Dan's Thoughts

Vision #24 - September 19, 2006

While I was writing about my diverse family a few days ago, I couldn’t help but think about the diversity I have experienced in the family of God.

One may broadly categorize the differences in Christian worship under three main labels: Liturgical, Evangelical and Pentecostal. Liturgical worship derives from the Jewish Temple, Evangelical Worship from the Jewish synagogue and Pentecostal worship from the Jewish Prophetic tradition. Thus each approach can easily be defended by scripture. That’s why literature abounds from each perspective that makes a passionate plea for every believer to learn how to “worship God’s way.”

Unfortunately, the New Testament does not give us a definitive order for worship. Unless we accept the Book of Revelation’s description of Heavenly worship as descriptive and normative for all Christians, we are left to draw our own conclusions about the matter.

Worship differs within these broad categories as well. Even as a little Pentecostal boy I noticed that African American Pentecostals worshipped differently than Whites, that Northern American Pentecostals worshipped differently than Southern American Pentecostals and that European Pentecostals worshipped differently than South American Pentecostals. Later on, I was shocked to know that some Protestants thought of Pentecostals as irreverent because they jumped and laughed during worship. Of course, I already knew that many Pentecostals believe liturgical worship to be dead and lifeless instead of relevant and reflective, as those who prefer that form of worship experience it.

It is important, I think, to learn to understand, even if not to prefer, worship traditions different than one’s to which we are accustomed. Sometimes, God pierces through to our soul more easily when we are being stretched by songs and prayers that are not already well known to us.

I’ll never forget how broken hearted I felt in worship at an Episcopal Church when I first read the line in the prayer of contrition, asking for God’s forgiveness “for things left undone.” Somehow, I had come to believe that if I just avoiding doing bad things, I would be fine with God. But in this prayer I had to acknowledge that I had also sinned by “not doing those things that I ought.” In the silence that followed, I found no retreat in the comforting loudness of my Pentecostal heritage. The silence forced me to pay attention to the words that were stirring deeply inside my being. I had to deal with the conviction that they prayer had provoked and make a choice about what I was going to do with it. .

People from liturgical churches often experience the opposite when they come to Christ Church. What is one to do with an atmosphere in which people openly cry or otherwise demonstrate deep emotions about their faith? It can be an appropriately uncomfortable moment for non Pentecostal believers, in which they are forced to consider whether silence is always the appropriate response to love and devotion. It forces us to consider how embodied and connected to emotional life our faith ought to be.

I have been continually shocked by the anger that people on all sides of the subject of worship can show toward one another. To me, it seems that each perspective offers something valuable in the on-going transformation of our souls. The diversity of my human family has blessed me beyond words and has provoked me to grow. So has the diversity in my spiritual family, especially where worship is concerned.

Dan