wooHOO
Church/Chapel was great tonight. I so enjoy this worship band…it is loud and they do rock…but they are real, live, excited and it’s great. Mike has officially taken over the service this week as both their chaplains have pcs’d (moved to a new assignment). Mike added a bit more structure and preaching time and with that and the music…..as Jared says “it’s right on”. There were even students responding by leaving to talk with Mike at the end of the service (sort of an altar call….shhh….don’t call it THAT). AND at the end of the service they dismissed everyone (a few left) and THEN worship continued on for another TWENTY minutes until the keyboard player said "I HAVE to go study". Mike preached on dry bones tonight….and I must say I felt like dry ground soaking it up. A song they sang a lot tonight was Amazing Grace…but the old/new way….the one that has the line “Grace falls down like rain”…..it felt like rain…spiritual rain and it was FUN. FUN – at the CHAPEL! Too cool!
It sort of chokes me up when I think that all these young folks have volunteered for the military – and most are students in INTEL for the various services….but what better for our intel community than young folks on fire for God?
3 comments:
Question for you . . . why can't you call it an alter call? Just curious? :-)
Emily
Emily - is this Emily in FL? Pastor's wife Emily? Emteacups?
Well....this is a tricky question. For years it was frowned upon to have altar calls in a chapel setting...because there are so many different denominations represented. The chaplaincy has, however, undergone some HUGE changes in the past say 15 years. It used to be mainly made up of main line denominations (high church) and now it is made of mostly evangelical denominations (but still a good mix of high chruch too- it just used to be 90% those main line groups.) In years past it was real common to have a wing chaplain from a main line denomination who greatly frowned on "emotionalism" and such. As far as I know they are always accepted in a Gospel Service. With the rise of contemporary services, "chapel standards" seem to be loosening. In the sense that when they find a chaplain that works well in that setting they tend to stay out of his/her way. Mike has done altar calls in most settings. Now we are in an "alternative" service and where we still have structure we are learning not to call everything by the "churchy" name....because folks want to pray and respond but they don't want to do "tradtional" things...so we have a prayer of closure instead of a benediction....power point instead of hymnals and bulletinsLOL That sort of thing..... We have truly been blessed to minister in such a wide variety of types of services....I have been in awe lately thinking about worship and how we all express it so differently but the goal of all of our services is to touch the face and heart of God.
Hi DeEtta,
Yes, this is Emily (emteacups) :-)
The church my dh and I pastor sounds a lot like the contemporary service that you are now attending. We also don't use hymnals but use power point to have the words on the screen but do on a occassion sing a old beautiful hymn :-) We end our service with prayer too. It could be for salvation, healing or any other thing you need prayer for. I was just curious when you said you couldn't call them alter calls!
Be blessed!
Emily
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