Moving beyond the worship service Nice article in TheOoze about the role of worship services in the Christian life, by Justin Baeder (who also has a nice "spoof this chair ad" contest going on at his blog). An excerpt from the article:
Perhaps we cling so strongly to the worship service because we think it's biblical. All of Paul's instructions to the Corinthians, all of the examples of church gatherings in Acts, and all the references to church gatherings throughout the New Testament are filtered through the worship-service lens. We assume that the early church did church the way we do now, with singing, a sermon, communion, and some housekeeping announcements. We assume that the "service" is a thing in itself, a special zone in space and time where the rules are different (e.g. head coverings, women speaking, etc.) than in the rest of life. This is the kind of old-testament ritual observance that Christ fulfilled and did away with in his death and resurrection. We think we have to find a pastor and a worship leader to be a church -- a throwback to the priestly system of tribal Judaism, not the universal priesthood God intended the Body of Christ to be.