A year ago in January I offered a congregation-wide
challenge for each person to attend worship all 52 weekends in 2014. We
installed a “52 Weekends of Worship” wall in Philadelphia Hall where you posted
bulletins and programs from churches where you worshipped. The challenge was
not necessarily to attend every weekend at CLPC, but to seek out worshipping community
wherever you are.
Many of you took this challenge to heart! You posted &&
bulletins on our board. There are countless stories of folks going out of their
way to worship. One business traveler arrived in Singapore at 6:00 a.m. after
an all-night flight and made it to a 9:00 a.m. worship service at Orchard Road
Presbyterian Church. Another couple
attended worship at the George R. Brown Center prior to the Houston Marathon.
The group from our church traveling to Israel worshipped at the Western Wall in
Jerusalem as Jews celebrated the beginning of Shabbat.
Corporate worship is more than a personal “spiritual
boost” for the week. It is a key soul-training rhythm of the Christian life. In
corporate worship we are reminded of God’s story of redemption – a story that
counteracts the petty narratives of greed in our culture. In corporate worship
we receive God’s attention and give him ours as we pray, sing, make offering,
and confess our sins and receive pardon. While we can, and should, worship individually.
Something greater occurs than the sum of the parts, for God and for us, when we
worship together.
