Worship

A couple of weeks ago, Thomas+ and I got into a little bit of a conversation about worship and I decided to bring it out overall. A point I made in the post was that I didn't think churches should be worship centers, but centers for discipleship. Thomas said that the most important thing his church does is gather for worship and I expressed that because of the time I spend in the tech booth, I don't get to worship very often.

Here's what I mean by worship. To me, worship is the ability to step away from ourselves and to focus completely on God and the wondrousness of His presence. In traditional Church of Christ theology, there are five acts of worship: teaching, giving, singing, praying, and communion. And if you only count those, I do get to experience those every Sunday, but I'm not able to focus exclusively on them. If you step away from that and get into a less "finger-based" approach (tiny joke there) that thinks in a wider view of worship and experiencing God in a more experiential way, I don't get to participate in that very often either.

Am I happy to be helping in the booth? Of course. It's a talent that I have and one I'm grateful to share with the body, and one that I know facilitates worship in others. But because I have to be so focused on making sure that there aren't mistakes in what we do which would distract others from worship.

That's what I mean by worship and why I'm not able to focus on it. So, Thomas, I'm interested in hearing your take, as well as anyone else's, of course. I'm going to be out of pocket after this morning and not able to respond until Monday, but I'll be very interested in reading the responses to this.