You can redecorate a cathedral like a barn, you can swap pews for chairs, you can get rid of the pulpit or get a different one, you can change the music, you can entertain, you can darken the sanctuary, you can have smoke or incense, and perfect colored lights, but unless pastor and people are willing to welcome the stranger, change social structures so an outsider can actually get in and be made to feel at home, and unless worship is soaked with prayer, and the Scriptures are read, respected and proclaimed, and unless the Spirit is reverenced, and Jesus is central, nothing much will happen. Let’s stop trying to create moods and learn to bow in awe before the Holy. God can be worshipped before a pile of unshaped stones.
“And you shall build an altar there to the LORD your God, an altar of stones on which you have not used an iron tool. You must build the altar of the LORD your God of unhewn stones. Then offer up burnt offerings on it to the LORD your God, make sacrifices of well-being, and eat them there, rejoicing before the LORD your God” Deuteronomy 27:5-7 (NRSV)
