Interlacing Worship Worlds

“[T]he New Testament bears witness that from the beginning believers saw their humble worship gatherings in small groups in houses as events with this transcendent significance and character” (At the Origins of Christian Worship, Hurtado, 113).

The importance of interlacing a “this-world” thinking with a “that-world" thinking should be obvious for interlacing the gathered worship experience with the scattered worship experience. Perhaps part of the reason that many people in the Church have come to believe that the practical world is more valuably different than what is often described as the idealistic love-oriented gathering of believers for worship is central to the problem of interconnecting these worlds.

Practical Christianity must engage practical living or it is valuable only as a fairy tale is. A fairy tale contrives a world that we wish were true, but which we acknowledge is not. Faith is not a fairy tale. It is an expectation of living in the world that is not yet, but a world that will be. Christian worship should reflect such faith. Worship that is divorced from everyday experience will struggle to be more than a hoped for life, and will never be the reality that people will embrace cogently and in everyday practice.