Flourishing Life

I'm on vacation with my family in Panama City Beach, Florida. It's really, really nice to get away and relax and have some time to reflect. On Sunday morning, we attended worship at Woodlawn United Methodist Church. Later, I discovered that this is the church my aunt and uncle, Sue & Butch Kitterman, attend when they're staying here in the winter. It's a great church with a tremendous outreach mentality that is infectious. We attended "9 Forty," their contemporary worship service held at the Arnold High School  Auditorium (theater) across the street from the church. They hold worship at the school because this service has outgrown their Christian Life Center. This past Sunday there were over 300 people in attendance and one of their associates was preaching. The praise band did a very good job, though their worship leader was gone on a mission trip with their young adult ministry.

So, whenever I am on vacation, I enjoy worship at other churches. It does a couple of things: 

1. It's Sunday, the Lord's Day. When it's Sunday I want to be in worship because it's one of the basic purposes of my life, to give glory to God. 

2. It's nice to worship in an atmosphere where I am only responsible for my own personal worship in a community that is led by another shepherd/pastor. I can relax much more than on Sundays when I am the pastor, leading our community in worship. Although I certainly worship every Sunday, when I am not involved in the planning and the message, it is a much simpler experience.

Being in this environment, I usually am a little more able to step back and examine what is the theology of worship evident in this experience? I usually learn something. I am able to reflect on what we do at Christ Church more because I'm not in that Sunday to Sunday cycle. So, this time, I really was drawn to reflect on worship and the meaning of worship. I came up with a few thoughts I want to share.

Worship is Christ-Centered.

The audience is not the congregation. The audience is God. When a community of faith gathers to worship, the focus is on bringing glory to the Lord. This is simple, but often overlooked.

Worship Order Matters

The design of the worship service itself matters because the order of the service says something about what you believe about God and about yourself. Where is the offering? Is there a time of greeting other members of the community? Where does the sermon or message come? How is the reading of the Scripture presented? The ordering of the different elements of worship is important.

Worship is Seeker-Sensitive

Paul's instructions to the Corinthians, ancient Jewish practices, and the testimony of the early church all confirm the reality that it is incumbent on a community of faith to take into account the presence of spiritual seekers in worship. This is undeniable. It has much less to do with music style than it does with other aspects of keeping the uninformed informed about what is happening and why it is happening.

Worship and Communion Go Together

I have been reflecting on this for a long time. Word & Sacrament go together. The only reason we don't celebrate Communion every Sunday in the UM tradition is because of a lack of Elders (priests) in early American Methodism. There were so few to go around, churches usually celebrated Communion only quarterly. It certainly was not a result of any theological reflection on frequent communion. The founder of the Methodist Revival, John Wesley encouraged frequent communion. Monthly communion has become the norm, but is this norm in alignment with the Scripture and historical Christian practice? Not really. This is something to think about.

These thoughts are simply a beginning. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts. What do you think is important? Why? How can Christ Church's worship be more God-glorifying and people-inspiring?