Tag Archives: liturgy

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The Journey Lately – Part Three

I’m finally ready to finish this…

Last week, I was chatting with a student about deep spiritual things. The things we were talking about, in my opinion, were not necessarily “deep” by definition, but pointed to a realm of spiritual curiosity that, sadly, few people – and even fewer Christians, willfully enter.

In my last two posts, I realize that, despite my best efforts, I may have come across as one of the following: pompous, pious, elitist, judgmental or overly cerebral. Obviously, I do not mean for these posts to be taken in any of these ways, nor am I proposing that just because I am one of the few who enter the “realm of spiritual curiosity” as I have mentioned means that I am in some way or another a better Christian or a more grounded and realistic religious man. Far from the truth. There are days, in this journey, in which I feel more lost than I have ever been – in which I wonder if maybe I didn’t veer off the correct course back in my early twenties and am actually hiking on some version of the broad road rather than the narrow.

The fact is, I spent twenty years of my life scraping and striving to be a “better” Christian. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized that there is no such thing. There are Christians and there are non-Christians. There are no good Christians and bad Christians no matter how many people choose to turn the word “Christian” exclusively into an adjective. In reality, there are good people and bad people. There are disciplined people and confused people. There are joyful people and angry people. In each category, you will find Christians. Of such, oddly enough, is the kingdom of God.

As I was talking to this student, I was saying essentially the same thing. I was trying to explain that becoming a Christian is not about seeking to fit into a particular mold. If anything, salvation in Christ is about the realization that there is no set mold. Rather, there is freedom. Why else would there be countless denominations from which to choose (all full of the good, bad, disciplined, confused, joyful, angry, etc.)? As the conversation turned to the dilemma of navigating a plethora of denominational choices – of philosophy and polity and practice – I tried my best to explain my view of denominationalism, and, to a greater extent, religious identity. What I have come up with is a metaphor that borders on the ridiculous, but I ask that you graciously bear with me.

I explained to this student that, in my opinion, denominations are like clothing. As far as my particular journey of faith is concerned, the way I have dressed throughout my life is quite similar to the way I have interacted with various denominations and their doctrines. For instance, when I was a little baby, I didn’t wear a lot of clothes, but once I did, it was not I that chose this apparel, but my parents. Equally, it was not I that chose to be christened in a Methodist church, but my parents. The same goes for my childhood in a Southern Baptist church. My parents made the call, so I wore what I was given to wear and I accompanied them to the churches they chose to attend.

Eventually, however, I became more concerned about my appearance, because, socially speaking, it was no longer my parents’ responsibility, but my own.Interestingly enough, around the same time clothes became important, so did my faith. Luckily for me, I had parents willing to buy me most of the threads I selected, and I had a genuine, intentional youth minister who encouraged me to seek truth and follow Christ.

For the majority of my adolescence and a considerable portion of my twenties, I dressed the way I saw others dress. I strived to remain in fashion. I think many will agree that this is stressful. But I did everything I could to look as close to the norm as possible, lest I be shunned as a spazz, dork, nerd (or some other derisive 90′s slang). I still remember begging my mother to buy me a pair of Girbaud jeans in eighth grade so that I seemingly wouldn’t be the only one without. Subsequently, at the eighth grade dance, I wasn’t by myself the entire night. I’m not sure if it was the jeans that got me on the dance floor, but I know it wasn’t my self-confidence either.

Ultimately, some of us reach a point where we quit trying to impress with our clothing. That’s why movies like The Devil Wears Prada and Mean Girls fill me with anxiety. There but for the grace of God… In my case, by the time I reached college, I was still interested in looking fashionable, but I also became concerned with being comfortable. I wore sandals when I felt like wearing sandals, plain T-shirts when it worked for me, and I chose jeans that fit well over those that sported an impressive brand stitch. As time passed, comfortability won out over fashion. I even started copping an attitude in department stores (“Thirty-five bucks for a pair of pants!”). Today, if I succeed in being fashionable, it is only after I have ensured that I’m comfortable. That what I’m wearing fits and fits well.

I told my student that the same has been true of my journey of faith, especially in regards to denominations, or at least the particular theological theories and worship practices inherent in many of them. In my late teens and early twenties, I was concerned with matching the emotional and spiritual intensity of the people around me. So I listened to the same praise music, raised my hands like the rest of them and considered secular culture the way most of them considered it. Basically, I tried to force a “look” that simply was not me. And I was never comfortable. I was always worried it wasn’t enough. I could not shake the concern that those around me, if they really took a good look, would realize that my Girbaud’s were bought at Service Merchandise, and it was the only pair I owned. Sooner or later, I would wear them out.

I have stated that the third aspect that drew me to things like the liturgical church, ritual, and contemplative prayer (and other things like Anglicanism, solemn worship, monastic principles and The Book of Common Prayer) was religious symbolism. Truthfully, I don’t see the term to be as intellectual as it may sound. I could write a whole new series of blog posts on the various symbolic elements in many of these things, from the progression of the worship service, to the Eucharist, to chiming the hours of prayer, to chanting canticles, to the Christian calendar, to icons and candles and incense. The list goes on and on. But, in general, religious symbolism simply means that everything points to the reality of God. Everything. For me, the emotional impact of a worship service is not found in a sudden, passionate key change in “Shout to the Lord” or “The Stand,” but in a long string of words and images and sounds that consistently direct my attention back to God. Religious symbolism is the rituals, the archetypes and the writings that work together as one to bring me into full communion with God – a communion of the heart, soul, strength and mind.

Fragmented worship makes me uneasy. A worship service that is segmented (first, we’ll have our worship set, and then we’ll do announcements, and then we’ll sing some more songs, and then we’ll pray, and then we’ll sing one more song, and then we’ll have someone come and bring a message, and then we’ll do one more set of songs, and maybe have an altar call if the Spirit is moving) is typically a worship service that is not working together but is merely a buffet of different forms of expression. In seminary, my mentoring pastor once told me that planning a worship service is not unlike writing a short story or composing a poem. Every image, every word, matters. As a pastor or worship leader, it is imperative that you carefully lead the congregation through the whole of it, and when you come to the end, they have received a glimpse into something much deeper, much fuller, than anything they experience in their day-to-day lives.

The clothes I wear today are ones that make me comfortable. They do not constrict. They do not distract. And, perhaps most importantly, they do not define me. At most, they can offer pieces of evidence regarding the person I am inside. This is even more true of the specific worship practices and doctrines to which I hold. I am no more an Anglican convert than I am an ordained Baptist minister, no more a contemplative or a new monastic than I am a Christian hipster. What is true is that I am a seeker of God and a follower of Jesus. Any doctrinal, denominational, theological philosophical, political or ideological stigma placed upon that is as trivial and vain as the clothes on my back.

My journey lately is about being honest when honesty has become unpopular. It is about being genuine when genuineness can no longer be clearly identified. It is about being reflective when the majority of Christians, whether consciously or unconsciously, spurn incisive examination of their own faith. It is about learning what it really means to love God with all of my heart, soul, strength and mind. Why the liturgical Church? Why ritual? Why contemplative prayer? It has nothing to do with being in or out of fashion.

It’s because they fit me, and fit me well.

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The Journey Lately – Part Two

In my last post, I began an in-depth focus on three specifics elements of Christian worship to which I have been drawn within the last few years. I defined and discussed the first element, liturgy, and related how, as I waded into my twenties, the typical liturgy of my evangelical upbringing and faith communities no longer assisted me in the way it once had. I had become wearied by what I felt to be a bland consistency to these church services and gatherings. Part of the time that I was experiencing these frustrations, I was working for a small Baptist church in Waco. One day, while talking about specific church music selections with the woman who helped “lead the singing,” she described praise and worship music as “7/11 songs.” When I returned her a puzzled look, she elaborated. “A song with seven words that you sing eleven times through.” It was funny, I realized later, because, in many instances, it was true.

But the sheer amount of time in a worship service dedicated to guitar-driven and percussion-laden P&W choruses was not the only thing with which I had issue. In fact, I’m still partial to acoustic guitar, and there are moments when a drum of some sort would not be out-of-place in my preferred worship – often it can be a way to outwardly represent the beating of a heart. No, the main problem I was experiencing during all this was that, for whatever reason, the common liturgy of P&W-style worship (joined together with long and winding messages accented with PowerPoint and film clips) no longer enraptured or edified me. Instead, participating in them only left me feeling empty, like a perfunctory chore I was obligated to accomplish. In essence, the very purpose of worship was lost on me.

For several years, I blamed myself for this. I was certain that the reason I had soured to worship was that I no longer performed by quiet time with as much dedication. That I wasn’t praying enough. That I had neglected to continue in Scripture memorization. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but this assumption was simply another side to the spiritual insecurity that has plagued me my whole life, the same insecurity that led me to walk a half-dozen youth camp aisles every summer hoping this time I would really be saved and all my doubts and temptations would finally cease.

I even spent the first year of seminary privately pining for a renewal to the things that had once interested me. I had participated in the entire OneDay 2003 Passion event earlier that summer, and I immediately bought tickets to the Passion Tour when it came through Austin. I taught my youth group the few worship songs I knew how to play on guitar. I did my best to lose myself in the “high-energy worship” at their camps. I kept buying the newest P&W albums.

The problem was, I couldn’t shut off my mind. No matter what kind of service I attended, it seemed I was addicted to analyzing the lyrics of each song, and what the Scripture passage and theme of the speaker/preacher’s message had to do with what we had sung about for the last hour. I began noticing that the only time I truly felt as if I had entered into genuine worship was during the occasional observance of the Lord’s Supper, or when the worship leader had beckoned us all into a time of silent reflection. There was something in those things that moved me. It was not long before I came to realize that what I had been missing in my worship experiences was the practice of contemplation. This was what my mind and spirit had been seeking all along, but much of the worship I was engaging in served only to distract rather than facilitate contemplation.

For me, contemplation is the second element, next to liturgy, that drives my worship these days. However, these two go together. As I stated in my last post, everyone practices some sort of liturgy when they worship. I found that the liturgy that spoke to me was one that catalyzed and encouraged a contemplative spirit.

I came to this particular realization during a visit to a place that initially terrified me. In fulfillment of the requirements of a seminary course called Wilderness Theology, my professor took the handful of students in the class to spend a week at a Benedictine monastery, the Christ in the Desert community in Abiquie, New Mexico. Of course, I grew up staunchly evangelical to the point that even Methodism and Episcopalianism were considered iffy. Catholicism? That was synonymous with hell. I’m ashamed to confess that such assumptions didn’t change until after I’d spent some time working as a Baptist missionary in New England, where I got to know several students from the College of the Holy Cross and found them to be some of the most devout young Christians I had ever encountered.

Still, the monastery made me uncomfortable, at least at first. I struggled to understand the purpose of chanting in Latin. While I could perceive the significance of the liturgical hours of prayer, I did not grasp the purpose. And praying to St. John the Baptist during lunchtime made me very uncomfortable. The first few days I spent observing these monks – some of them hardly older than me – and silently judging them. How could they think they were serving God by tucking themselves away in this remote canyon and praying for over half the day? It seemed almost delusional, if not arrogant.

After day four and day five, however, something changed. My seminary professors had taught me to open my mind in more ways than I was comfortable at first; I had always found what I learned exciting, even refreshing. I forced myself to attempt the same thing here. Almost immediately, I was afforded a glimpse, or, more accurately, a series of glimpses into the deep purposes of ritual liturgy and contemplation. I began to catch parts of the Latin. My avidly analytical mind began to dissect the creeds and communal prayers, and I found the theology wrapped up within them to be enlivening. The week shifted from worthless to restorative.

Even on the van ride home, I began making plans to implement contemplation into my life. I was far too wimpy to become a monk, but I wanted to practice contemplation and so much more. It seemed the monks at Christ in the Desert lived a kind of seasonal, cyclical life. They recited the Psalms over and over, they worked the same gardens, stacked the same amount of wood and ate the same basic meals again and again. But there was nothing tedious or unstimulating in these rituals. Rather, this worship-and-work liturgy seemed to foster a consistent sense of renewal. I wanted this. Deep down, I knew this was what I had been looking for all along.

In attempting to include such elements into my life, I found that this only opened up new pathways for me. Words like mysticism, contemplation, meditation and monasticism no longer frightened me or made me assume I was being deceived by demons touting principles of evil Eastern religions. I recognized that what mattered most in worship was expanding my heart and mind and taking God out of the box in which I had kept him stuffed for so many years. This God was my life-giver and was not willing to be nailed down by specifically denominational definitions. This God was interested in freedom, but freedom that challenges and changes rather than comforts and consoles.

I would go on to see this God at play “in ten thousand places,” as Hopkins writes. Because what came next was an expansion of understanding that continues to stretch me, daring me to follow the Spirit into places I never expected to find him before. This is the real journey – the one I constantly encourage my students to take even in the midst of their larger “faith journeys.” Next week, I will conclude this blog series with an examination of what this unnerving journey looks like…

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The Journey Lately – Part One

In the last few weeks, I have been asked about my interest in Anglicanism and the liturgical church three times, I have sat down with two colleagues to discuss what draws me to liturgy and ritual in worship, and I even had a singer/songwriter of “liturgical rock” recommended to me by a friend familiar with my journey. I have fielded questions about this particular aspect of my spiritual life before, but never with this much frequency. It’s coincidence, to be sure, but while I believe in coincidences, I also believe that sometimes there is a connection to the Holy within them, even if such a connection is forged when we simply stop to consider the why of it all.

To clarify, all this takes place after the events described in the “Faith Journey” piece I wrote in 2005, which can be read by clicking on the Faith Journey page at the top right of this blog, or by clicking here.

The first thing that must be understood before one sits down to write about his or her faith journey is that everything matters. There are thousands of moments that I can point to – some obviously more significant than others – that came together to form the person I am today, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually… Therefore, I cannot begin with the typical “It all started when…” line, because the reality is that everyone has a backstory and what affects a person at different points along his or her journey ultimately propel us in certain directions, with certain preferences and inclinations effecting changes in our particular interests. In other words, I count myself part-Anglican now due largely to a particular seminary class trip to a Benedictine monastery, but, in the same way, my experiences at Christ in the Desert were influenced by the specific Southern Baptist tradition and subculture in which I came of age. As Richard Rohr reminds us, “Everything belongs.”

My Anglican leanings are simply a manifestation of something much deeper that has been going on inside me for some time. I am not drawn to Anglicanism as much as I am moved by three specific aspects of worship that happens to drive much of Anglican-style observance. Those three things are liturgy, contemplation and religious symbolism. I will examine the first one in this post, and the next two in subsequent posts.

Rich Mullins once said in an interview that liturgy is something that you “give yourself over to.” It is a thing that “you voluntarily participate in in order to identify yourself with a certain group of people.” He went on to explain that when he visits with a certain group of friends, they must play a particular card game. Why? Because, if they don’t, it does not feel as if they have really met together. In other words, liturgy is the traditions – some obvious, some subtle – that are automatically manifested within an activity or event. In this way, liturgy is not exclusive to older church traditions, or even any religious tradition at all. Families that come together for Christmas or Independence Day participate in liturgy.

However, liturgy as an aspect of religious observance has become very important to me. These days, I am drawn to a specific liturgy because the traditions inherent within it resonate in my heart and mind in ways that nothing else can emulate.

Growing up, I attended a small Southern Baptist church in a small town. The sanctuary was small, the classrooms were small and the youth group was small. The church participated in a specific liturgy in its gatherings. There was always the singing of hymns, the gravely-throated muttering of a deacon’s prayer, a worship service that built up to the sermon, the sounds of a piano and an organ, and, at least a few times each month, the invitational strains of “Just as I Am.” Additionally, there were potlucks in the “Fellowship Hall,” felt-board lessons in Vacation Bible School, and annual gatherings on the church lawn to celebrate the new Sunday School year (which followed the local schools’ year, beginning in late August and closing in early June). This was our liturgy and, as far as the whole community of faith was concerned, there was nothing lacking.

During my teenage years, my youth group became interested in praise and worship music, beginning with songs like “His Strength is Perfect,” “From the Rising of the Sun,” and “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High,” but following the movement close enough to adopt anthems like “Shout to the Lord” and “Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?” into our repertoire. Some of the kids learned to play guitar. Sunday School-like Bible studies became “praise and worship services,” or sometimes we would call them “concerts of prayer.” You didn’t always have to bring your Bible because eventually PowerPoint provided a way to project not only lyrics but Scripture texts as well. During the lengthy stretches of music, you could stand, your could lift up your hands and sway, or you could curl up in a fetal position and weep if the emotion of “The Heart of Worship” affected you in just the right way.

I encountered and engaged in this outpouring of emotion and devotion in college as well. College group gatherings had formed their own liturgy, or, perhaps, it had formed them. Music, music, music, announcements and welcome, music, music, music, prayer, slower music, speaker or group discussion, soft music while emotional speaker intoned a convicting challenge or prayer, music a little bit faster now, a little bit faster now, a little bit faster now…

Go to any evangelical church today, especially one known for its high numbers of twenty- and thirty-something attendees, and odds are that you will encounter a liturgy similar to this. Lately, hymns have been making their way back into worship – albeit with a little P&W funk rubbed on them (thanks, David Crowder and friends) – so you may hear the singing of “Come, Thou Fount of Ev’ry Blessing,” “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” or even the “Phos Hilaron,” which some credit the Passion movement for bringing back.

So, what is wrong with this?

Nothing, really. For some people, the emotional kick of the music (be it three songs or thirty songs in a row) is what they’re craving. Combine that with a challenging message (the word “sermon” is out, and don’t even think about using the word “homily”) and the satisfaction of worshipping together with other people close to your age who also dig the music and the look of the place, and you’ve got yourself the makings of a genuine community of believers. Whether you do it up big (Lakewood, Prestonwood, North Point, Mars Hill) or on a smaller scale, the liturgy found in the majority of evangelical churches is not phony. It may very well begin to feel stereotypical, but the thing about liturgy is that what makes the guided experience of it genuine is the person who participates in it. Sure, there are plenty of folks who simply show up and go through the motions of the liturgy they follow, but there are also others who, as Rich Mullins says, give themselves over to it. They allow it to move them.

So, why have I rejected the liturgy described and illustrated above?

Because I spent years participating in it and found that, over time, I was struggling more and more to genuinely connect to God and to the other worshippers in my various communities of faith. While some people were having amazing experiences singing “We Fall Down” and “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever,” I felt as if I was colliding with walls, not communing with the Almighty. I felt that I might actually have to sing of His love forever if the “worship leader” didn’t wrap it up. For a while, new praise anthems captured me, but eventually, it did not matter if the song was new or old, chorus or hymn – I felt empty. I was not moved emotionally. I was not drawn in spiritually. I was even beginning to have theological hang-ups with some of the lyrics. I did not feel connected to other Christians despite the closeness that my fellow worshippers seemed to be experiencing in the same service.

Simply put, I could find no depth to this brand of liturgy. I was tired of it, and I knew that I would have to find something different if I was going to maintain any sense of devotion to God.

It was at this point that several providential events occurred. At first, I did not see the connection in them, but in the last few years I have begun to recognize their relationship to one another as if it was all some grand conspiracy with me as the pawn. I found another form of liturgy that I could embrace in ways I was never able to assimilate the praise and worship service brand of my youth. It is a liturgy similar to that which is observed in many Anglican, Episcopal and Catholic churches today. It is driven by contemplation and religious symbolism. It is a kind of worshipful magnetism that I will expound on more in my next post…