LIFE-CHANGING WORSHIP…6.17.09
by SteveIn her book, Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard writes of her astonishment that (back in the day) women wore velvet or straw hats to church rather than crash helmets. “Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may awake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.”
O that that could be descriptive of the way we do worship…you know, that stuff we do on Sunday mornings between 11a.m. and 12 noon. Does that sound like any worship service you have attended lately? In the process of “RETHINKING CHURCH,” we haven’t had much discussion about the worship service. In fact, most people seem to like it the way it is. It’s comfortable and comforting.
What if, instead, our worship was challenging and changing…what if we came in with the expectation of meeting the God who loves us as we are, but is not content to leave us that way? What if we came listening for the Word of God to us in the hymns, the anthems, the Scriptures, and the sermon? If that were our attitude and expectation, I have no doubt that not only would our worship be transformed…but so would we. Blessings….
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Steve,
I think it strange that many of us are searching for the same things but need many different medias to get to that point. Tex Sample also has a book I have been reading titled Powerful Persuasion Multimedia Witness in Christian Worship. I believe that the Epilogue says it all. Two lines that I don’t want to take away from the rest but say it all to me is “The church must “pitch tent” with the wider culture. Here my contention is that the practices of the culture be used to serve God’s story and not the other way around.” A friend Bill Martin gave me a great article to read in Sunday school. It comes from the Oklahoma Observer, June 25, 2009, B18. Titled America’s Emerging Church is Different. I think you should try to find it and see what you think. If you can’t find it I will send you a copy. It has a cartoon I think will make you laugh! Just food for thought anyways.