A Note from Michael Gossett | August 28, 2026
A Healthy Church:
A Church that worships
I mentioned this on Sunday, but I love the excitement of the fall. Primarily, I always get my hopes up for cooler weather, which inevitably seems to wait until after Christmas here in East Texas. However, it is still worth hoping, right? But, I also love watching college football. Yes, I was born and raised a Georgia Bulldog and I bleed red and black, but I just love college football. I love watching the Longhorns (worth the note: someone has been working hard on my son who now believes he is a Longhorn fan), the Aggies, Baylor, Tech, and everyone in between. Every season, people gather together in their favorite home stadiums and cheer as loud, excited, and proud as anything I have ever seen. It is a sight to behold. We cheer for victory, celebrate when it happens, and are saddened by anything that comes in the way.
There have been times in the past, when my entire mood has changed because of a loss. This made me really think about my heart posture toward college football. I thought to myself, “I wish I was this committed to the Kingdom” or “I wish I was saddened at the thought of people who are lost as much as when Georgia loses.” I know this seems silly, but the Lord really did expose something in me. What is most important? What do I love the most? What wins do I really celebrate? I know that we would never say that we “worship” a football team or even remotely close, but it does prove something in us. We are made to worship.
Long before you walk into the worship center, the wiring is already there. There is this natural pull to give yourself away to something bigger than you. When your team scores, the stadium erupts into cheers. Moments like this are people handing their hearts over to what it treasures. C.S. Lewis noticed that we praise the things we enjoy almost before we decide to, that praise is the way our joy finishes itself. The real question for us to consider is not whether or not we worship, but what or who we worship.
Jesus pressed that very question on a woman who came to a well thinking she had come only for water. But what she finds, is completely transformative for her and helps the way we think about worship.
John 4:19-24 says, “19 ‘Sir,’ the woman replied, ‘I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.’ 21 Jesus told her, ‘Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.’”
Worship Reaches Beyond the Mountain
Watch what the woman does the second the conversation turns personal. Jesus literally just revealed to her the sin in her life and the brokenness of her life. She then reaches for a worship debate to change the subject. Your people say Jerusalem, mine say this mountain. Debates of worship may look different today, but the debate itself is ancient. There are moments in the life of the church, even today, that accidentally get caught up in debates on furniture placement, carpet colors, pews vs. chairs, stadium seating, style of worship, aesthetics of a building, and whose tradition should win the day. Jesus refuses to chase her down that road. He lifts her eyes over the mountain and over Jerusalem, all the way up to the Father Himself. An hour is coming, he says, when the place will no longer be the point. The how of worship still carries real weight, and Jesus even makes this clear, but He will not let lesser external debates become the center of the conversation.
This is really tricky. Just like in the days of Jesus, everyone has traditions they grew up with. I certainly do. I remember when Katie and I were first married, and we were completely blindsided about how many preferences we had when it came to traditions. Growing up, my family had a specific flow of how Christmas Eve should be done. My cousins, grandparents, and my family would all get together on Christmas Eve and have a meal together and it wasn’t just any meal. It was the Christmas Eve meal. My granny, who is now with the Lord, would fix her world-famous meatloaf accompanied by butter beans, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, rolls, collard greens, fried okra, and enough dessert to put you in a diabetic coma. I never claimed my family was health-conscious, but boy, was it good! Then, after dinner, we would all open one present, read the Christmas story from Luke, and then go to bed.
Well, needless to say, Katie grew up with different traditions. I thought that was strange. After all, could you possibly have Christmas Eve without meatloaf? I thought it was blasphemous! I write this with a little bit of a chuckle, because looking back, how could I not see it? I was so offended that Katie was not going to make meatloaf for Christmas Eve. What the Lord taught me 19 years ago was that, for our marriage to work, I had to lay down my preferences and traditions for the sake of marital health (and probably myphysical health as well). Katie’s traditions were not wrong, except for the lack of meatloaf, but it is certainly what she was used to. Every tradition we have brings back nostalgia, comfort, and even ease in our spirit. I know that is true of my life, Katie’s life, and I know it is true of your life as well.
The problem is not that we have preferences or traditions, the problem emerges when our preference becomes the highest authority at the expense of unity. I was unwilling to have division in our marriage over my personal bias toward my traditions. You know what was beautiful about the whole thing? It caused Katie and me to grow toward each other. It was actually sanctifying in our marriage. It can also be sanctifying in our church family as well.
If only two people who are married and committed to one another have to lay down preferences, traditions, and biases, how much more is it necessary for when 5,000 people come together weekly? It is seemingly impossible! Every single one of us want to worship in a certain way that makes us feel like home, brings back the nostalgia, and comfort that we are used to. But just like Katie and I had to realize 19 years ago, what has to become more important is that we are together. We had to reach beyond the mountain of differences for the sake of unity and sanctification. I have seen and heard about too many people choosing not to be a part of the church gathering because it looks different than we are used to. A healthy church, as well as a healthy disciple, keeps its eyes on the Father and holds its traditions and preferences with a loose grip.
God Cares About the How
Worship is a serious matter and God is serious about the way we gather together. In Leviticus 10, on the very day the tabernacle worship was inaugurated, two of Aaron’s own sons, Nadab and Abihu, decided to go rogue. Scripture says, “each took his own firepan, put fire in it, placed incense on it, and presented unauthorized (strange) fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them to do. Then fire came out from the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.” These were priests, the sons of the high priest, standing at the very center of Israel’s worship, and they brought God something he never asked them for, and it cost them their lives.
Then hear what the Lord says through Moses in the next verse. “I will demonstrate my holiness to those who are near me, and I will reveal my glory before all the people.” And then four of the heaviest words come next. “And Aaron remained silent.” This text reveals to us the truth about the God we gather before. He is holy! Drawing near to Him is a gift, but it is also weighty. The Lord has never handed to us the freedom to simply decide randomly what we should do in the gathering.
This is what Jesus meant by worshipping in truth. Notice he told the woman that her people “worship what they do not know,” while true worship rests on the God who has made Himself known. Worship is our answer back to God, and the shape of that answer belongs to God. He tells us how He will be approached. The Reformers recovered this truth, and the Puritans ordered their whole lives around it, that we come to God the way He has appointed in His Word. The old confession of our faith said it plainly, that the acceptable way to worship the true God is appointed by God Himself, so that we are not left to worship Him by inventions of our own imagination. John Calvin said, the human heart is a factory that never stops turning out idols. When we gather, one honest question should hang over everything we do. Did God give us this, or is this just the latest phase of evangelicalism? We open the Word because God commanded it. We pray because God has invited us to do so. We sing because God told us to teach and admonish one another with His truth. We baptize and we come to the Lord’s table because Jesus placed those in our hands and said do this. We preach the gospelbecause it is the power of God for salvation. The strange fire of Nadab and Abihu warns us, and the Word of God guides us, so that what rises out of the room on Sunday is worship that the Lord actually asked to receive.
God Sees the Heart
There is a second danger, and it comes at us from the opposite direction. A person can get the form exactly right and still walk out having missed God completely. Jesus said the true worshiper worships the Father “in spirit and in truth,” and then He told us why. “God is spirit.” He is living and personal, and He alone sees straight past the surface of our Sunday and into our heart. So the motions by themselves will never reach Him. We can easily sing along with every song while our minds are occupied in a different direction. This was Jesus’ own warning to the Pharisees. Jesus said, “you honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me.” Strange fire grieves God, and so does cold fire, the right words carried up by a heart that is wandering from Him. Jonathan Edwards gave his life to this very point, that true religion lives in holy affections, in a heart genuinely stirred to love and treasure God. But here is the mercy of it all! Since God is spirit, this kind of worship reaches past anything our flesh can manufacture. Paul says we are the ones “who worship by the Spirit of God.” The Spirit Himself has tobreathe on a dead heart before it will ever truly sing. So we come, and we ask Him to do that very thing in us.
Do not miss this: Jesus says, “The Father wants such people to worship Him.” God is seeking worshipers. The holy God of Leviticus 10, who needs nothing and is complete in Himself, has set his heart on gathering a people who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. Jesus went looking for this broken Samaritan. And Jesus has come seeking you. Augustine spent years running before it finally broke over him, that God had made us for Himself, and our hearts would stay restless until they came home to rest in Him. That ache you keep trying to suppress or satisfy is worship longing for the Lord. The same God who guards his worship so jealously is the God who ran toward a sinful woman at a well and made her a true worshiper. That is grace! Our singing never earns his attention. He turned His face toward us first in Christ Jesus, and our worship is simply our response back to Him. This is healthy. This must be our story of worship.
When this is our true focus, our preferences begin to disappear, and unlike anywhere else in the world, all people of different ages, colors, backgrounds, and statuses who are fixed on Christ can dwell together under one great preference: I belong to Christ and prefer to worship Him together. That is my prayer for our church as the Lord continues to sanctify us by His grace and in His love.
THIS SUNDAY AND MORE!
This Sunday we are continuing our study in Luke 15:1-7, “Kingdom Shepherd.” The parable of the lost sheep is one of the most well-known parables in all of Scripture. Luke records this parable so that we can get a glimpse of the heart of a shepherd who will do anything to reach just one more!
Come Sunday and let us worship together a God who counts His sheep and will not rest while even one of them is missing. Bring someone who needs to hear that He is the very one being sought after. See you Sunday at 9:30 / 11:00.
CHURCH VOTE
I also want to share an exciting way we are continuing the vision God has given us. Over the last year, we have continued to see a need at our Flint Campus. One of those needs is to provide more Connect Group space for adults and space for our Student Ministry. The finance committee, the BEG (Building, Equipment, and Grounds) committee, and our deacons have approved building a new student space at our Flint Campus. This is part of our overall plan to continue to connect people to Jesus and His church so that we may all grow in His likeness and multiply for His purpose. This requires adequate space in order to continue moving forward. With that in mind, we will vote as a church family to approve this recommendation on Wednesday, September 2nd,after the Prayer Gathering. The motion is to build this space for a price not to exceed $600,000. Please pray through and bring any questions that you may have. Thank you for being a church committed to doing whatever it takes to reach one more with the gospel of Jesus Christ!
You are loved and prayed for!
Michael Gossett