Empty Ecclesiastical Bathtubs - Liturgy

This is part 2 in my ongoing series about areas where I think evangelical protestants, in the interest of correcting what we saw as errors in traditions like Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism, may have thrown out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

Liturgy:  I have an Anglican friend who is always quick to point out that every church and late night talk show host has a liturgy.  The question is not 'do you have a liturgy' but 'what is it?' I come out of a revivalist tradition and so much of our traditional Sunday morning liturgy, we would say "order of service," is patterned after revival meetings - song service, preaching service, altar service.  Over the years that has been slightly tweaked to include the offering and announcements and, in certain dark corners where the devil holds sway, a ritualistic form of congregational abuse dubiously described as "special music."

So what I'm really talking about here is rich liturgy.  Liturgy that is beautiful and narrative and symbolic.  Liturgy that gives rhythm to a life of faith.  The kind of liturgy that allows us to lean hard on 2000 years of expressions of worship crafted by the church as led by the Spirit.  Liturgy that reminds us that the truth we live is ancient, timeless, and unchanging.  Not that we want to lose sight of its relevance today, but we also want to anchor it in the reality that what will get us through Monday has been getting Christians all over the world through their Mondays for millennia.

So what would this look like in the Wesleyan context?  I don't know.  If my training was painfully-weak on catechism it was downright non-existent on liturgy.  I learned the word.  That's about it. I do know that in my own ministry the weekly celebration of communion (more on that in a future post) and the consistent dismissal by pronouncement of a scriptural benediction have been helpful and meaningful.

But I suppose practically speaking if I as a Wesleyan were going to delve into implementing more of a liturgical dimension to the worship of a local church I would start with the liturgy that Wesley himself was shaped by and seemed to love - the liturgy of the Anglican Church as found in the Book of Common Prayer.  (There is a good introduction to Wesley and liturgy by John Drury HERE.)

Then I would work my way out from there creatively. I think sometimes we evangelicals think that liturgy is the opposite of creativity, but I have a growing suspicion that it is just the opposite, that liturgy is actually the pinnacle of creativity in worship.  Maybe good liturgy takes the meticulously creative care that is given to a great song lyric and extends it to every prayer, and reading, and celebration of sacrament?

Of course the common objection to liturgy is that it's dry and I have seen that be true many times.  I love hamburgers but when not cooked properly they are dry.  One way to keep hamburger from becoming dry is to use Hamburger Helper.  Another way is to learn how to actually cook.  Maybe it's time for evangelicals to lean less on the Hamburger Helper of shallow but passionate worship forms and instead learn how to cook up services with depth and passion, spirit and truth.