{"id":2813,"date":"2022-10-02T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-02T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2813"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:48","slug":"dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2813","title":{"rendered":"DANCE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It can be humbling. And eye-opening.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Going to church this morning in Gbetsile, Ghana was like that for me.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">American Christians could learn a few things from the Ghanaian church:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li><b>Worship can &#8211; and probably should &#8211; last longer than 60 minutes.<\/b> Our service this morning ran 2 hours 45 minutes. And even though I didn&#8217;t understand most of what was being said, it didn&#8217;t drag. Now, maybe I didn&#8217;t need 3 hours, but I did find having more than an hour very useful for some reflection.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li><b>The time of offering can be a celebration.<\/b> Most of the people in church this morning earn a fraction of what American Christians live on. And yet, each person gladly carried a tithe to the front of the church and relished dropping it into the box. These were joyful givers.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li><b>There should be dancing.<\/b>\u00a0When I first walked in this morning, I was wondering why all the chairs were in the back two-thirds of the sanctuary. I thought, &#8220;Well, I guess since nobody ever sits in the front few rows, it makes sense to not bother putting them out.&#8221; But no! That front third was reserved as the dance floor! And what a celebration broke out about midway through the service.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/12E46F81-E97D-43CD-81F7-4D97301DFADA-3-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"4032\" height=\"3024\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do we in the U.S. really need to be so staid, formal, and formulaic in our approach to God each Sunday morning? Isn&#8217;t our rather fastidious approach bound to limit the Spirit&#8217;s movement?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Is it possible to break free?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can we dance?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It can be humbling. And eye-opening. Going to church this morning in Gbetsile, Ghana was like that for me. American Christians could learn a few things from the Ghanaian church:\u00a0 Do we in the U.S. really need to be so staid, formal, and formulaic in our approach to God each Sunday morning? Isn&#8217;t our rather [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2815,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813\/revisions\/2815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}