The Rev Roddy Hamilton asks what it means to understand our lives as an ongoing act of worship.

FOR discussion: when does worship begin?

Pet peeve: the words “our first hymn is…”

Also, the words: “as we close our worship our final hymn is…”

Do we ever start and finish worship? We can gather in worship as the body of God’s People and we can be sent out in worship to continue that worship through our living and actions, to gather again, but I wonder if we ever begin and conclude our worship. I know it can almost feel a relief to hear the words, “our final hymn…”, but none of us believe we pick up God as we enter, and leave God behind when we leave.

Language is always important. How we frame what we say when we find ourselves together in worship informs a theology of how we understand being gathered together in one place and time, and the worship we offer in action and living outwith those times.

Are not our whole lives worship? We give praise, we share sorrow, we lament, we make a place for God’s relationship with the world in everything we do: a single ongoing act of worship.

When we specifically gather as God’s people, we bring together our diverse experiences. These speak of who we are, different this week than we were last week, and we tangle these together in the space where we come together.

Thus as we gather, we gather as all God’s People. Might we recognise that?

“ Worship never begins or ends, but flows through everything...

Might we hear how each other is, what our experiences have been, what burdens are being carried, and make space for those whose names we don’t yet know?

Of course we all chat, catch up, say hello. It is the very essence of community. We have greeters and stewards who guide us and welcome us. But is there a ritual we might shape that deliberately makes space for us to recognise each other anew after the events of each past week?

As the worship leader gathers us might they use words that recognise who we are and whose we are, affirming us and our journeys, assuring us that we belong, and inviting us to turn and make space for each other, listening to and welcoming each other’s stories so that our relationships, in other words our love of neighbour, become the bedrock of our worship?

We then worship in the love we have for each other. It becomes sacrificial. Rather than worship offering us simply a lesson to be learned from an erudite sermon, it becomes a giving of ourselves in relationship with each other.

Similarly, following the benediction, nothing ends, but we take those relationships, that experience, the insights gained, into the world to continue to reshape us and our relationships with each other and God in the world.

We continue to worship.

Therefore, what words are God’s People offered in that part of worship that invite us to feel sent into the world to continue our worship through our work and actions, where we find ourselves naturally returning to gathered worship the following week, changed once more, in the constant cycle of worship?

Worship never begins or ends, but flows through everything, and with a little imagination in the words we use at these points, we invite a deeper understanding of our continual worship in our church services and our service in the world.

The Rev Roddy Hamilton is minister at Bearsden: New Kilpatrick.