Photo by zhang kaiyv on Unsplash
It was Gordon Preece who taught me the concept of the church gathered and the church scattered. He was talking about the link between what happens on Sunday and where we find ourselves on a Monday. The church gathers to celebrate God, to be spiritually fed in community, to pray for one another, to be blessed and then to be sent out into our jobs, neighbourhoods, schools, universities, and communities, to serve others and continue to honour God.
We don’t stop being the church when we go out the doors. We are the people of God sent into the world as salt and light.
In her book Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Harrison Warren describes it this way:
The work we do together each week in gathered worship transforms and sends us into the work we do in our homes and offices, Likewise, our professional and vocational work is part of the mission and meaning of our gathered worship. We are people who are blessed and sent; this identity transforms how we embody work and worship in the world, in our week, even in our small day.
She highlights the little things we do that make up our working (paid or unpaid).
I have a friend who is a high-up leader in a national organisation. He’s doing good work and making an impact through his career. But when you ask him what he does for a living, he answers, "If you ask my kids, they’d tell you that I check emails and go to meetings." This kingdom vision — our identity as those blessed and sent — must work itself out in the small routines of our daily work and vocation, as we go to meetings, check our email, make our children dinner, or mow the lawn.
God notices the details of our days, and the heart with which we do them. Everything we do can be offered in worship to the God who sees us, and knows us. God can use the little things in his kingdom economy. He can transform our simple acts of faith into movements for renewal.