Worship Three Ways

I've been reading Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracted to the Liturgical Church by Robert Webber. (Footnote: "Evangelicals" here is used in the older 1970s sense of "Biblically conservative, but not Fundamentalist". Nowadays, the word conjures up television preachers and anti-intellectualism, but that wasn't the connotation when Webber wrote this book.)

Webber actually graduated from the same seminary I did, about four years previously. I remember his name but unfortunately never met him. It's my loss. Anyhow, he got me thinking about three ways that worship occurs on Sunday mornings.

Presbyterian/Rational
At Covenant Seminary, we were taught to pull together three-point sermons that could be easily outlined by people in the congregation. Half an hour or more of sermon/lecture seemed about right, and the main point was to explain and teach. Calvinism takes a lot of teaching, and Calvinists worry a lot about fine points of doctrine. I have to admit that I never did quite give my heart to the business of explaining single predestination (somehow, in that doctrine, God decides in advance who will be saved, but does not decide who will be damned). It's all very logical, very academic. I never could exactly explain why listening to a lecture fits under the definition of "worship" either. Webber quotes a visiting preacher who referred to the hymn-singing and all the rest as "preliminaries," and that's how it felt. At least we did get to sing the grand old hymns, all the verses. Depending on the congregation, 1890s emotionalism (for example, the hymn "I come to the garden alone") was also very popular.

Summer Camp
The tradition I am just now leaving had its roots in the Jesus People. Singing and dancing in the meadow, and no real advance planning—that's divine worship. You can't worship without a guitar and the Holy Spirit is dishonored by such things as forethought. (It's typical that nobody knows exactly what will happen on a Sunday; yesterday's basic song list was still in rough draft form 30 minutes before the service.) In the singing department, newer is better: of yesterday's ten songs, the oldest was written in 1990. Repetition is also really valued: One of yesterday's songs consisted of the verse "O, draw me, Lord" repeated three times, followed by the words, "and I'll run after you". If the song is sung as written, you do that five times, but the worship leader got excited and repeated the whole operation, so "O, draw me, Lord" got repeated thirty times. The order of worship typically amounts to six or eight songs sung without any particular theme or introduction, followed by a lengthy sermon that urges us all to give our hearts to Jesus and a call to come down front for prayer at the end.

Liturgical
Yes, it is all figured out in advance. Buy a copy of the Book of Common Prayer and it's all there, except the hymns. But it changes. We just celebrated the sixth Sunday after Epiphany, and that governs everything from the colors in the church (green at the moment) to the Scripture we read to the hymns. You're not going to get "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" during Epiphany. Yes, there's a sermon, but it's not really the most important event of the morning.

For me, the most vivid change was a change in focus. Lots happens in the Episcopal Church, but it's really not a performance. I cannot imagine anyone applauding during Sunday worship. I'm not there to learn something or to take home something good. It's more of a meeting with God. Lots of times in other churches I've gone back to my seat with the little thimbleful of grape juice and sat there pondering my own spiritual state. That's what I was supposed to do. But now when I kneel at the communion rail and someone helps me take a sip of the eucharistic wine, something really different, powerful, and unexpected happens. (No, it's not the alcohol. I drink wine at home.) I often wish I could just stay put there for a while. I don't want it to end. It all really happened. He's really here. I can't focus anywhere else.