This is a new year filled with all the promises of the Lord’s gracious working and blessing and providential grace and mercy. It, therefore, seemed good to spend a little time detailing something that has been on many of our hearts and in our prayers over the course of the past number of years. We will resume our corporate reading of Exodus in the near future, however there is something ahead of us to which it would behoove us to pay very close attention and attend with prayerful consideration. It is the matter of our corporate worship.
	First of all, this will not be an exhaustive deliberation of how to worship God. That will, in all likelihood, take every bit of the eternal ages to do to perfection. As well, this is not a “how to” series of messages, designed to give step-by-step instructions as to the methodology of worship services and the manner of conducting them. Every group of believers has what they consider to be the best practices of worship. We are in nowise stating that they are wrong and we are right in the way we conduct our time together. We count on the Holy Spirit to direct and to guide and to admonish and to encourage and to make our worship that which will be pleasing to the Lord. 
	It is on the foundational truth that we want to please the Lord in a continually more perfect worship that we will be approaching this time of consideration and deliberation. As we do so, I earnestly beseech each one of us, as is true of every message delivered to God’s chosen, to take what is shared to the Word and to the Holy Spirit. Please do so in solemn and intense prayer for His working into us that which is of Him and to set aside that which is not of Him.   
	We want to share that which the Lord has put upon our hearts from the very beginning of our being gathered together in His Name in our worship. The reason is that there has been a tremendous turnover of you, the Beloved saints of God in Christ Jesus. There are many in this room who may never have received any specific instruction as to what we have been taught of God to this point regarding why we worship as we do. 
Please realize that there have been many changes in the format of our worship over the years as we have responded to God. We must always consider that we all have much to learn about what will more fully please the Lord in our gathering together. We are not perfect in the manner in which we conduct our time of corporate praise. Knowing this, our single heart’s desire should always be that God will work in us that which more fully and livingly honors and blesses His heart each time we gather together in His name. 
	We must never get so caught up in the traditions of how we have always done something that we refuse to modify our time of His praise when the Lord so moves upon our hearts. I am not at all implying that there is anything inherently wrong with tradition. Traditions are a basis of how we function within the framework of our understanding of that which pleases the Lord. The key, however is that we do not want to cling to something that we have done in the past over and over again just because it is that, something that we have always done. We are seeking a living fellowship with Christ and in His life, as we do grow our understanding of Him and our maturity in Him must be evidenced as we come together before Him. There should be that fluidity in our thoughts and hearts coursing with the desire to ever more intently honor and celebrate and glorify Him in the more perfect expression of our love for Who God is and what He has done. If there is a tradition that serves to hinder that ongoing longing and yearning to more perfectly bless the Lord, then we need to set it aside and choose that which God is showing us.
	As but a couple of examples of this, please consider the fact that we have changed the manner in which we include our children in worship with us. We did, at one time, have a more traditional Sunday school with the children separated from the rest of our worshippers. In our hearts, we felt that it was more important that they were taught, from birth, that they are as much a part of us in our worship unto the Lord as is everyone else. On that basis, we no longer separate them from the joy and the excitement and the blessing of our coming together to give the Lord glory and adoration. It does place a greater responsibility and burden on the rest of us, especially the parents, but it is something which we do together in order to please the Lord. 
Those of us without children need to take both parent and child into our hearts and in our prayers with patience and guidance and understanding. We all play a part in terms of the teaching and the parenting skills and treating and dealing with each family in all the Love of the Lord. We encourage them and we honor the Lord in not allowing ourselves to be distracted at those times when things are a bit noisier than normal. 
Rather, we celebrate the fact that our children are being raised to know that the Lord is God and that He is to be honored and adored and cherished above all else. We have included our children with the shorter Bible lessons and the songs specifically geared to them. They are a complete blessing to me and many others with their evident knowledge of the Lord and their hugs and their desire to listen and partake of worship in their own way.
	Another example of change in our worship is the fact that we have incorporated our message into the morning meeting. It was not that long ago that we had the two meetings each Sunday. Sunday morning was exclusive of the sharing of the message. We came back Sunday evening for that part of our service, and there were those who would thus miss the sharing together of the Word. 
The other reason that we combined the two services was that we felt that Sunday afternoon and evening was a good time for families to spend time together sharing together in the bounty of the Lord. As the family worshipped the Lord and then spent time with each other in fellowship after the worship, our prayer was that a bond in the goodness of the Lord would continue to grow and develop within our community of believers. Those were the two reasons that we changed and made the morning worship inclusive of the weekly message.
	One other example, before we proceed forth, is the fact that we read the Word of God together as a fellowship. Sadly, in many churches there are those believers who have never, ever read the whole Bible, either individually or as a body of believers. We truly feel that it is incumbent upon each believer to spend time in the Word. Therefore we made the decision that we would read the Bible through as a portion of our corporate worship. In so doing, we honor God with His own Word. 
I know that we are not progressing with haste through the Bible, but that has never been our intent. We are reading it together and spending time in it together. We provide these yearly calendars that will help us individually to read the entire Bible on our own or as family units within the timeframe of a year. That is good and is absolutely encouraged. 
On the other hand, as a fellowship, we have read through the entire New Testament and are now in the Old Testament; specifically we will be back in Exodus in the near future. It is a part of sharing together in the goodness and the instruction and the heartfelt thanksgiving to God for the gift of His Word to us.  
In prayerful consideration, it might help those, who have no history of this fellowship, to see how we have gotten to this place each Sunday before we get to the intensive nucleus of why we worship in the manner in which we have been so led. From the very inception of this fellowship, our heart’s desire has been and continues to be that the Lord would make us Exhibit A in this community of that which pleases and honors Him in Spirit and in truth. This was never with the intent that we would be seen as something great and mighty and important in any measure. Our heart has and needs to remain absolutely and concretely set in being only that which gives all glory and credit and tribute to God. 
At the very core of our being is that which was stated by John the Baptist in John 3:23. "He must increase, but I must decrease. Over the course of these more than 45 years, there have been those who have left us because they were seeking a church with greater mass appeal and a more permanent and a more traditional building in which to worship. There is nothing wrong with that and we certainly do not hold that against them in any form or fashion. We just never wanted to be burdened with all that was involved in the care and the maintenance and the cost of a building. We would have built a church building, if that was what we felt lead to do. But that has not been the case. We never looked for great numbers who would support such endeavors and we never wanted to be involved in anything other than that which would honor God in every measure. 
There has always been the sense that we were to worship in an intimate way with a very personal and close relationship with the Lord and with each other. We started out as a home Bible study on Friday evenings. There was no advertising, no going door-to-door, no telemarketing campaign. We grew as the Lord added those to our number according to His working through the needs and the crises and the guidance of His Hand in operation. 
We progressed to a larger home on Sunday mornings as our small community of believers felt so inclined to worship together. Eventually, as the Lord added more people to our fellowship, we moved to a school room. Then, when there was an issue of separation of church and state, we met in a room at a bank in Westlake Village. When that place was no longer available, we began to rent a couple of rooms here at CLU, CLC at the time. We were in the old chicken coops that had been converted into classrooms. We have been on this campus ever since as the university has been so very gracious over the course of these past 35 or 40 years to allow us to rent these facilities. Our needs have been fully met in this manner and will continue until the Lord decides there is something else in His heart for us. 
	The other aspect to the history of this fellowship, which must be taken into consideration, is that we have never wanted to be the type of church that was a social club or place of entertainment. In this age, the purpose of church, for many people, is to broaden social awareness and social contacts. They are seen as meeting places for increased interaction and enhancing business opportunities and operations. 
As well, many of them incorporate elements that will draw in those who want to be entertained. There are those who participate in the enjoyment of having an hour each week in which homage is paid to God, like a duty, then are free to do their own thing for the rest of the week. The focus, in some of these churches, may often center on what the congregation receives for the time they have invested.
	This again, is not a criticism of that type of church going community. There are very real and very wonderful results when outsiders are drawn into a church to hear the salvation message of God being preached. Community outreach programs are extremely important and bear much fruit. We do not hesitate to pray for the Lord to so move marvelously and miraculously through the efforts of churches such as these. They do have their place within the overall structure of the Church of God universal. It is just that that has never been the focus of this corporate expression of Christ. 
Our heart, from day one, has been focused not on what we get out of coming to church, but on what the Lord receives through our time of worship. We do not gather in order to get! We come together in order to give and to give and to give to the utmost of our heart of love unto God. 
We have taken as our creed and as our desire that which was expressed by the Psalmist in Ps 100. Please turn to it so we can read it together with a united heart to bless the Lord. Ps 100. Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before Him with joyful singing. Know that the Lord Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him; bless His name. For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting, And His faithfulness to all generations. Amen.
	We come together to bless the Lord and to declare His goodness and His glory and His awesomeness. Our focus in being here is not to increase our social networking framework. It is not to meet some sense of duty that requires that we allot God an hour or two each week in order to fulfill some type of Christian obligation as a means of keeping our spiritual awareness and balance in tact. We are not here because this is what we have always done and feel that we need to do out of a sense of religious requirement to be good and upright. No, the reason that we come together is because we love the Lord and we want to touch His heart with our united expression of gratitude for Who He is and what He has done in Jesus Christ, Our Lord and our Savior. That is why we try not to focus on anything other than that which will honor and please Him in all humility and praise and adoration unto Him. 
	In all honesty and candor, it has been said, over and over again, that our worship service is not an easy one to attend. It requires preparation and participation and reliance on the Holy Spirit to guide and to direct it unto the Heart of God. That is exactly what we have always been after in our service of worship to God. This is what we want to look at more carefully as we continue, Lord willing, with what is required in our worship unto God. So be it. 
	Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before Him with joyful singing. Know that the Lord Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him; bless His name. For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting, And His faithfulness to all generations. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 104:31. Let the glory of the Lord endure forever; Let the Lord be glad in His works; Amen.