Archive Entry #10: January 15, 2009
2009 was an important year for our church. It was the first full year of Sunday morning worship constructed exclusively of contemporary praise music. During the previous two years we had experimented with a Sunday morning blend of contemporary praise and traditional hymns, a well-meaning experiment that satisfied seemingly no one and led us to the contemporary framework. At the end of 2009 we celebrated a 19% increase in worship attendance over 2008, the largest single year percentage increase in worship attendance of my 29 years at FCCEM.
To our great disappointment, the accomplishments of 2009 have not lasted; in the years since we have given back the gains of that great year and a lot more. Our current challenges make today’s archive entry – originally published in opening weeks of our change in worship format five years ago – all the more relevant. Occasionally through the years my newsletter columns have said something people in our church very much needed to hear; this was one of those columns. It still is.
