Worship Wednesday: Kingdom Encounters

In our blog description, we explain that the name for our blog comes from the name of the radio program that we produce every Saturday night. However, we never explained to you just how we came up with the name Kingdom Encounters. It is actually a big deal and has a lot to do with worship, so I want to share the story behind the name of our blog with you on this Worship Wednesday.

The Beginning: Why Encounters?

When I was in college studying religion and music, I attended a wonderful and friendly church near campus. This church had a Minister of Congregational Life named Karen, who really became a mentor to me. She taught the College and Career Sunday School Class that I attended, and her enthusiasm and gentle welcoming spirit really drew me in. When I was required to do a ministry internship for my degree, it was a natural fit for me to work under Karen's supervision. Although, I was assigned to work with the Middle School students for my internship, Karen saw a need for a program geared towards my peers and allowed me to design and implement a collegiate program as a project for my internship. What I came up with was a Sunday night coffeehouse-style meeting of college students called Encounters 631.

The idea behind Encounters 631 was to create a welcoming enviroment for college students to come to church on a Sunday night and encounter God in community with other seekers and believers and to share about their own encounters with God. The  "631" represented the theme verse of our meeting:

You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.

Psalm 63:1

I was attracted to this verse because of the desire it expresses...the longing to encounter the peace, love, joy and satisfaction that is the very essence of God!

Kingdom Encounters, the Radio Program

Years later, Mr. The King and I were approached by his radio station about producing and hosting an hour-long weekly radio program. As we discussed what we wanted the program to be about and what we would call it, I remembered the program that I had started in college, and we finally decided to name the program Kingdom Encounters. Honestly, at the time, we just really liked the sound of that name and the basic idea of it, but it wasn't until recently that I began to understand the meaning on a deeper level.

Encounter: Definition and Relationship to Worship

Recently, as I considered the definition of the word encounter, I found out just how appropriate that word is to describe the way that God works in our lives. Here are several definitions that I have found for the word encounter : 

en·coun·ter 

 /ɛnˈkaʊntər/ Show Spelled[en-koun-ter] Show IPA

verb (used with object)

1. to come upon or meet with, especially unexpectedly: to encounter a new situation.

2. to meet with or contend against (difficulties, opposition, etc.): We encounter so many problems in our work.

3. to meet (a person, military force, etc.) in conflict: We will encounter the enemy at dawn. 

I find these definitions to be so relevant to our spiritual journey. An encounter with God is often an unexpected meeting. It is often a meeting that he uses to contend with us and show us the things that we are holding onto - things that are in conflict with His Word. When our fleshly nature comes in contact with the spirit of God, it can be a brutile encounter, but out of this meeting comes a true spirit of worship...a laying down of worldy things to recieve the spiritual things. These encounters are opportunities to learn and grow. These unexpected meetings are life-altering moments that lead us into a lifestyle of worship.

encounter - a casual or unexpected convergence; "he still remembers their meeting in Paris"; "there was a brief encounter in the hallway" meeting convergence - the occurrence of two or more things coming together

In this definition, it is obvious that an encounter involves "two or more things coming together." I couldn't give a more accurate definition of what it means to worship! Worship is like marriage...it is a joining of our souls with the spirit of God. Just as the "two become one" in the union of marriage, I believe that the goal of worship is for our spirit to become one with the spirit of God, and for all believers and followers of Christ to become united in spirit as well.

So, to Mr. The King and I, "Kingdom Encounters" are daily moments of worship, drawing us ever closer to The King of Kings and His will for the Kingdom. These encounters promote change in us and prompt us to promote the kind of change that the Lord desires to bring about in this world and in the lives of His people! These kind of encounters are what our radio program is about, what our blog is about, and what we want our entire life to be about!