Worshipping without My People

Yesterday Dominyk and I went to church in Lynchburg -- to Heritage Baptist church.  Our next door neighbors who have a teenage son go there and he had gotten Dominyk all excited to try it.  So we went and it was enjoyable enough.

There were lots of people there -- in fact there were about 35-40 people on stage leading worship.  The music was good, the songs were ones I knew and liked, and they didn't even make me stand up for 30 minutes like they do in the "thigh gap" churches.  (Sorry, that's my mental name for churches without any old people who all look the same -- sane race all young, healthy, shop the same place, get their hair cut at the same place, etc.   I like worshipping at those churches as well, but sometimes the 30 minutes standing makes me think more about my back than Jesus).

but I digress.

We worshipped and it was fine, good even.  The sermon made sense though it was twice as long as what I am accustomed to, and I was sitting with our new neighbors so I wasn't completely alone.  But I realized something while I was there.... church really is about community.  It's about people living life together, knowing one another, on an intimate level.  And with that corporate worship has so much more meaning than with strangers.

Bart will be here in three weeks and we will begin to build new relationships with another congregation.  And soon those people will be my people.  And today I get to meet with my whole new staff, and soon they will be my people.  

But in this interim  stretch I will really miss those with whom I most recently worshipped at Brunswick, especially when we sing. Yesterday we sang "Open Up the Heavens" and "Our God" and "Stronger"... all songs that our praise band, Testify, did in Minnesota.  And I missed those folks a great deal while I sang.

That's all.  Not a brilliant blog entry.   Not well written.

Might be because distracted because I'm heading off to start my first day!!!

The beginning of an era....