Why Bother with Weekly Worship?

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.