Why Go to Church?: A Little Book of Guidance (Little Books of Guidance 0)

Sunday worship is still the shop window of the Church. It has the power to convert or to repel. For all that churchgoers say worship is an encounter with God and requires engagement from everyone present, and that it’s not just Christian entertainment, the Church still has to make sure that its worship is designed and offered to the highest standar

it’s easier to preach five sermons than it is to live one. And living that one is our task.

Worship isn’t for sycophants who seek to buy off a narcissistic God with constant affirmation; it’s for people who seek to live the truth of their nature as made by God, in God, and for God – who is Love.

Mahatma Gandhi said: ‘You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisations to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.’

churches make an honest attempt at community in a culture that’s forgotten how to do it

In worship we celebrate God, the Source of life. It’s the time in the week when we get it right for once, when we let God be God and dethrone our idols, chief of which is our own ego. Worship is what we exist for. I worship; therefore I am.

As we listen to a sermon it’s helpful if we can think of it as a kind of three-way conversation between God, the preacher and ourselves.