March 2nd, 2010

Walking through Hillsborough the other day, I noticed that a new coffee shop had opened up. After making a brief assessment of its potential, I decided that it probably wouldn’t rival Gracie’s, my ‘regular’ hangout (every couple of months counts as regular, surely?). One thing it does have going for it, though, is the fact that it stays open until six every evening – Gracie’s shuts at half past four (Gracie’s, if you’re reading: I can’t get there much before that. Stay open until later.)  

Over half term I spent a couple of mornings in Gracie’s, reading, making notes and observations and working on various bits of writing. One particular morning, my friend Andy, who also likes coffee, texted me the following quote as part of an ongoing SMS-based exchange of wisdom: Why can’t we think of churching together as a web of relationships? Why are we obsessed with the singular event rather than seeking the rhythm of a community together? It’s from a book by Michael Frost called, ‘Exiles – Living Missionally in a P0st-Christian World. After spending a few seconds laughing at the idea of posting Christians (a good way of solving church disputes, maybe?), I started to think about it seriously. It even made it into my notebook.

Because during that morning, I’d been giving some thought to the question, ‘Where’s my place of worship?’ During my teenage years, I got involved with leading musical worship at my church, something that I’m still involved with today. But looking back, the word ‘worship’ was inseparable from the word ‘music’. Worship equalled music. When people asked, ‘What’s the worship like at church?’, I would answer by telling them how much it, or I, rocked (in my book, the more it rocked, the better it was. I was convinced that that God loves Pearl Jam…..) If someone had asked me, ‘Where is your place of worship?’ I’d have answered with the name of my church, which would’ve been a reasonable answer.

As I grew older I realised that worship is about lifestyle. It’s about what happens outside the walls of the church building (another misconception – church equals people, not building). Worship is about making every action, every thought, about God and not ourselves. It’s about making each encounter, each interaction with another person, reflect our relationship with Jesus. It’s about seeking and finding; learning and developing. Songs can help us to do this, but they are one expression of worship; people who are tone deaf or can’t play an instrument are not somehow ‘worse’ at worship. This might be obvious, but to me, growing up, it wasn’t. Now I can see just how poorly some areas of my life reflected, and still reflect, the call to worship.

I’ve touched on the fact that I saw the church building as the place in which to ‘do worship’. I propose changing ‘church’ from a noun (a thing…) to a verb (a ‘doing’ word…). We need to be church, not just go to one. What should a church be? Where can we do that? Where is the greatest need? I’m willing to bet that it’s not within the walls of the building (althought there will be needs there that should also be met).

A church should be a source of support to its community. How can we support others? By using our gifts and talents. By talking to people (remember that, Facebookers?) about how they’re doing and what they need. Is it likely that the needy and broken from our community will just walk in on a Sunday morning, admit they need Jesus, pray with us for five minutes and then be changed forever?  People want, and need, actions that express love without an agenda.

If you’ve ever read about the early church (again, ‘church’ as in the group of people….) in Acts, then you can see what church should be. In chapter 2 verse 46, it says that ‘They broke bread together in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts’. They didn’t have an annex with a kitchen. They didn’t even have a coffee machine (maybe their PCC should’ve looked into that one). They also hung around in the temple courts, where the everyday people also hung out. In the following verse it tells us what happened as a result: ‘The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved’. By being amongst the ‘normals’, the average people, people were saved. How many people are saved over the course of the average year as part of our church services?

The church building is vital for us. Communal worship in musical, liturgical and prayer form are essential – we aren’t called to be hermits for our faith. But it musn’t become the focus of our faith. Sunday morning or evening must be a starting point for a week of worship that can take as many forms as there are members of the congregation. Worship through teaching. Worship through cooking. Worship through cleaning, writing, talking to the lonely. It’s about dedicating every task, every talent, to the glory of God. ‘Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Collosians 3 v17).

Where is your place of worship? Do you have more than one? Do you confine worship to Sunday morning? Worship in Gracie’s, anyone?

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