A New Thing

What’s up everybody,

My name is Jonathan Smith, I am an associate pastor at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Columbus, Georgia, and I will be sharing with you my thoughts, feelings, and insights about creativity and worship (I think those things go together well!!) over the next few weeks. If you want some more info about where I serve and what all it is I do, feel free to check out my profile page or shoot me an email.

But for today, I’d like to share with you this thought:

In Isaiah 43:19-21 God says, “19See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. 20The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, 21the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise."

I believe, that even today, God is doing a new thing. He’s making streams of life in the midst of the desert wasteland of our broken culture, broken relationships, and broken sense of identity, in order that we, the people formed in His image, might proclaim God’s praise throughout the earth.

Sadly, and all too often, we short-change our worship. We turn it into a routine, a prescribed set form of liturgical elements, or an exercise that neither impacts our hearts, nor lives, for God’s Kingdom and God’s Mission. Sometimes we worry more about getting done the right way, than we worry about whether or not God’s presence was felt by His people.

I think these verses from Isaiah are a call for us to find new and creative ways to usher people into God’s presence as a response to the new life He is giving us and is offering to all. So we need new ways, or perhaps even old ways reinvented and reimagined, to connect God’s people to God’s presence.

So here are some questions to get us started talking about the new things God might be doing in our differing communities and contexts:

What sort of new thing is God doing through your community’s worship that is giving life to people who are thirsty?

How is God working in your congregation’s worship to restore broken relationships, to redeem a broken culture, or recover a new sense of identity?

How does your community’s worship call people to join in God’s Kingdom and God’s Mission here on earth?

Who can you brainstorm/communicate/dream/vision with in your community to bring a new sense of meaning and purpose to worship?

Feel free to leave your responses below and see you next week!!


Jonathan