So Much For Seeker Sensitivity

The greatest gift the church can give our society is a glimpse - however fleeting - of another city. But we can only do that if our worship is self-consciously, confidently, and unmistakably oriented to God. If someone wanders in off the street as we pray, he should sense that there is present a double church, as Origen put it: the one that is seen and the other that is unseen. Indeed if the visitor does not feel uncomfortable, out of place and out of step, something is terribly wrong. The visitor should experience a little vertigo, because something is going on that is beyond his perception. Yet one would hope, as he listens to our faint voices and feeble songs, that he would also hear, if only as an echo in the distance, the thunderous sound of the heavenly host singing, ‘Holy, holy, holy.’ ~ Robert Louis Wilken