True, worship is always evolving, but this article has very problematic assumptions.

A good, well executed celebration of the mass according to the rubrics in a parish that knows the joy of Jesus and lives out the Gospel in its common life and in the broader community is still very, very attractive.

Ditto on Fr. Bill.

Additionally, while I understand the desire to tailor worship to what speaks to people, I think if you press the issue too much, it leads to the idea that worship is for *us* and not for God. Yes, we should experience God in worship and if that experience is stifled, there's something wrong. But I am unconvinced that it's something wrong with the liturgy, that a form of worship that has survived for the better part of 2 millennia (at least since St. Hippolytus in the 3rd ct. CE) has suddenly stopped working. It's an extremely exceptionalistic point of view.

Rather, what might have gone wrong is that liturgy is badly understood by both clergy and laypeople and a sense of mystery and sacramentalism has been abrogated by reason-first, self-centered understanding of reality.

Our liturgy requires constant re-examination in context.

"A useful way for any practitioner of liturgy to think about the need for liturgical revision is to think about who is not in your congregation. . . . [Y]ou may find that your congregation is monochromatic, or missing young people, Spanish-speaking people, women under the age of fifty, gay or lesbian people, or college students. Then you and your congregation have to ask yourselves whether you actually want them there? Be honest! It may well be that resistance to liturgical change in a congregation is representing a resistance to diversity and inclusiveness in general."

Better Get It In Your Soul: What Liturgists Can Learn From Jazz by Reid Hamilton and Stephen Rush, Church Publishing, 2008.

Reid Hamilton (see Jim! I remembered!)

[Editor's note: Yay!]

Sorry, this article is pretty bad.
"Do we worship the way we do because it makes certain members of the church happy?" That leads me to ask, Do we gut and revamp our worship because we think it might make future members of the church happy? Comparing the two questions leads me then to see the first as hinting dangerously close at an ecclesiastical consumerism.

This article refuses to take a long view of religious and cultural history. I see more young people at Choral Mass than I ever do at "Folk Mass", and the pendulum will always swing back and forth, due to complex causes and conditions, between what one generation will look for at church and what another generation will look for. A couple of points: 1) to try and keep up will mean losing any anchor to the past beyond the words of Scripture and the intellectual conclusions of theologians whose writings have survived. The Scripture readings when connected with the emotional impact of the liturgy, carry the meaning of Christianity through the centuries to be experienced in the body itself, which is why emotions are felt and not merely thought. And 2) By the time one figures out where the pendulum is going, it will already have swung and be too late to make the kinds of adjustments to further the objective of always being "relevant."

And is it the job of those who "plan worship" to be mind readers, or to do demographic studies? Nope. Rather, be scripture readers, and tradition readers and be artistically sensitive, and just have church. A welcoming community with a traditional liturgy celebrated in a warm and loving way always wins.

The author is a Presbyterian, and I take that as some his context. Anglican worship has a different quality and is more anchored to the ever flowing stream of our tradition, not so much an anchor as something that maintains a continuity.

I agree it's hopeless to be mindreaders of others. But I to be fair to the author he's not asking us to do that so as to an honest self examination of ourselves. Why do we do things in worship the way we do? Which are essential? Are we setting up unnecessary though intended stumbling blocks for those who are not like us (r.e., ethnically, socially, economically)?

A recent business had me in the Houston area over a weekend. I was hoping to attend a local Episcopal church ... but my client was very eager to have me experience a service at a Christian Fundamentalist "Mega-Church."

The worship experience was really more of a Disney-like entertainment experience. There was dancing water ... big screen TV ... praise music ... and what they called a "rock" band. From my point of view, it was two hours of hell.

If there is going to be change ... I hope it will be change in a direction other than the Chistian Worship Extravaganza.

It looks to me like this article is just a teaser to get us to buy his books. There is absolutely NO content here. It's all generic truisms with no application to my actual experience of trying to lead my congregation to an experience of God or to awaken their consciousness of God at work in the world about us.

Bunker Hill
Spearfish, SD

True John, it is easy to set up unnecessarily stumbling blocks for those who aren't like us, but we still gotta be us as well, or we're doing the whole Christian world a disservice. We don't expect the people not like us to give up their identities and enjoyments, why do we expect the same of ourselves? Again, I see a lot of this as a self-esteem problem.

"For most of my life I have really disliked worship."

Really, now? And how many of us would buy a cookbook from someone who confessed "for most of my life I have really disliked eating."

True, Clint. People have an innate since of when you're trying to be something you're not - i.e., phony. And likewise who wants to be around someone experiencing an identity crisis. Too often we're unsure ourselves what it is that is unique about Anglicanism, and Anglican worship. What's the wheat and what's the chafe?

Still, I think we're pretty good at setting up stumbling blocks. It's worth asking a simple question: are we doing something because it's essential to who we are, or are we doing because it's turned out to be something that discourages people who are not like us in skin color or education from joining our community?

While we're talking about Anglican identity, I dare to ask the following question: We gained and regained so much due to the Oxford Movement, but I wonder if we lost anything in the process too? Became too Catholic-Light and thus less Anglican in the process? Became something compared to something else, either how Protestant or Catholic we are or each parish/diocese might be, and did not have and allow an adequate time for our Anglicanism to assert itself as primary? That doesn't mean that the Liturgical Movement shouldn't have cleaned up and reordered our liturgy to more ancient patterns, or that we should have passed up the opportunities provided by being exposed anew to the greater inheritance of Undivided Christendom. But did all those things get subsumed in Catholic identity that was too Roman-centered, or too Medievalist? As I study and learn I find myself more attracted and attached to John Donne and George Herbert and the Ferrars (Puritans called their estate an "Arminian Nunnery"!! Love it!), maybe even that scoundrel Archbishop Laud, or the excellent Scottish Non-Jurors. Such excellence must needs be revived and reconsidered I think.

Although it is true that Standish is a Presbyterian, he has led his congregation to embrace a lot of traditional liturgy. From reading his other books, I would say that Standish has a particularly apt assessment of problems of mainline churches, including Episcopal/Anglican churches. In "How to Be A Blessed Church", his analysis of 'rationalistic functionalism' describes many Episcopal Churches that I have been in. The assumption is that people actually encounter God in our liturgical worship (which I affirm is true), but might there not be a fair number of people who 'do not know how to do that' in our forms of worship. Maybe they are bad people. Maybe they are just uninformed. What Standish seems to be focusing on is whether our worship, whatever form it takes, is actually transforming the people involved. While I would certainly not endorse everything he says, I do think he is well worth listening to.

Two suggestions that are applicable to Anglican worship, and which go together nicely (with good preparation):

1. Keep silence after the Bible readings. We don't have time to feel, think or react. Many people do encounter God in the readings, so let them do so. Others can look around at the pretty stuff, because beauty is another way to encounter God.

2. Eliminate the Sunday sermon occasionally. Let people experience the Liturgy of the Word followed immediately by the Liturgy of the Table, just as you would for a weekday Eucharist.

Sermons are good, sometimes they're needed; what isn't needed so much is a 10-15 minute period every darn time we're in church, where "we all sit while the Big Man talks." Or the Big Lady!

Dispense with it. Everyone likes a little vacation.

Like others, by the end of the article I was tired of the generalities and wondered what this might actually look like. It's helpful to be reminded that the author is a Presbyterian and so speaks out of a different context than we Anglicans.

But I think there is great value in asking how our worship engages our current context. I appreciate Reid's comments about who is not in the congregation (but is in the neighborhood). It is possible for worship to be both relevant and anchored in tradition; many vital Episcopal churches do this week after week.

In fact, over the centuries worship has changed again and again in different times and places, even as some things have remained constant. The worship that the Roman priest Hippolytus knew in the 3rd century is not the worship that our forebears in 16th century England knew.

There's a tie-in between the conversation we are having here and Nick's post from a few days ago:

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/evangelism/how_to_get_people_in_the_churc.html

The comments are diverse, and reflective of recognizable viewpoints and paradigms.

Interesting to me, that as I read all this, I thought of Martin Luther King III Day. What is celebrated? Is it his work, or his reputation as a leader whose acts stand on a prophetic tradition?

Likewise, the Fourth of July. Do we remember the purpose of the Revolution, or do we celebrate the soldiers who today are also warriors?

A disconnect between culture and worship is problematic, especially when the worship no longer can be understood in the context of one's own experience. And while I have enjoyed watching Elizabeth II go from young queen to elderly monarch, and while I enjoy watching on C-SPAN her verger bang on the door of Parliament for her to be admitted to address her subjects, it is still foreign.

I love the Episcopal liturgy, especially a beautiful, magnificent Rite I service, but still, it is not a reflection of my culture. Successive American generations have moved beyond the idea that Lutherans are German, Episcopalians British, Presbyterians Scottish, etc.

Who are we as American Christians? The mega-church is more about technology, and that is not the alternative that I seek. But I do ask for civil discussion, and an end to the polarization that reflects aging generations.

I mean really, let's get more kids in the pews.

While it's true that the Presbyterian context does not mimic ours, there is some movement toward a more liturgical / sacramental style of worship in the Reform tradition. I base this on conversations I engaged had with several worship leaders in a number of different Reform traditions (including Presbyterians) at the Calvin Worship Symposium two winters ago.

Regardless of that point, however, I think that if Standish is pointing to the need to always ask questions of our worship practices and their renewal to reflect our changing cultural needs, then he has done just that.

What are some of the life cycle events or world realities in our time that call out for some sort of ritualization through worship? When our worship points to ourselves - and not to God - in some sort of consumeristic fashion, I think we've missed the boat; on the other hand, if our worship doesn't help people in our neighborhoods from connecting their lives outside the red doors with the renewing and healing and restorative powers of God, then we have also missed the boat. The latter is not about consumerism, it is about relevance. What is relevant in one context may not be relevant in another - young adults may readily attend a Rite I liturgy in one context and be unwilling to enter the doors of the church, looking for something less traditional, in another context.

Perhaps our liturgical mission as Church is to find a place where our neighbors' needs, fears - and even joys - can find some meaningful expression of praise, of petition, of healing, of hope in the liturgy we share with one another.

For me, I feel connected with the church community most when we harmonize and sing, when our voices fill the sanctuary in uplifting joy. Alternatively, I very much dislike unison readings where the congregation sounds like a collective of Borg drones.

The moments when I have felt plugged into the Holy Spirit I have been in nature witnessing a quiet snowfall and gentle frost. However, I feel as if I'm gasping for air when we must debate four-legged insects and two-legged fowl.

I don't expect the congregation to adjust to want I like, so I just stay away.

What really keeps me away, though, is when the worship leader declares that couples are not considered a family until they have children.

[Dear first time commenter. Please note our policy in the fine print about the comment box. We require your full name. - eds.]

I like how Clint Davis concludes his comments (July 12):
"Rather, be scripture readers, and tradition readers and be artistically sensitive, and just have church. A welcoming community with a traditional liturgy celebrated in a warm and loving way always wins."
And to that, I would add that unless we are consistently and authentically living a day-to-day existence that seeks to remind people around us (as well as ourselves!) of God's glorious activity in their lives, our liturgies will be flat and lifeless. Worship, after all, is the "summing up" of who and what we are in all our daily experiences.

Andreas - please add your last name next time. ed.