The thing that I love about attending worship at Ward is that feeling you get when you’re in a room with over 500 other people. If you’re like me you find energy contagious. You find it exciting when people are singing and praying together. An institutional church (meaning a church that has regular Sunday meetings and would be easily recognizable to a North American as church) like Ward has some differences from a house church and this Sunday showed them off.
In the institutional church the congregation hires a pastor to bring a professional message and he usually prepares extensively each week. Ward is no different. Our pastor Scott is an amazing communicator. He knows what he wants to say and says it in a way that grabs people’s hearts. Scott’s teaching in content and delivery is worth the price of admission, as the saying goes. People aren’t bored hearing him and they almost always have a practical life application in hand. House churches don’t usually have a paid speaker or even someone who can devote the better part of a week to honing a message.
The worship music is also a big difference. We may or may not sing in our house church, but at Ward in Knox Hall we worship in song together. Today with Josh on the violin and the acoustic set it was powerful. When we sang IN CHRIST ALONE I was moved. This is definitely something I think the institutional church does very well.
Lastly, there is the feeling of being together with so many others. Ward had over 2000 people today and more than 500 in the service I was in. At times following Jesus can feel a little lonely, or isolated. But when you look around the room and you see people that are living out their faith all over the region it inspires you. You want to do better because those people are counting on you and you on them.
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