Reading

Over the Christmas-January break I like to dip into some old favourite books.

A passage from one such book, N. T. Wright's Simply Christian, took my eye recently:

Reading scripture in worship is, first and foremost, the central way of celebrating who God is and what he's done.

So, please, no more little snippets from one book; let's plunge in: call to worship, celebratory or reflective psalm, substantial (but not excessively so) readings from the first and last testaments, reflective passage after the sermon, then benediction.

At my church you are lucky to get one small snippet of scripture in the service; its barely noticable in our, to my view, misguided 'seeker-sensitive' times. Of course, there are rarely any seekers there, and if there were, they would expect us to be thrilled about having the very word of God!