Worship - Escape or Engage?

Is worship in the church for the purpose of getting a spiritual fix and escaping the ugly world OR might it be for the purpose of being confronted and engaged by our God, the Lord Christ who takes on flesh and immerses himself in the filth of the world? What if we came not for rose-colored lenses to be polished for another week in our big, bad surroundings, but to encounter the God who cares intensely about his creation? Are we Deists or are we Christians? Is our God aloof and indifferent or is he dynamically involved, calling his people to sacrifice everything that his presence might be seen, heard and felt in the here and now? As tears fill our eyes for the suffering around us are we not in a mindset, a heart-set pregnant with worship of and petitions to our God?

A suggestion: Some American bodies have partnered with churches abroad for mutual encouragement, missions contacts, etc. This is great, but what if it was taken in a direction for immediate impact on the liturgy? Take a church in say Burma or Uganda; what are they dealing with—socially, economically, relationally—both within the church and in their local setting? The answer to these questions could be grafted into the liturgy so that as the congregation was offering worship to the Lord they would simultaneously be united to their brothers and sisters abroad, becoming informed of their joys and pains, learning from them what it looks like to build the Kingdom under vastly different circumstances. It should go without saying that when one gets a glimpse of the world through a wholly-other context, immense clarity is gained for one’s own setting. Is this not desperately needed in our often blindingly affluent milieu?