Comment Highlights for Week of July 10, 2011
As I mentioned in the first post in this series, I want to highlight some of the comments that have been left on my blog posts during the past week. Hopefully, this will give more visibility to some of the reasons that I love blogging – dialog and interaction.
While there were several great comments on many of my posts, today I only want to highlight a few of the comments from post “Looking for the ‘Worship Service’.”
Why only highlight the comments on this post? Well, first because it’s my blog, and that’s what I want to do. But second, and seriously, because I appreciated the discussion that took place in those comments.
Art said in one comment (among many great comments he left on this post and other posts):
Since both the phrase “worship service” and the way we understand and define this term today are extra-biblical and don’t even come close to the NT meaning and purpose of assembling together, I’d ditch the term altogether.
If it was a biblical term, it might be worth trying to redeem it and clarify its biblical meaning. But as it is, it only continues a bunch of distracting errors and confusion among the saints.
So if we a) intentional seek multiple and varied voices in the “worship service” (i.e. more than one person and not the same people each week) and b) emphasize fellowship outside of the Sunday morning meeting, we can see some positives coming out of the traditional “worship service”. The problem is that not many people see that there is a problem with the “worship service” in the first place.
Dori said this in a comment:
My husband and I often are one anothering each other (duh ..lol) and we find ourselves encouraging and exhorting and comforting each other by sharing a scripture or song that was put on our hearts that day. When we come together each has something from the Lord to share after we have listened to each other. There is spontaneous communication that happens in family that seems to be a model of “worship service”.
And Chris offered a different perspective in this comment:
I think there’s a semantic issue with saying that “building one another up” is not occurring during a “worship service.” If I’m singing and praying to God with you and others around me, that is tremendously edifying! I am definitely “built up” through such experiences. I think all you can say is that these are not the only activities that should happen during a gathering. “Edification” has to happen in other, more direct personal ways as well.
Make sure to check out these comments and the other great comments in the discussion in that post.