Liturgy

I invited an Anglican friend of mine, Brent, to teach some of our worship leaders about liturgy tonight. I don’t know that everybody thought this was a great idea, but sometimes people humor me. I’m glad they did. He came, and a small group of us learned from him for a couple of hours. Whenever I experience good liturgy, I’m drawn to worship. I became friends with an Anglican minister about 15 years ago. Around the same time, I began to occasionally visit a convent for retreats. I began to discover a whole new world of worship I never knew existed. Liturgy has always been a bad word in my circles. There is a richness and beauty in liturgy that is attractive to me. I think it’s the depth of the written prayers, their use of Scripture, and the sense that you’re joining millions of other people in worship. I’ve come to realize that extemporaneous worship is not the only or the best way. The best thing we learned tonight was the value of the Christian calendar. The idea of intentionally marking the important events of our faith in a meaningful way, centered on Easter, came alive for us. It was neat to watch the reaction among some of those who attended. Some lights went on tonight. I have no idea what shape this will take – it will obviously look very different here than at an Anglican church. However, it’s exciting to begin processing this together and to appreciate something we knew little about. We finished the evening with Compline (maybe a first at Richview!) and it was a perfect way to end the evening.