Sunday morning Nazarene General Assembly: it’s about as Nazarene as you can get. A case could be made that a person is never fully “Nazarene” until they’ve attended at least one of these signature services. The 2009 version was no disappointment. The music was excellent and the sermon by Dr. Cunningham was a blessing. The big communion service was blessed. Tradition finally won as the congregation sang (yes, we sung and didn’t just listen to) “Holiness unto the Lord.” The music team resisted the temptation to “contemporize” it up by mixing in a praise chorus or by updating the rhythm. It was nice to hear the whole congregation join together in a well known song of the church. I’m okay with the more modern songs, but I really like it when we all sing unto the Lord rather than just standing and clapping and listening to the talented folks with the microphones do our singing for us. Dr. Cunningham brought us another patented GS story telling sermon. It was fun to listen to and was quite inspirational. In preparation for communion we recited the Apostle’s Creed. If you like old fashioned worship, you would love seeing the church embracing this nearly 2000 year old Christian ritual! The hall was, I guess, around 80% full. That’s a lot of people, over 22,000 were in attendance. That means it wasn’t close to being the biggest Nazarene crowd ever…but that’s a lot of Nazarenes in one place at one time. Additionally, we’re told that there were over 6000 streaming internet connects. I can only imagine that that number will continue to grow. In 10 or 15 years we may have as many participants off site as we have on site.