Where to Worship??

St. Peter's Cave Church, Antakya, Turkey

One of the unspoken joys of professional pastors is the treat of worshipping with other churches on “Sundays off.”  Some congregations write into their pastor’s Terms of Call that they are to take 4 Sundays away from their own church to worship with another congregation 4 times a year (and it’s not counted as part of their vacation/study leave time.)  There is one pastor in our Presbytery serving a mult-staff church who takes one Sunday each month to worship somewhere else for his own spiritual enrichment (and new ideas.)

I love to worship with other churches – and I’m using the traditional Sunday-everybody together in the sanctuary definition of worship here (rather than the Benedictine everything-we-do-is-worship definition, although that is also true.)

So far in this sabbatical, I’ve worshipped with Chevy Chase Presbyterian in Chevy Chase and in Montreat, NC, and at St. Paul’s Church in Antalya Turkey in terms of formal worship services. Sadly, much of my travel has been on Sundays so I haven’t been able to walk through the doors of a sanctuary, sit down with other people of faith, and sing, pray, and celebrate communion.

But today, on this Lord’s Day, Libby and I are heading up to St. Peter’s Church – a cave – in Antakya, Turkey. There is no formal worship, so to speak, but it is the site where Christans secretly worshipped shortly after that first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection. I’ll report about the experience here (assuming the internet is working.)  As with so many worship experiences, I’ve found that something stirs in me as I stand in holy places, even if there is not a congregation around. Visiting Hagia Sophia in Istanbul last week was such a moment.  But I also miss worshipping with a  congregation.

I understand that priests can indeed be granted special permission to celebrate mass in the St. Peter’s Grotto, if they wish.  But we are expecting to have our own moments of worship – probably by ourselves this morning.