Centerpoint...

From Working the Angles:

...the role of the community at prayer was formative in everything else that took place.  When the people gathered to join their prayers in the act of worship this act was neither haphazard nor peripheral; it was dramatic and basic...The prayers of the people were the most important things that they did.  

Where in our lives do we live into this?  "The people gathered to join their prayers in the act of worship..."

A passage from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters teaches the young Wormwood that when you can't fight against a concept because its strength is too great, you can redefine the concept to make it something completely different and through that eliminate its power.  What is "worship" for us?  An hour to be inspired?  excited?  strengthened?  motivated?  educated?  And if we are not any of those things, then we don't attend?  We find a book to read which accomplishes one or all of the above?  take a walk in nature or on the golf course?  or just dismiss it all together as a waste of time because it doesn't "meet our needs."

What would worship accomplish if we "gathered to join our prayers in the act of worship" without concern to our own needs?  Is worship supposed to "accomplish" something?  Why is a community "gathered to join their prayers in an act of worship" both dramatic and basic?  Would we agree that on Sunday our corporate prayers were "the most important things we did"?

I think we count first the sermon...does the preacher connect with us and meet some felt need we have--and do we agree with his/her "opinion" about the text?  Then, perhaps we would count the music...do we know the songs?  like them?  connect with them?  Does the musician add to our experience of worship with the music or does his/her skill distract?  Then, perhaps the visuals in worship... power points, liturgical art, drama, etc.  Do we like that?  Connect with it?  Does it stir us emotionally?

And I bet, not one of us, would evaluate prayer in our list of what we liked/disliked on a given Sunday--either the prayer of the worship leaders or our own prayerful participation.  In fact, I wonder if we have even participated in prayer during Sunday worship, or do we simply wait until the "prayer" is over and we get back to the real work of worship?

What would our churches, our worship and our lives be like if we "gathered to join our prayers" with the idea that they were "the most important thing" we would do in our worship time?

I don't know.  But I know that reading this passage tugs at a part of me that feels real and true and hungry.  I think I would like to try a worship that was seen as a people gathered to join their prayers together and not a people that have come to get their needs met (me included).

Peterson says, comparing Greek stories and Hebrew prayers:

The Greeks were experts on understanding existence from a human point of view; the Hebrews were experts in setting human existence in response to God.  Whereas the Greeks had a story for every occasions, the Hebrews had a prayer for every occasion.  For pastors [or really, all God's people], the Greek stories are useful, but the Hebrew prayers are essential. Prayer means that we deal first with God and then with the world.  Or, that we experience the world first not as a problem to be solved but as a reality in which God is acting.

Let us pray...