On Not Following Your Instincts

On Not Following Your Instincts
Deuteronomy 12: 1- 32

Tomorrow morning I shall go to seminary chapel. Except that it isn’t a chapel. It’s an auditorium. On other occasions, I have lectured there, sung the blues in a concert there, listened to jazz concerts there, and taken part in faculty meetings there. We do sometimes have services in a big nineteenth-century church on the edge of the campus, but mainly we do so when we need a building that holds many hundreds of people. It feels churchy, which is fine by me but is alien to many students. On other days of the week, there are other meetings for worship and prayer that follow the patterns of different denominations and traditions, and there is no seminary control over them. In the past, at least, there have been happenings there that people from other traditions would disapprove of (for instance, things that were a bit too Pentecostal or a bit too Catholic). There are advantages and disadvantages in having a special building, as well as advantages and disadvantages in leaving people free to worship in the way they feel led...