Post by Pastor Tim– Our family has been worshiping in the common places for about 10 days so far.  As expected, there have been no cataclysmic events, although I consider each day to be extremely important in the discipleship of my family, co-workers and friends.  Here are a few of the “common places that we’ve worshiped at so far.

1. Home  – You may have never considered your home to be a common place, but notice that we used the word “common” and not “public.” Most of us spend the greatest amount of time in our homes, thus making it the most common of all our common places.  Admittedly, it can be easy to bypass this common place in favor of more exotic locations, but our family has experienced some of our greatest growth in Christ during our evening worship time (in our home).  This past week we’ve worshiped at the dinner table, around the fireplace and in our bedrooms.
2. Park – Our family spends a great deal of time at the park, so we’ve purposed to make the park a place where we glorify God.  On Sunday, we invited the .W Fellowship to worship at our park as well, and we did the Four Pillars underneath a gazebo that was adjacent to the playground.  By design, we tried not to draw attention to ourselves, but also not to hide what we were doing.  We had a few curious people watch us, but we continued to worship regardless of who was watching.
3. Restaurant – As our family sat down to eat, I must admit, I was considering bypassing the worship.  But my nine-year excitedly remarked that we needed to worship, and I’m glad that we did.  We focused on the Ten Commandments portion of the service and after reciting it together, we compared the Ten Commandments to the Ten Principles in North Korea.  The kids were fascinated with the truth that Kim Il Sung reformatted the Ten Commandments to suit himself.
4. Office – While everyone in our office is a Christian, regular worship is not a regular activity amongst the staff.  We gathered together to sing the song in our booklet and to pray together before we again became engrossed in the busy office activities.

What happened during my worship time may seem a bit anti-climactic, but I believe that this is the nuts and bolts of discipleship.  We have a tendency to try to keep God within the four walls of the church, instead of keeping our hearts centered on him throughout the day, wherever we are.  And, as I am learning from the North Korean underground church, keeping our hearts centered on Him has a lot to do with the “quiet steady faithfulness” in the common places.

I would love to hear about your “steady faithfulness” over the past ten days as well.  Comment on the blog and tell us your experiences of worship in the common places.