Powerful Opening Worship Kicks Off AC15

The Central Texas Annual Conference is off to a rousing start following Sunday night’s Opening Worship service. The service featured music from several of White’s Chapel’s talented musicians and singers that brought those gathered to their feet in praise and celebration several times.

 

Reverend Rudy Rasmus, senior pastor of St. Johns UMC in Houston, served as the conference preacher for the evening and brought a powerful and poignant message of the need for change in our churches if we are going to effectively reach the hungry and the hurting in our communities and world. Using the biblical narrative of Jesus meeting the Samaratin woman at the well from the Gospel of John, Rev. Rasmus taught that there are some treasured traditional frameworks of the church that are going to have to change.

 

He then went on to call out what he believes to be the biggest challenge facing the church today…fear. He says we have to confront that fear, ask ourselves of what are we really afraid, and then reconcile with that fear. True transformation will not occur until the leaders of the church name and confront those fears remarked Rev. Rasmus. He then suggested that we need not worry about how we are going to confront those fears, or how we are going to solve the problems standing in our way at the moment. He said there is no need to worry about how, because we already know who we can turn those problems over to – the one who has already paid the price and paved the way for our salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Following a powerful prayer by Rev. Juanita Rasmus, Bishop Lowry then moved into the 2015 service of Remembrance and Resurrection. This always moving service that honors the saints that have gone on to glory in the past year, was highlighted by more moving music from the White’s Chapel choir and soloists.

 

If you were not able to attend or didn’t get to catch the webcast live, an archive version of the webcast will be available sometime Monday, June 8. Please check back here for details. Following are just a few still frame snapshots in time from Sunday’s service. If it was any indication of what’s to come, the members of the 2015 Central Texas Annual Conference are in for quite the mountaintop experience. Please join them via our live web stream (go to ctcumc.org/ac15-live for a schedule and link to the live webcast), and join the twitter conversation at ctcumc.org/ac15-twitter.