I have spent the majority of my life in non-liturgical churches. Most of my adult life was in a church birthed out of the Jesus People movement in the early 1970′s. You can imagine what it has been like trying to explain how or why liturgy attracted me. Early on in the journey, I could not articulate this. It wasn’t until I read a couple of books, especially “Ancient Future Faith” by Robert Webber, that I was able to get my thoughts out in some intelligible way!
I just read an article in Christianty Today written by a fellow Anglican, Mark Galli. He articulates really well what I’ve been trying to communicate the last several years. I highly recommend his article to you. Not to say that liturgy is THE answer, but to hear from another voice on how God uses liturgical worship to draw many like myself closer to Him.
Read: ”A Deeper Relevance.”
Shane
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1 Joseph Daniels // May 8, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Pastor Shane –
For perhaps a similar reason you and Mr. Galli are attracted to liturgical worship, I am attracted to creedal/confessional/reformed churches. “I believe …” — I just love these words. It warms my heart to sing the doxology with the entire congregation as we bring forward our offering. For some reason I cannot explain, I look forward to reciting the Apostle’s Creed each week. .
I admit that I am no longer attracted to American-style worship because, quite naturally, as one who works each day in media and entertainment, I associate churches with an emphasis on bands, big screens, little or no preaching, drama, Christian celebrities and their over the top testimonies, and these sorts of things with the same Hollywood personalities I have to work with day in and day out. That is not to say that American churches aren’t worshipping God as they should be; I simply have a mental block when it comes to frustrated musicians who pretend to be rock stars each Sunday morning. It annoys me more that the evangelical American preachers of the 21st century would really like to be in the Comedy Central line-up rather than waste their time engaging in the rigors of sermon preparation, theology, and biblical exegesis. Nothing discourages me more than after waiting all week to hear the preaching of God’s word only to find instead that the pastor has substituted clever anecdotes, emotional appeals, and recycled sermons from radio pastors or 1980’s self-help books.
Furthermore, creedal, confessional, liturgical, and even sacramental forms of Christianity are more international than American evangelicals could ever hope to become. It is quite common for our small Phoenix congregation to have visitors from all over the world. I do not know how they find us because we do not have a homepage. But find us they do. Dutch, Afrikaans, Mexican immigrants, Swedes, Germans from all over wander in, – and stay with us! We are still unsure how they originally found us. But they are at home in our church because we have a worship style that appeals to the whole world, not simply the American suffering from ADD. Internationals also feel “safe” when they are in a church service that resembles their home country. The only thing “relevant” about 21st century American evangelicalism is that it appeals to … well … American evangelicals raised on MTV (or whatever the hip and cool music program exists today).
2 Kris Truter // May 9, 2008 at 8:03 am
Joseph,
Thank you for you comments. I spent many years in Japan and understand the international perspective. I currently live in Valencia, CA and serve at a church similar to the one you described: acute focus on reaching the lost, but I sometimes worry what is going to happen to all these baby christians several years from now. Will the church continue to just feed milk for years to come?
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