{"id":2376,"date":"2026-10-12T15:04:55","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T15:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/?p=2376"},"modified":"2026-10-12T15:04:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T15:04:56","slug":"the-puzzlement-of-isolated-worship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/?p=2376","title":{"rendered":"The Puzzlement of Isolated Worship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I recently noticed a phenomenon: a meaningful number of people who consider themselves Christians don&#8217;t attend Sunday worship, even though nothing prevents them from doing so. Their overall lifestyles show Christian behavior, yet they prefer watching a service on TV or enjoying a pleasant \u201cfamily day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Isolated worship aligns with intense American individualism, yet, sadly, it doesn&#8217;t tangibly express the yearning to be part of the only genuine larger story, God\u2019s Plan of Salvation, which begins with creation and ends with the restoration of creation to the way God originally intended it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you practice isolated worship, please reflect on why you do so. Only by being part of a local church body do you tangibly experience the deeply satisfying reality of being part of God\u2019s larger story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently noticed a phenomenon: a meaningful number of people who consider themselves Christians don&#8217;t attend Sunday worship, even though nothing prevents them from doing so. Their overall lifestyles show Christian behavior, yet they prefer watching a service on TV or enjoying a pleasant \u201cfamily day.\u201d Isolated worship aligns with intense American individualism, yet, sadly, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2377,"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376\/revisions\/2377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebelsheim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}