the Church, the Body, & Worship

While I was in Munich, Germany, a few of the Christian men I had met invited me to come to Starbucks. I gladly agreed; these are some wonderful men who I am blessed to be seeking Christ alongside of.

We sat there sipping our respective drinks, and of course began talking about different things. Our conversation at last settled on The Church. More specifically, what form should The Church take? There is the MegaChurch form, the ReallyBigChurch form, the Regular-to-Small Church form, the Tiny Church form, the House Church form, the informal-meeting-together form. This is just to name a few.

But the question, I suppose, really took the form of, "What should a church, meeting together, look like." Is it better to have a huge congregation, or a small group of friends and acquaintances who are all seeking God? Or is something in between best? We wrestled with this question for quite a while, exploring several different avenues. The answer we eventually came up with is, "There is no one best way to meet together as a body." There are many different ways, as we see all around us, and each way is equally valid. This is because our relationship with Christ is dependent on Him, not on what we do. The form of our corporate worship is not nearly as important as the hearts of those engaged in that worship. And we decided that at different times each kind of corporate worship could be best. There is just not One Way to worship together. That would be a method, a pattern. Our life with Christ dies by patterns that do not depend on Him.

However, that's not what I wanted to write about. That's just background information. In fact, I've got a little more background information too.

Ben has started a time of prayer that we host at our flat. Originally the plan was to meet each week on Tuesday night, but it's only worked every other week so far. We have about two hours of silence, prayer, and spontaneous Scripture reading, interspersed with songs. It's a wonderful time of quietness and solemnity.

This time of prayer that we host is in addition to Wednesday afternoon's time of Team prayer. The Impact team meets together at different member's flats to pray and share a meal. And this time of prayer last Wednesday is what triggered this entire blog post.


As we sat in Jeff's flat praying, we kept having different interruptions. We might laugh together at something, someone would ring the doorbell as they arrived late. One member had to escort a guest to the nearby train station. All in all, it wasn't the focused time of prayer and solemnity that I somehow expected.


I have been in many, many different meetings of The Body as I've grown up. Having a set "form" of service can lead to me tuning out, just going through motions. Currently I am very appreciative of small groups of seekers meeting on their own to pray and discuss their pursuit of Him. Since the group does not have a set pattern of doing things, it feels different, and feels more like I'm worshiping God and responding to Him.

But sitting in Jeff's flat this past Wednesday, I realized again that having no pattern is a pattern. And, in fact, patterns will emerge very quickly. Expectations creep in, and I can tune out anywhere. The point of worship is not the form, the point of worship is not how it feels. The point of worship is God. It's an attitude, a heart-spirit. That is why I can be sitting in the midst of the Body, and we can be sharing a laugh, and still be worshiping. People can come and go, doing what they must, and we are still worshipping.

In Sunday School when I was about six I learned a simple chant that I will carry with me the rest of my life. It is not a complete definition, but it still serves to remind me of the point of worship. It goes like this:

W-O-R-S-H-I-P,
Here's what worship means to me
Telling God
how special
He is



In His Time,