Gathered Worship

When has gathered worship carried you on a day you had little to bring? I can tell you what that day looked like for me. It was 2018, just a couple months after my first baby, Ellis, had been unexpectedly stillborn. I hadn’t been to worship at all since then. The idea of being at church with people felt too overwhelming during my grief. I also struggled with knowing how to worship after experiencing something so absolutely terrible, so devastating. 

One weekend I was staying at my parents’ house while my husband Hunter was out of town. That Sunday my mom planned to go to church and at the last minute I decided to go with her. We snuck into the back of the sanctuary after worship had already started. John Harp, the minister I’d grown up with here was preaching that day and was standing in the back of the foyer. When he saw me it seemed for a moment as though he’d seen a ghost, I sensed a hesitation from him. He hadn’t expected to see me. The last time John had seen me was at the hospital the night Ellis was stillborn. 

My mom and I found a seat near the back. One of the first songs we sang was “This Little Light of Mine.” I was struck by this because Ellis’ name means “Light of God,” it felt significant. Then an image appeared on the screens, a rainbow. Many of you know that rainbows are an important symbol for me. My family saw a rainbow in the sky outside the hospital after a big thunderstorm the day Ellis was stillborn. Seeing the rainbow during worship, I couldn’t help but think that somehow it was for me. For a moment, despite my grief, I was filled with wonder. 

Then something totally profound happened, though it began in an ordinary way. John got up to preach and opened with a farm story, a regular theme for him as his dad was a farmer. One day his dad discovered that one of his cows was lying on the ground unable to stand. She’d given birth to a stillborn calf. I could not believe what I was hearing. John shared how his father’s peers suggested that the cow would need to be put down if she could not stand up on her own. His dad refused that advice and was determined to help the cow stand. He built a sling, almost like a hammock, to hold her up. The cow eventually recovered. As I sat in the pew I imagined myself as the cow, being held up by so many from this church community who refused to let me lie broken. I wept. 

It was hard being in worship that day, really hard. At the end of service, many people who I’ve grown up with here came up to hug me and give me their condolences. I wept in their arms. It was hard and also so good. God met me that day—through songs, through images, through stories, through the arms of others. 

John and I later talked about his sermon. He acknowledged that when he saw me in the foyer that morning he had to ask God if he should continue with the sermon he’d planned knowing the subject matter of stillbirth and my fresh grief. Perhaps that’s what I’d sensed about him, that moment of unease. But ultimately he felt an assurance that he was to give the sermon he’d planned. And I assured him that it was the story I needed to hear. I was so grateful for it. 

John Harp baptizing Taylor as a teenager at Sunset Ridge 

Not every worship experience is like that one—that one felt mystical. But perhaps it was the combination of all of the regular Sundays of worship, a childhood full of them, that laid the foundation for a Sunday like that one. Where the ordinary was transformed. Where a community who knew me, really knew me, could care enough to carry me. 

This past Sunday, we focused on one of the primary foundations of spiritual formation—weekly worship. We know based on research emerging from the Flourishing and the Church study that participating in worship every week contributes to greater human flourishing. It’s not about having profound worship experiences every week, those may only come once in a lifetime. It’s about faithfully showing up, even when you have nothing to give, and worshiping God in community, trusting that we will be carried.