"I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm not sure exactly what habit or practice of his day Emerson referred to here, but I've often thought the best way to gather would be to do so in silence before the church began its meeting. Though I can't throw it up against the preaching or in any way diminish its importance.

Of course, I come from 19 years of experience in Brazil, where pre-meeting ritual is a noisy, huggy, hand-shaking, back-slapping greeting of every single person. I like that. I like it a lot. But I wonder if we don't often do it at the expense of our concentration on the person of Christ present at our meetings and of our reverence to the sovereign Creator.

The Lord has set no instructions on this. It is one of the incidentals that we are free to establish according to our time and culture. So it's good occasionally to stop and question whether our practice is promoting that which the Lord has specifically commanded.