wonderful time with Noel and Tricia Richards with us over the weekend. They are a remarkable couple with humility and a heart for reaching out with the love of Christ. So often contemporary worship can foster a "Bless me Lord" mentality with the lyrics and individual focus. However, "worship without mission is self-indulgent, and mission without worship is self-defeating."

The Richards certainly follow through with that statement. As Noel taught in a seminar and again at our Sunday worship service, it is important not only to worship God vertically with songs and praise, but that we worship Him horizontally by showing His love to the least, the last, and the lost. This has been in my heart for a while now, so Noel's words just confirmed what we've been working through in our church.

One thing I've never seen are worship songs that speak of helping the poor and downtrodden in the lyrics. Yet this is one of Noel's new songs that we sang over the weekend:
We Thank You God

We thank you God for our daily bread
In every way our lives have been blessed
And by your hands we're fed

Why do we pray, bless us O Lord
You meet our needs, still we want more
What is Your blessing for
If not to feed the poor

To love justice, show mercy
This is the Kingdom of God

Open our eyes we need to care
Move in our hearts teach us to share
Your riches everywhere
Love beyond compare

To love justice, show mercy
This is the Kingdom of God

We thank you God for our daily bread
In every way our lives have been blessed
And by your hands we're fed

That is a powerful statement. It is a challenge for us as the church to be out being the church, instead of just holding church. If you get a chance to see Noel Richards, I would highly recommend it. If you haven't checked his music out, he should be getting his albums available through iTunes USA (they're on the UK iTunes, but Americans can't use it unfortunately).

Noel Richards In Blackfoot Idaho

I've been a little behind my preferred amount of blogging because I've been working on a special event my church, Harvest Foursquare Church, is hosting next weekend.

Our church is bringing in Noel Richards, a well-known worship leader from the United Kingdom. He has been to Pocatello before and is well aware of the challenges we face in this area.

Noel has been involved in leading worship since he was 15 years old. He’s worked with many other well-known worship leaders such as Matt Redman, Graham Kendrick, Reuben Morgan, and Delirious. He’s written numerous worship songs for the modern church, perhaps the best known of them being “All Heaven Declares”.

Noel has been involved the last 10 years in organizing worship events in large stadiums across Europe – believing that if people can pack these arenas for sports, why can’t we see them filled with people giving glory to the King of kings? He’s led events at Wembley Stadium in London and at Olympic Stadium in Berlin.

We are having Noel Richards come on Saturday, September 22. He will be giving a worship seminar from 1-4 pm at our church (see map here) for $10 per person. Noel will be presenting 3 separate sessions dealing with issues of leading worship and a lifestyle of worship.

Then at 7 pm we will be having a regional night of praise and worship, led by Noel and his wife Tricia. We're anticipating a great night of worship and coming together in unity for southeast Idaho. This event is free, with an offering taken for the Richards that night.

On Sunday, September 23 Noel and Tricia will be speaking at Harvest. The morning service starts at 10:30 am and usually goes to around 12:30 pm. All are welcome to come and worship with us that day.

Noel will also be speaking in Idaho Falls on Sunday night, sponsored by another fellowship. When I have more details I will update this post.

If you live in southeast Idaho, I highly encourage you to come to one of these events. It is not often we have someone of Noel Richard's caliber coming to our area. I would love to have as many people as possible partake in this. If you have any questions, leave a comment here with your email address (written as yourname [at] yahoo [dot] com to prevent getting picked up by a spammer) and I will be sure to contact you.

Let's praise the name of Jesus together!