By James Gómez in Sacred Convergence — 30 Aug 2023

10 Ways Religious Gatherings Help Us Experience the Sacred

Coming from an evangelical background, much of my spiritual development was premised on individual religious activities often called “spiritual disciplines.” Examples of these disciplines are prayer, reading my Bible, memorizing it, telling people about their need for Jesus (and how they will burn in hell if they decide they don’t want Jesus…😬Sorry about that!), etc.

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As a result of the hyper-focus on individual performance, it became pretty commonplace as a pastor for congregants to ask,

“What’s the point of coming to church on Sunday if it seems everything I need to be a Christian I can do by myself at home?”

The truth is that many evangelical and non-denominational church services are focused on creating as entertaining a Sunday worship environment as possible. I remember vividly sitting in a staff meeting at a mega-church in Austin and the lead worship pastor discussing how important it was that congregants didn’t hear one another during worship. The rationale was if congregants could listen to themselves or those around them singing, they wouldn’t want to sing. This hyper-individualized worship didn’t stop at decibels; but it was also thought if congregants could see others singing, they may not want to, so we should also turn the lights off.

The result was a concert atmosphere every Sunday where the only voices that could be seen and heard were those on the stage. Once worship was over, the lights were brightened enough to take notes, but most of the lighting was focused on the preacher. The preacher’s job is to then preach a sermon in 30-45 mins in a way that is “gospel-centered” but also humorous, convicting, and uplifting.

Often, the final product is neither worshipful nor entertaining, which understandably leads to the phenomenal question, “What’s the point of going to church when the music isn’t as good as Spotify, and the sermon doesn’t entertain as well as Netflix?” When the emphasis is on entertainment as worship, the church becomes another piece of content competing for our attention rather than a sacred space to connect with God communally.

Candidly, it wasn’t until I left evangelicalism that I understood and began to experience the benefits of corporate worship gatherings. The purpose of religious services is to cultivate experiencing the sacred to open our hearts to become transformed into living and loving more like God. On the front end, my experience of the sacred isn’t exclusive to liturgical churches. I’ve also experienced God through worshiping in a synagogue during Shabbat service, through Buddhist meditation, and observing Muslims pray.

Though my experience of the sacred is within the Christian tradition, each of the ways listed below applies across religious traditions. Here are ten ways religious gatherings help us experience the sacred:

Most often, the sacred story that religions experience together is found in their ancient texts. These are texts like the Bible, Torah, Quran, etc. Religious stories capture our imaginations and teach us to reimagine what a better place our world and lives can be when we embrace playing a role in these stories.

Marcus Borg describes the power of sacred stories as:

“As ‘our stories,’ they shape our sense of what it means to be part of this tradition (and not some other tradition). As stories about God and us, they shape our images of reality, of life, and of ourselves.” (The God We Never Knew, p. 116)

The American church often forgets that our sacred stories are not primarily truths to be believed but stories to be lived within. Our sacred stories help us experience the sacred corporately to better understand how to live within that story in our individual everyday lives.

The most common sacred rituals within the Christian tradition are baptism and communion. In both ways, we are participating in re-enacting truths that connect us to Jesus.

For Jewish people, a sacred ritual is the Passover and remembering God’s redeeming work in freeing Israel from enslavement to Egypt. For Catholics, this can be the Mass that is usually offered daily. For Muslims, sacred rituals are a tradition like Ramadan.

Every religious tradition has its rituals, and all are meant to draw communities to remember or re-enact a spiritual truth that invites the community into a new reality. What’s more, sacred rituals are inherently corporate. I can’t baptize myself like a priest can’t offer a Mass alone.

If evangelicals have anything that resembles sacred seasons, it’s Christmas and Easter. For liturgical traditions, the calendar year is sacred as it’s broken into seasons of Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time after Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Ordinary Time after Pentecost.

When a liturgical calendar transforms life, every season invites the community to live in light of a particular emphasis on the holy and sacred. Through sacred seasons, time itself is transformed into a sacrament. By sacrament, I mean a means of grace, reminding and mediating the sacred in our lives.

One of the things I love about Judaism is its emphasis on teaching the truths of God through songs. This is also true for many Muslim prayers. Though they aren’t sung, they are spoken rhythmically, similar to music.

For many Christians, specifically older Christians, their understanding of God was ingrained through music. Most older believers readily confess they know Jesus loves them because “the Bible tells them so.” And grace is amazing because it “saved a wretch like me.”

Within the Christian tradition, sacred speech is often associated with glossolalia, commonly known as “speaking in tongues.” Though songs and speech can be done alone, they are most powerful and generally learned corporately.

Sacred sounds within a Christian tradition are often experienced through chants, bells, and alleluias. Within Buddhism, many meditative practices implement a deep, prolonged sound of om to help connect deeply within yourself.

When sacred sounds are experienced within the context of a corporate gathering, their effectiveness in opening hearts to God is intensified. There’s something unique about a community sharing in sacred sounds that doing so alone can’t accomplish.

In the same way, there are sacred sounds; there is also sacred silence. Have you ever stopped to contemplate that? Through gathering with other religious seekers, silence can be a sacrament that opens our hearts to a more profound experience of God.

Within the Christian tradition, Quakers and Monastic communities are the best models of incorporating silence as a means of grace.

Within the Orthodox tradition, icons play a significant role as windows that connect the community to the Saints waiting for us in eternity. However, often incredibly creative and artistic, sacred images serve a deeper purpose.

In describing the purpose of icons, Marcus Borg shares;

“Their purpose is not to display the creativity or virtuosity of an individual artist but to point to the sacred. Indeed, they do more than point; intended to be used in meditative prayer, their purpose is to become windows to the sacred through which we “see” God and God “sees” us.” (The God We Never Knew, p. 119)

If you’re interested in implementing icons into your meditations or prayer practices, I encourage you to check out Kelly Lattimore’s work as well as Ivanka Demchuck’s work.

Evangelicals love setting themselves up in former grocery stores, warehouses, open spaces with stained concrete, or “campuses” where they build mini-malls with stadium seating and hipster coffee offerings. The argument is often that any space can be turned into sacred space so long as the Holy Spirit is present.

How to confirm the Spirit’s presence is entirely subjective, but any space is deemed sacred. I agree with the sentiment but also know from experience there’s something uniquely powerful about a sacred space that is designed to be sacred.

Walking into a mosque, synagogue, temple, or church designed to mediate the sacred hits different from the old warehouse. The way light is let in, stained glass reflects the Saints' images and characters, and the clergy's vestments remind us that we are in a unique space.

Sacred space created to be sacred space is always made with the community in mind. As great as a house church may be, Jeff’s IKEA couch will never draw you into a spiritual experience like architecture designed for that sole purpose.

Whether it be the Torah, Jesus’s command to love God and love your neighbor as yourself, or the Buddha’s four noble truths, it is in a corporate context we learn how to live out our sacred laws. It is often in our religious gatherings that we also learn to receive grace and forgiveness, as these spaces are often where we are lacking in obeying sacred law comes to light.

Some religions have literal sacred journeys like the Hajj in Islam. These journeys draw pilgrims into deeper intimacy with other travelers through shared experiences.

Whether a literal or a symbolic journey, there is deeper intimacy with God as pilgrims pursue being in the presence of God. Inherent to any journey is an endpoint or destination. What makes sacred journeys so unique is there are often tangible markers that show a change in depth and relationship with God as you get closer to the end.

Within the American Church, many Christians are content to experience God and live out their faith as secondhand religion, being a religion they’ve learned from others. Those who understand how their religious tradition helps them experience the sacred within the community of believers are those whose religious experience comes through firsthand experience. They know God not because someone else told them about God but because they’ve personally experienced the sacred.

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