#wors

Time and again I hear how important the darker environment is to those at our vintage-faith worship gathering. Attenders feel they can freely pray in a corner by themselves without feeling that everyone is staring at them. ↗

— Dan Kimball

#church #introverts #prayer #spirituality #worship

Most of the church landscape in my lifetime has been heavily invested in trying to do something for Jerry or Sherri or some other icon of unchurchness. The problem is that they have been only about themselves from the moment they could wail for their mothers, and the decision to give them at church what they can find in any self-help book appears now as a choice to abandon the One in whose honor the church gathers. What they need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God. It was never God’s desire that He would sit on the sideline and watch us frantically devise impressive ways to reach people or simply hold the line on orthodoxy as though faithfulness can exist in a vacuum apart from fruitfulness. God is the Matter of first importance! Can you say that about your current weekly encounter with church? ↗

— James MacDonald

#encounter #focus #god #task #vision

God thundered again and again through the prophets that worship in the context of mistreatment of the poor and disadvantaged is an outrage. ↗

— Ronald J. Sider

#christianity #god #outrage #poor #prophets

There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse. ↗

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#could-have-been-worse #difference #enemies #family #family

It is pardonable for children to yell that they believe in fairies, but it is somehow sinister when the piping note shifts from the puerile to the senile. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#fairies #hero-worship #john-f-kennedy #kennedy-family #politics

The worst thing is always thinking of titles for records, with some reason behind them, and she just came out with the word, which she thought was a good word, a hard word, and since then we've sort of attached loads of meaning to it. ↗

— Emma Anderson

#attached #behind #came #good #hard

The immoral woman in Luke 7 has the faith to anticipate Christ's forgiveness. She can act in love with no words to justify. ↗

— Jenn Thoman

#forgiveness #justification #worship #faith

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly becomes any of us to talk about the rest of us. ↗

— G. W. Cooke

#best #friendship #good #talking #worst

Hang your merit. I don't seek anyone's approbation. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#approval #black-humor #disapproval #dishonesty #funny

Worship, then, needs to be characterized by hospitality; it needs to be inviting. But at the same time, it should be inviting seekers into the church and its unique story and language. Worship should be an occasion of cross-cultural hospitality. Consider an analogy: when I travel to France, I hope to be made to feel welcome. However, I don't expect my French hosts to become Americans in order to make me feel at home. I don't expect them to start speaking English, ordering pizza, talking about the New York Yankees, and so on. Indeed, if I wanted that, I would have just stayed home! Instead, what I'm hoping for is to be welcomed into their unique French culture; that's why I've come to France in the first place. And I know that this will take some work on my part. I'm expecting things to be different; indeed, I'm looking for just this difference. So also, I think, with hospitable worship: seekers are looking for something our culture can't provide. Many don't want a religious version of what they can already get at the mall. And this is especially true of postmodern or Gen X seekers: they are looking for elements of transcendence and challenge that MTV could never give them. Rather than an MTVized version of the gospel, they are searching for the mysterious practices of the ancient gospel. ↗

— James K.A. Smith

#church #gospel #liturgy #mtv #postmodernism