First Kainos Worship Service

My friends and I started a ministry at Believers Fellowship called Kainos, from the Greek word for "new." It started as a small group Bible study for people 18–25, but it is quickly growing into something more than that. Yesterday we had our first Sunday night worship service--it was awesome!

I love the "Kainos" theme that we have chosen. While studying Colossians, I kept coming back to Colossians 3:9–11 as a theme verse for the new humanity. I wanted to call the group "Anakainoo," after the Greek word for "renew" that appears in Colossians 3:10. However, everyone agreed that the word was too long and hard to pronounce, so we shortened it to the related word "Kainos" and kept Colossians 3:9–11 as our theme passage. There is kind of a double entendre to the name. On the one hand, people 18–25 are doing a lot of "new" things--they're leaving home for the first time, getting their first jobs, paying rent for the first time, etc. Also, we are the "new" humanity. I love that.

We started by reading Rob Bell's Sex God together. It was an interesting choice for a first book, but it's gone pretty well. The people in the group have been real about the things in their life, and the atmosphere has been pretty warm and non-judgmental. The group is quickly outgrowing my house, so we needed to find a place at the church to meet. At the same time, we wanted the group to be more than just a time to hang out and talk about a book--we wanted a chance to do church together.

All of these ideas came together last night for the first Kainos worship service. Like I said, it was great. We worked around the theme of spiritual renewal or transformation, and asked the question of what God wanted to transform about the culture of Gig Harbor and Tacoma. Then, we asked the question of what God was doing in our lives to make us a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem. God is cleaning up our culture, we said, and He is starting with us--the new humanity. I am excited to see where this goes.

I think what made the time so special for me was that it was real. When you are in the ministry, it is so easy to get caught up in the technical aspects of what goes into church so that you lose sight of worship. Last night, I wasn't worried so much about what I was going to say, or how it was going to come across. I just spoke from my heart. During the worship time, I wasn't worried about how the worship sounded, I simply focused on God. Johnny, the worship leader, did a great job of leading us in worshipping the Father. To me, last night was everything I want from a worship service--a time to be real with my brothers and sisters in Christ, and a time to worship God together with them. Good stuff. Can't wait until the next one.