Wandering Elder

My understanding of the church had been relatively staid until I entered the parish setting.  I would say that initially, my thinking of the church revolved around a location.  The church was a place.   Church was where you went, and where you belonged – as in membership.  All my life I had ‘belonged’ to the United Methodist Church.  But that location was also a positive location, where I felt welcomed, and where I was fortunate enough to find a voice for my faith as well as a voice for my doubts.  Church, in my estimation now, was the place where you went and from which you learned how to, for lack of a better word, behave like a Christian the rest of the week.   Over the years, my thinking has changed from an institutional mentality to more of an idea of a movement.  I would like to believe that my old understanding entailed some kind of transformative aspect as a result from being a part of the church; some kind of response that continue...

As a pastor, one of my responsibilities in the church is to officiate the service of worship and make sure that it is an edifying experience for those in the congregation.  Yet I find that there is an aspect that we have neglected, at least in the Protestant church, is the actual activity of worship . In the more 'contemporary' worship services, praise music has taken root and, in some ways, offers a chance to worship God by providing repetitive lyrics and rhythms that allow the people singing to, in effect, lose themselves in the activity of the song and open themselves to God's presence.  While I am not a fan of praise music, I do appreciate what it does - more or less. What it does is provide focus (again, more or less) towards God.  I fear that much of our worship does not  provide focus.  I have found that what we do is not to worship God so much as offer pieces of a service in honor of God.  Worshiping and honoring are not the same thing.  Wh...