Today was the first time our 2024-2025 Worship Team led our chapel service. Two Grade 8 and one Grade 6 student led the pledges, The Lord’s Prayer, O Canada and the Land Acknowledgement. They also led the singing of the first song, “Our God” (by Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin, Chris Tomlin and Jesse Reeves), as well as the accompaniment. The Worship Team musicians included a violinist, guitarist, pianist, keyboardist, and a percussionist on the cajon.
Next, the audience watched an upbeat Wesley video about “Respect” and listened to the leaders read several descriptions of how leaders that are respectful behave.
For the second worship song, the team chose “Living Hope” by Phil Wickham. This is a familiar and popular song at Wesley. The entire gym filled with praise, especially during the chorus, as the primary students sang with great enthusiasm.
Wesley students then had a chance to see how some of their peers responded to the question, “Why should we honour the people that God put into our lives?” This short video featured 7 students.
The last worship song that was sung this morning was “Pharaoh, Pharaoh” by Tony Sbrana. This familiar song is filled with actions and accompanied by an electric guitar to give it a rock n’ roll feel. The students enjoyed singing this song.
Our guest speaker this morning was Pastor Phil from Uxbridge Baptist Church. As he spoke on the topic of respect, he challenged the students to think about how they can show respect to those whom they may not like or are unkind to them. He shared that God wants us to treat others well, irrespective of how we feel about them. Pastor Phil used Jesus’s parable of the lost sheep to make a point. The Good Shepherd left 99 of his sheep to find the one that was lost. Pastor Phil asked the students to think about the sheep as 100 friends and the concern you would have if one of your friends got lost. Pastor Phil explained that each of us are worthy and important because God made each of us uniquely, and He values every one of us. Jesus treats each of us with respect. We, in turn, need to do the same and follow His example. Pastor Phil reminded the audience that the next time we encounter someone that we may not like, is unkind or different, we still need to treat them well by looking past the “thing” that aggravates us and looking at the worth of the person from God’s eyes. This, in turn, will help us treat everyone with respect. Pastor Phil concluded in prayer.
The Worship Team ended the service in leading the recitation of an aspirational passage, which is the hope of being a CRISP leader.
