This Week in 9/1 Worship

Dear Grace Family,

The final sport in our homecoming series is tennis. It is probably the sport I know the best. At least it is the sport I have played the most. It is also the only individual sport in the series. The other four sports (football, baseball, basketball and soccer) were all team sports. Tennis can be played as a team sport. You can play doubles instead of singles, but nobody remembers the doubles champion of the last U.S Open. In high school and college, I played on the tennis team. By winning matches, you scored points for your team, but it still came down to beating your opponent one on one. Tennis is best known as an individual sport.

Ironically, the church is never an individual sport. Actually, it is not a sport at all, but my point is that to be a church it takes more than one person. Jesus never said, “where one or more are gathered in my name, I am there with them.” He said, “Where two or more are gathered…” The church is a community of people who gather to live out their faith by loving God and one another. We can love God as individuals, but we can only love our neighbor when we are connected in community.

So, what does tennis have to do with being the church? It does start every match with the score love-love. Maybe that gives us a hint, but you will have to join us in worship this Sunday to find out more. This is the last Sunday that the late traditional service will meet at 11:00 AM. On September 8, we will all worship together at 10:30, and on September 15 we will start our new Sunday morning schedule with traditional worship at 9:00 and 10:30 Am and Common Grace at 10:15 Am.

See you in worship!

Barry

Each Tuesday Pastor Mitch publishes a devotion on his website Weeklydevotion.com.  If you’d like to receive this in your inbox, drop him an email at   and just say “Sign me up!”