worship

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You can download the Discussion Guide here.

When you get right down to it, a lot of what happens on Sunday mornings in church gatherings is weird. Nowhere else in our culture to people get together in a room and sing a bunch of songs at each other, then listen to someone talk, collect money, and so on.

Our regular, weekly practices make Christians unique. But why do we do them?

It's interesting - when the earliest Christians started meeting together in homes, they had to come up with a name for it. Nothing like it had ever happened before. So they chose a word that was already used in their culture.

They called their gathering times liturgos. It's where we get our word "Liturgy", which is how some churches still describe their worship.

Liturgos literally means "work of the people". It referred to actions wealthy citizens did that benefited the whole community. So if they paid for a road to be built or hosted a set of games, those were liturgos. It's amazing that the earliest Christians called their worship liturgos. That means that when they gathered and entered that heavenly throne room together, they believed their worship wasn't just about the people gathered in that space.

They believed that their worship benefited the whole community. What happens in the worship space is good for the world. And that's still true today.

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