I’ve got lots of questions, here’s a series of questions I’ve been pondering lately on church gatherings – and by that I mean that thing folks do in the New Testament when they get together.
What do you call yours? I was going to say Sunday gathering, but lots of folks don’t meet on Sundays. Worship service came to mind, but ain’t all life worship? and are we really being serviced?
Last sunday I did a collaborative message in silence (You can read about when I did it last before here). If you brought me into your church to ‘preach’ and all I did was help Christ be formed in them one of the best ways I know how, would you be disappointed?
With the centrality of Scripture, and it being text, content, information (and yes, Story for you emergent folks, and the Living Word of God for you fundies), I wonder if we’ve overemphasized it’s generally unidirectional mode of communication in our own practices?
Does ‘the gospel’ need to be proclaimed with every gathering?
Could the full weight of the gospel ever be transmitted this side of life?
Could we compress the gospel to a 140-character tweet and spend the rest of our time living it out?
How much literal reading of the Scripture do you do? Things vary for us, but typically we collectively read a mix of passages following a lectionary, and I tend to expound on a short text. Some folks want full exposure to the breadth of the Bible, others don’t want to gloss over it and hone in.
Does the Pareto principle of 20% of the people doing 80% of the ‘work’ apply to your gathering?
Do we really need to gather weekly? versus daily or monthly?
What does God desire for us collectively as we gather? And are there elements in our worship gathering that don’t contribute towards that?
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