Liturgical Theology

So...I couldn't really find a picture to put on this post...so there...

Liturgy is theology applied to worship and even to all of life. What do I mean? What we all believe is encapsulated in how we worship. This is part of the reason the so called "worship-wars" have happened in the church throughout the past two generations. There has been a struggle to determine if how one worships affects how one believes. I think that in the long run, it does. If you water down the worship, it will be extremely hard to overcome what you are indirectly teaching (or learning). If worship is flippant, then our view of God becomes flippant. If worship is all about experience, then we become convinced that the Christian life is built on experience or how I feel that "my faith" is doing today.

Of course, my use of liturgy here is narrow. When I use it, I mean an explicit liturgy, one that follows the contours inherited from the church of the first 500 years or so. Because, as I said previously, all churches have a liturgy. It's just that some don't have an explicit one.

Liturgy in Me

Let me talk about the aspect of liturgy getting into me (and you too, when you experience it!):

The use of the same prayers is important because you learn them by heart. It is important that we learn them by heart because they connect us to one another and also to all who have come before us in the Church. In fact, many of them that are used in the traditional liturgy (like that of the Book of Common Prayer) date back to the first 500 years of the church.

Anglican Fever~

Great video. Much of what is said here actually meets with my previous post and the next post that is coming! Enjoy!









I think that they did a good job with all that they had to say...a couple of minor errors in reporting, but it's a complicated situation right now in the formation of the new province.

Liturgically Experienced

And I believe what I believe is what makes me who I am. I did not make it, no it is making me. It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.--Rich Mullins, from the song Creed

After spending a year attending a Lutheran church, I had truly fallen in love with the liturgy. I remember that we had talk about having a contemporary service at the church and it had so many people upset. They were primarily concerned that we would lose our liturgy, I think (at least some of them were). The liturgy is highly important to those of us who take seriously the entire purpose of it.

So why is liturgy so important??

Lutheran and beyond

After Rachel and I joined the Lutheran church, we eventually felt a weight lifted off of us from having been at our previous church. The traditional liturgy freed us from the never-ending circle of getting excited and feeling like we worshiped God on any given Sunday. We could just go to church and fall in line with everyone else and worship. The sense of needing to have some type of emotional response to worship was gone! I feel like people don't understand what this is like because many have never realized how much their worship is really centered on how they respond to the "uplifting" music and how worship leaders work and work the crowd to get them to have this response. Of course, many have never had the experience that Rachel and I had while at our previous church.

Another Step Along the Way

My journey continued forward. My future wife, who's name is Rachel, and I finally began dating in late 2002. This would last for nearly a year before we completely broke up due to our various struggles. It was mostly that I still didn't have my head on straight from all the stuff that was going on inside of my mind. In the following months, we had as little contact as we could with one another, which was especially hard since we had virtually all the same friends! Along with this, I had to find a new church since we always went to church together...

The Continuing Journey

As my life continued, I found myself at a new college in the fall of 2000.  I had dropped below my required GPA to remain with my scholarship, so I transferred to a new school and hoped to have something of a new start to my life after so many tumultuous events prior.

I pursued the faith that I had come back to after two years of fleeing from it.  Though there were ups and downs in the days preceding East Tennessee State, I was being led forward by the Spirit in His so mysterious providence.  I eventually began attending a Baptists church just before Spring of 2001.  Here I was shaped in the college ministry and through its minister discovered my love for philosophy.  I had also become involved with Campus Crusade for Christ during this time.  I had made some good friends and was growing in my oh so small faith.

A Continued Story

Picking up where I left off last night....My siblings and I became involved in the Methodist church that we had attended very infrequently after my mom's stroke.  In our little town, it was very Baptist in my ways.  I wouldn't have known that there was much of a difference between my church and any other except that our sign said we were Methodists. That and we baptized infants, but we didn't have very many of them because we were a small, old church.  When I say small, I mean 35 tops on a good Sunday!  And when I say old, I mean that we were the only family that wasn't over 50...or at least it felt that way. But I didn't care too much about that because it was my church and I loved the people there!

The Beginning of the Journey

As stated in my last post, I've decided to discipline myself for Lent by blogging about various reasons that I became Anglican.  I'm going to start with a few days of briefly sketching out the contours of my life.  I do this to give some context and background because nothing is without some context in life.  

And now I begin....

One of the most formative moments in my life was a night in 1988.  Sadly, I would need to ask my siblings what day it was as I haven't thought about the specific date in a long time, but the event is burned forever into my psyche.  It was the night that my mom had her stroke.

Something for Lent...hopefully

So...I've been quite quiet for a while on here.  I've just struggled with what to say and what to do with this blog.  I used to enjoy writing so much, but have been overwhelmed of late with doing it....

It is a sad state.

I hope to remedy this during Lent and maybe be able to get a habit going for the future.

During Lent, I hope to blog about why I ended up in the Anglican camp.  There are various categories that go into this.  I don't guarantee that everything will be accurate according to the various theological representations within Anglicanism that seem to believe that their particular vision of it is exactly what Anglicanism was 450 years ago.  But this is purely from my perspective, how I have observed and understood Anglicanism through the back drop of a "theological mut," so to speak.  It is true, I am a "mut" of sorts or maybe to put it more nicely, "a bit eclectic" theologically, as I said the other night to a friend.