The community of God in worship

The trouble with blogging or perhaps the discipline of blogging is that there is little opportunity to build a sense of shared community with your readers. It is the same in worship. Visitors want to be impressed immediately; rare are the folk who are willing to invest a month with you to see what's really going on.
You may think you know a service having visited once. But really, all you know are the ways that this group of people reinforce or upset your prejudices. Authentic worship emerges out of community, and one of the things about community is that you know and are known. This sense of journeying together emerges over time, most often. It is rare indeed when you walk into a place and know that you are home, even if you have never been there before.
Most of us figure out that we were home long afterwards, when we find ourselves missing a place, an event, a people. And too often we get stuck in nostalgia, even grief, instead of looking to be in community where we are.

How do I serve here?

The absence of God in worship

This is a much more difficult thing to write. Perhaps it is our lack of perception or even our projection that leads to the conclusion that the Spirit is not present or not able to move.

Can anything stop God doing what God wants? I think we can. I think God chooses to give us the space we ask for. Sometimes we ask for nostalgia, or style, or ideology above the living presence of God. Sometimes we simply want it our way. Sometimes our leaders are radical and provocative to get a response, not with the view to glorifying God. Sometimes we are experience junkies.

Sometimes we are simply tired, angry, afraid, too caught up with ourselves to be present. That's why at our church we start with a Psalm each morning. We use the voice of others to remind us of the reality that the world conspires to make us forget.

God is real.

God is here, now.

God will meet with us today.