The shape of Sunday worship

Our local church is a hexagonal shape with flat floor, carpet and chairs. It lends itself to all kinds of arrangement for different kinds of services.

With more or less movable furniture this imaginative building was designed to reflect a whole lot of different ways of being church. For instance, it could be a "people" kind of church where worshippers could see a little more than the backs of people's heads in front of them. Or perhaps a "participatory" kind of church where contributions could be made and seen and heard from some other place than up front, concert style. Or maybe a "gathered" church where the congregation could be seated around the (hexagonal!) communion table for the fellowship meal. The possibilities are limited only by our imagination.

And there's the problem.  In more than two decades of occasional visits and eighteen months of fairly regular attendance I have never seen it arranged in any other manner than what I would call "railway carriage" style. Rows and rows of chairs, all facing the same way towards a table that is always against the same wall.

Somewhere, sometime, a vision for this sanctuary was lost. And now, just to make absolutely sure of our fundamentalist understanding of worship and its setting, I have just found on the wall a diagram showing us exactly how the chairs should be rigidly laid out to marks in the carpet! I suppose some committee put a lot of work into this to save things being a little untidy on Sunday mornings.

I'd have preferred a bit more untidy and a lot less rigidity...

Off to Church

In a few days we will be heading overseas for a final fling at the rest of the big wide world that is out there some place. As we come up to our last Sunday service in this very special little congregation I am asking myselfd what I will be looking for on the Sundays following.

I think I want to be invited to think. I won't be checking in my brains at the door and I don't want my intelligence to be insulted with the trivial, the unrealistic or the frankly pietistic.
I want to join in singing of three or four congregational hymns – this means that I have to know the tune or be given a copy of the music. That may be a tall order in other countries, and I'll make a little allowance for that. But corporate singing is very important to my understanding of worship.
I don’t want to hear, or be asked to use non-inclusive language. I don't care if people say "When I say man of course I mean everyone" - I appreciate language and want it and its meanings to be unambiguous..
I want to be reminded about some issue of social justice in the context of the environment in which I will be worshipping. I will try to view this in the light of what we have learned from those who have lived in the compassion of Jesus over the centuries.
I don’t want to hear the words “Jesus said” when it would be more accurate to say “Mark’s Jesus said” - I am getting a bit impatient of those who play fast and loose with the bible and this is a point of discernment where the speaker's orientation is revealed.
I hope to experience more acceptance than this list seems to indicate I deserve. God help me, I don't need to make a list of expectations; I just need to be there. Let it be so.