Altar Ministry

One of the ministries which is disappearing from the church today is the altar ministry.  Perhaps, pat of the reason for its disappearance has to do with the disappearance of anything which resembles an altar.  In my years of growing up, I spent a lot of time at various altars.  The churches in which I received must of my spiritual formation usually ended Sunday night worship with invitations for people to come forward for prayer at the altar.  Of course, there is another thing which has disappeared: Sunday night worship.   

I always seemed to have something to pray about during those Sunday night prayer moments.  Others did, too.  Nowadays, the only time folks are invited to kneel in the churches which still have altars is when Holy Communion is offered, but even then, more and more services are featuring "walk by" Communion since kneeling might take too long to satisfy hurried worshipers. Something important is being lost in our movement toward a more sophisticated style of worship.  The Scripture does not speak of kneeling before the Lord to remind us of an ancient outdated religious custom, but of an importance practice in our spiritual life.   

Where else in our world are we given an invitation to acknowledge that there is someone before Whom it is good and appropriate to kneel?  To be honest is to admit kneeling is not something we even consider necessary in our spiritual practice.  My mother taught me to kneel beside my bed at night to say evening prayers and while it was a habit I carried with me into my early adult years, it has long ago been abandoned.  I learned to pray while laying in bed before going to sleep and then I just learned to go to sleep.  My hurrying to bed without kneeling as I was taught to do is my loss. When the church encourages its people to abandon the posture of kneeling, it, too, brings loss to what could be gain.