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How can worship call Christians to look beyond themselves?
Can you give me some specific ideas about what we can do during worship which calls Christians outside the walls of our churches - to minister to others, to serve them, to love them, not to fear them. Sometimes it seems to me that we spend more time focusing on how to be together as an exclusive group than we spend on encouraging each other to expand our group. What is the right balance?
I wish that some of our songwriters would start writing songs that send us into the world in a spirit of service and love. I’ve been working on a few in this regard – we need a lot. As well, our prayers and benedictions can give us an orientation toward our world and our neighbors – for better or worse. I hope you’ll consider coming to the Worship, Art, Liturgy and Preaching conference in April at Asbury Seminary – this should be a topic of dialogue for us there. As well, we need to create some venues to share ideas and resources, since they might not be picked up by “mainstream religious media.”