Bring the unedited version of you.
A call to worship.
This call to worship1 is about the priority of God’s grace over our religious effort. Our worship and community don’t begin with what we generate. Not with our sincerity, our compatibility, our competence, or our spiritual intensity. It begins with the life of the Triune God shared with us in Jesus Christ.
The Father gathers us, the Son brings us into His own communion and priestly worship, and the Spirit takes up our ordinary, imperfect lives and draws them into that fellowship. We belong to one another because Christ has first made us His own.
And it is on that foundation that a church can gather honestly rather than performatively, trusting not in the strength of our faith but in the faithfulness of Jesus, who receives, carries, and perfects our worship before the Father.
Themes
Gathering • Union with Christ • Belonging to God • Community • Performance • Priestly Mediation • Worship • Participation in Christ • Communion with the Father • Grace • Christ’s faithfulness
We belong to one another because we belong to Him.
Scripture reading
Psalm 133:1 Hebrews 10:19, 21–22 Romans 8:15–16
This call to worship is about not having to manufacture our worship or, I suppose, even somehow hold this church together. It’s God who has gathered us in Christ, and by His Spirit, He receives our whole, imperfect lives, and because we are His body, He also gives us to one another.
King David wrote these words: How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! The writer of the Book of Hebrews preached these words: Since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, and since we have a Great Priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith. And the Apostle Paul wrote these words: You have received a Spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
Prayer
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You have gathered us here. We have been gathered. And we have been united. And it’s not something that’s been manufactured through our compatibility or our shared preferences or our music and the arrangement of chairs. Our fellowship and our friendships begin in Your own communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and are given, then, to us through our union with Christ. This past week’s church camp of tents and RVs, campfires, shared meals, laughing and conversations, inconveniences and exhaustion— it was something more than just a pleasant social experience. In all of it, You’ve reminded us that we belong to one another because we belong to You. Christ has gathered us into His life and in so doing, has given us to one another. And so we’ve not come here this morning to make ourselves worthy or to produce perfect worship or perfect open-mic offerings with the right amount of intensity or sincerity or competence. We’ve come through Jesus, our great High Priest, who has already opened the way to You, Father — who brings Your life and love to us — and who is, even right now, carrying our prayers and our praise to You. He brings all of our humanness— all our faltering and inadequate prayers, and confessions, and thanksgiving, and worship— to You. By Your Spirit, then, gather up everything we bring. We’re not bringing some edited, religious version of ourselves; we’re bringing our joy and gratitude, our weariness and distractions, our hopes and our needs. Gather up everything we’re bringing this morning and draw us into the worship of Your Son. Draw us into the Son’s communion with You. Make us attentive to Your Word, open to Your grace, and present to one another. Correct our assumptions about You, about ourselves, about each other. We’ll let go of the impulse to justify ourselves. We want Your grace to encounter us as we are, and give us what we truly need. We come with confidence, not because our faith is strong, but because Jesus Christ is faithful. Amen.
A call to worship given to the small assembly of Christians that gathered in Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on July 19, 2026.