On Sunday night Jay and I spoke at Sunset’s high school group (Overflow). It was the first time I spoke any sort of message in front of a larger group. And I actually really enjoyed it. We centered our time around leading worship and the spiritual discipline of worship, while making the talking points more conversational by having our high school director (Mike Giering, who rarely blogs) lead the discussion. This post as well as the ones that follow, flow out of some of our discussion on stage and what God put on my heart to share with the students.
We often talk about worship being a lifestyle and yet living that out often becomes quite hit and miss. Somehow there is a disconnect between our emotional worship experiences with our church congregations every weekend and how we connect with God throughout the week.
I want to explore some of the ‘why’ behind this disconnect. As I thought through this (a real problem in my own life) a few distinct things immediately came to mind. Here is one:
- If God can show himself in lots of little ways during the week surely he will show up even more on a Sunday morning when the church is gathered specifically to hear from him.
The problem is, very few come to church with this kind of expectation and so few are met in a special way because of this.
We rarely come to our times of congregation/corporate worship with an expectation that God is going to do something special. For all the criticism charismatic churches receive, we certainly can’t discount their expectation for God to be at work in the midst of their corporate gatherings.
What would it look like for a church to anticipate what God was going to do in their midst?
Don’t we put God in a box by not giving him room to operate?
I’d really appreciate your thoughts here because I’m really just in the beginning stages of forming my thoughts on this topic.
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