{"id":1760,"date":"2012-08-16T05:19:08","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T05:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/?p=1760"},"modified":"2012-08-16T05:19:08","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T05:19:08","slug":"centrality_of_worship_in_the_c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/?p=1760","title":{"rendered":"Centrality of Worship in the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few days ago I read a blog post from Fr. Robert Hendrickson, friend and colleague, Curate at <a class=\"zem_slink\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Christ_Church_%28New_Haven%29\" title=\"Christ Church (New Haven)\" rel=\"wikipedia\" target=\"_blank\">Christ Church New Haven<\/a>, and developer of the new and wonderful ministries of St. Hilda&#8217;s House, Ascension House, and Church of the Ascension in the Hill district of New Haven.&nbsp; In his blog entry, we spoke about the centrality of worship as the hallmark of Anglican Christianity and the Church&#8217;s experience.&nbsp; From his blog entry:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><i>I have found that this exercise has emphasized that which we have<br \/>\nalways struggled with as Anglicans &#8211; uniformity of belief. Throughout<br \/>\nour history we have navigated the Catholic and Reformed strains and<br \/>\nstruggled with the melding of politics and religion. Through all of<br \/>\nthis, we have maintained our identity through common worship. We have<br \/>\nprayed together, broken bread together, and listened to one another with<br \/>\na common language, with a common prayer.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><i>It may sound nonsensical or naive but I truly think the most crucial<br \/>\ntask for the Church is not growth, justice, discipleship, survival, nor<br \/>\nrestructuring. The most crucial task facing the Church is worship. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Please read his entry at his blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/thecuratesdesk.org\/2012\/07\/18\/jesus-is-so-lucky-to-have-us-of-justice-doctrine-and-worship-in-the-church\/\">The Curate&#8217;s Desk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This morning, I thought it might be interesting to see how <a class=\"zem_slink\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eugene_H._Peterson\" title=\"Eugene H. Peterson\" rel=\"wikipedia\" target=\"_blank\">Eugene Peterson<\/a> (pastor, scholar, writer, and poet) wrote a couple particular chapters in the book of the Bible known as the Revelation (you know, that strange, last book of Holy Writ) in his version of the Bible known as &#8220;The Message&#8221;.&nbsp; Upon reading his short introduction on Revelation, I was reminded of Fr. Hendrickson&#8217;s blog post above on worship.<\/p>\n<p>Peterson writes,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Worship shapes the human community in response to the living God.&nbsp; If worship is neglected or perverted, our communities fall into chaos or under tyranny.<\/p>\n<p>Our times are not propitious for worship. The times never are. The world is hostile to worship.&nbsp; The Devil hates worship. As The Revelation makes clear, worship must be carried out under conditions decidedly uncongenial to it. Some Christians even get killed because they worship.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We are wise if we heed such instruction and insight from both.<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top:10px;height:15px\" class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none;float:right\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?x-id=115c33cc-e676-4695-a013-6d80b08d9a17\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few days ago I read a blog post from Fr. Robert Hendrickson, friend and colleague, Curate at Christ Church New Haven, and developer of the new and wonderful ministries of St. Hilda&#8217;s House, Ascension House, and Church of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/?p=1760\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,27,9,24,5,6,10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican","category-christianity","category-faith","category-generations","category-personal","category-politicsculture","category-quotes","category-the-episcopal-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}