It strikes me that, among Western Christians, what, in our community, we call gathering and what most others think of as worship, there is little, if any, sense of purpose.
I would say that, of all the ways what we do defies the norm, the fact that there is clear purpose about our coming together is what distinguishes us most, especially in our Thursday gathering.
The atmosphere of our Thursday gathering is both more relaxed and more intense than what takes place in typical congregations.
Because there is so high a degree of intimacy in our fellowship, we are always very at ease with each other. Yet, because we understand that we gather to spur, to agitate, each other to love and good works, there is always intensity about what we all understand to be the end game of our gathering.
That strange sense of relaxed tension is most evident in the Thursday night group.
Those diassonate elements merge most inexplicably and most intensely during the taking of the Lord's Supper, an event that is normally at the center of the gathering, is normally interactive and often takes a long, sometimes an hour or more, to complete.
How out of the norm for most others. And, what a blessing.
We often use Frost and Hirsch's term "regospeling" to describe what we do.
The gospel lived out by Jesus, and remembered by us, is, almost always, central to what we do.
Reading the New Testament, that is as it should be.
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