Hey folks!
If you’ve been around the First Presbyterian Church this summer you’ll have noticed me playing the keys in the contemporary service. I’m your new intern, and I’m so excited to be back in action at FPC, and to be playing music, and writing this very blog!
First, I’ll give you a bit of my backstory. I went to undergrad at Mizzou and met Preston Turley, our fearless praise and worship leader, through a mutual friend, Chanelle Koehn, who later became my fiancé. Chanelle invited me to a Ukirk event, and there I really clicked with FPC, and Preston. During my time in undergrad I received the call from God to go into ministry during my sophomore year. That summer, and for several summers after that, I was an intern at my home town church, Fellowship General Baptist, located in Poplar Bluff. However, during my last couple years at school I participated in the praise band at FPC playing drums. After I graduated I pursued my call to Asbury Theological Seminary. For three years I lived on campus there in Wilmore, Kentucky, and gained invaluable knowledge and perspective on our Lord, and the Kingdom He is building on earth through His Church. Now, I have moved back to Columbia to be closer to friends, family, and my fiancé, while finishing my seminary classes online. I have always had a passion for the Gospel. Telling people about Jesus, and talking about what He has done for me is a pure joy. I hope this blog will serve to help you all know me a bit better, and allow me to put down some of my thoughts and reflections about our Christian walk together. On a more specific note, I will be discussing some thoughts about praise and worship, both on its history in the Church, and its current state of being in our culture. Preston and I are reading through a book called The Worship Pastor by Zac Hicks, which has some excellent insights into what is at the heart of our worship, and some important notes on the development of worship leaders. I will be using this to guide the discussion for the blog. I hope to redefine our view of what worship is, and what it can be. Worship, especially worship with music, is so special to the Christian movement, and it has been a cornerstone since the Church began. It combines praise to our Creator, the Gospel message, and unity of the Church through the Spirit.
Colossians 3:16 reads, “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.” This verse perfectly sums up what I am getting at here. When we worship we are proclaiming our faith as a body, acknowledging Jesus as Lord, giving thanks to our Creator, and letting the Spirit fill us up with the language to do all that. Where church worship abounds, so does the Spirit, and the Spirit is the being that draws us together into the right mindset, and heart-set if you will, to experience a relationship with each other and with God. In the next installment I will go into more detail about worship, and include some more in-depth discussion from the book. I am so happy to be able to worship with a new church family, and look forward to meeting and getting to know more of you! If you have any thoughts or questions please feel free to email me at kennedy.samb@gmail.com. God bless you!