Why Do You Do That?!

Recently someone asked me a good question which I felt was worth sharing here.  She had apparently been having a conversation with an evangelical friend who was trying to make the case that liturgy is dry, dead and rote.  She asked me, "How do you, as a priest, approach the common opinion that liturgy is dry, repetitive, rote, and has no spirit (or Spirit) in it, and how can the church as a whole dispel that belief?"  So here was my answer:

The first, punky short answer I thought of was - have you been to our church?   Does it feel dry and rote?  
(For those readers who have not had an opportunity to worship at Christ Our Hope, Fort Collins you need to know that we are a very lively blend of traditional liturgy with upbeat contemporary music and lively extemporaneous prayer where you might encounter "hand raising" and even some people quietly praying in tongues - not generally dry, repetitive and lacking Spirit). 


But for a more serious answer I think we need to acknowledge a couple things.  First of all, every church has a liturgy.  Even "non-liturgical" churches have a liturgy.  Opening song, weclome, more songs, announcements, offering, a prayer, a long sermon, closing song.  That's a liturgy because these days most churches in America do exactly that week after week without much variation.  The point is every church has a liturgy, some are just better and more thought through than others.  And some, like ours, have more of a history and a deeper theological content than others.

Now, yes it is absolutely true that liturgies (all of them - even the Bible Church ones) can become rote.  How many times have you or I gone through the motions (sometimes literally) of a worship song or even a set of worship songs and get to the end and think - "wow, I can't even remember what I was just singing."  I was singing the words, maybe even had my hands in the air but my heart and mind were totally elsewhere and not engaged.  It can happen with familiar songs, it can happen with familiar prayers.

However, I believe, because I have experienced the fact that, when liturgy is engaged in such a way that the Spirit does come and enliven the hearts of the participants and therefore He moves and speaks in the midst of it, then the traditional, content rich liturgy of the Church has a positive, shaping affect on our hearts.  

There is a story from the sayings of the Desert Fathers (those are those proto-monks that fled the creeping mediocrity of the newly legalized Christian religion and sought God in prayer and contemplation in the Egyptian desert during the 4th century).  It goes something like this, a young monk came to a very wise and holy Father and began asking him all of these questions about how to lead a life of stillness and peace and prayer.  And the Father told him, "return to your cell (that is his monastic enclosure - probably a cave) and stay there, and your cell will teach you everything you need to know."  I think in the same way if we stay in the liturgy, the liturgy teaches us everything we need to know about worshipping God and living the Christian life.  The Liturgy teaches us to read and study the Scriptures, it teaches us the creedal center of the faith, it teaches us to respond to God in prayer, it teaches us to confess our sins, to make peace with our neighbors, to give thanks to God in all things, how to have communion with Him and finally how to go forth into the world rejoicing as his ambassadors of reconciliation.  The Christian liturgy sums up the whole of the Christian life and enables us to live those truths week after week.  

As for how we dispel the misconception - just keep worshipping in Spirit and Truth and inviting others to come and see.

That was my answer.  What are your thoughts?