Worship Together

Well, we are a month-and-a-half into our new worship schedule. I guess that is too soon to decide whether it is a good thing or a bad thing… or just a thing. On the one hand, our worship has been tremendous! The combination of our praise team with the whole church singing together (rather than divided into two services) has been pretty amazing. I’d rather worship with you guys than anywhere else! (And I’m sure you’d rather hear me preach than Jeff Walling or Max Lucado! Amen? Hello?) But the other hand, it still feels really strange to have church first and then Bible class. After 26 years of preaching and then going home for lunch… well, it is hard to get used to something different. I’m probably not the only one who is struggling a little bit with change.

The change was intended to bring us back together into single communion service as a way of emphasizing unity. Gathering around a common table to simultaneous remember the sacrificed body of Christ and proclaim our unity as one body in Christ is a powerful metaphor. No one (at least, no one here) would argue that multiple services and multiple communions are wrong. There are many different ways to “do communion” (Tressa and Angelynn visited a church that has weekly communion on Sunday night in small groups, trying to recapture the communal setting of the first century). But for our specific church situation, the elders thought the symbolism of one communion service bringing us together as one body (1 Cor 10:17) was powerful enough to make squeezing together into one service worth the effort.

Symbolism can be profound. But we need to understand that everything about our worship proclaims (or should proclaim) unity. We sing together with one voice praising God and encouraging each other. We come before the throne of God together to petition Him in prayer. We come together as children allowing God to speak to us together through his word. Everything about coming together in worship proclaims that we are one family coming to worship one God. The power of our worship together is the together!