This may strike you as an odd call to worship, but you are being summoned to worship the God of heaven with understanding. This includes understanding how our worship affects the unbelieving world outside, and this particularly includes unbelieving women in our community taking off their tops.
First, know that when God is worshiped rightly in any community, that worship necessarily unsettles the power brokers of unbelief in that place. When they are particularly threatened, as they are in this town, the reactions will include desperate attempts to distract us from what we are effectively doing. But do not be distracted—worship the God of heaven, knowing the worship to be a battering ram.
Second, take this as an opportunity to confess sin as necessary. If these women are doing what some within our church have been doing on a lesser scale, we should simply confess the sin. And if these women provoke the wrong kind of gnostic opposition from within our ranks, we should confess that too.
Third, when the first two issues are settled in your souls, do not respond to any of this with fevered indignation or outrage. This is not just a clash of worldviews, but also a clash of strategies. Outrage is just the Mrs. Grundy reaction they know how to handle, and are deeply hoping we will give it to them. This is why we must respond with a thorough-going opposition that manifests itself in high good humor. Do they really think the kingdom of God will be stopped with a little flashing of breasts? Didn’t they know that God could see through their blouses already?
And last, returning to the first point, anything that happens this coming week must be seen by faith as an outgrowth of our worship here. If you do not immediately see the connections, you are exhorted to trust God and roll with it. We have been given a wonderful opportunity. We appropriate that opportunity by faith, exercised here and now in the worship of God.