Repeat offender?
27 Apr 2007
The modern church has to a greater degree dismissed spoken worship seeing it a dusty, old, vain repetition of words, week in and week out, learning by rote. Maybe those words no longer hold any real meaning? And for some they can be decidedly snooze inducing…well maybe!
I know only to well about spoken worship or liturgy, I was raised an Anglican and can still remember the words when I attend an Anglican service…but I now wonder if that is such a bad thing?
The modern church, to a greater degree, now uses sung worship and I have noticed that I am repeating these words week in week out, learning them by rote. Maybe those words no longer have any real meaning? And for some they can be decidedly snooze inducing….well maybe!
Having now been in a modern church for the last ten years or so I find myself recalling the words to the oldest songs…and I am wondering is that such a good thing?
We are certainly not expected to limit our prayers or worship lives to liturgy, prayer books or songs and tab books.
And as I have researched the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Celtic traditions I have found the written prayers and songs of the Church do not limit my spiritual life but actually provide me with an underpinning or foundation for my own prayer and worship. This is something I hadn’t expected but does in fact give me something to build on as the tide of life ebbs and flows around me.
It is often argued that liturgy is vain repetition. Liturgy is without a doubt repetitive, just as the Lord’s Prayer is repetitive and yet many millions are happy to say that every day. So is there a possibility that repetition can be a basis for Christian living?
I believe repetition serves to free us from the actual words of the liturgy and helps us connect to God with our souls; this is certainly one of my experiences in sung worship.
We will become familiar with the words, what is said, where it is said, and why we say it. Maybe we are then able to focus on the meaning of those words thus enabling us to free ourselves and give us a sacred space in which to connect to God?
What do you think – liturgy whether spoken or sung – vain repetition or life giving re-connection?
Tagged: worship
15 comments
Trackback
Comment by David
11.12 am on 27 Apr 2007
Have been lurking for a while – keep up the good work! This article encouraged me to pipe up!
Certainly, I would support the notion that several wings of the church are wrongly dismissing spoken liturgy. If they think it’s boring it’s probably not the liturgy at fault but the way in which it is delivered. Liturgy done well, with creativity, as it is or mixing in song perhaps or imagery can be absolutely life giving.
A small example – how about a good old Anglican confession sandwiched by the two verses of Purify My Heart or a similar song about confession and holiness. Try it and see how it feels.
If our churches are not using spoken liturgy, then the resources that people call on during their week are the songs they sing. Whatever it is that is spoken or repeated is what goes into the heart and given the quality of theology and depth of spirituality in some of our songs, I fear for us if we don’t use and allow the resources of spoken liturgy, the various traditions and all the wisdom of those who have gone before us in the Lord, to feed and build our spiritual lives.
Comment by marc
12.14 pm on 27 Apr 2007
I agree we have to look at liturgy as part of our worship and not the sole instrument.
We are looking at ways of integrating this and the church calendar as a whole into our wroship at my church and have had some success at this with positive reactions and larger attendances for Good friday/Ash wednesday services etc.
Thanks David.
Comment by steven hamilton
12.01 pm on 27 Apr 2007
i think it is dependent on your heart and intention and maybe season of your journey in faith. i grew up in an independent baptist church in midwest america. yet, most of my friends at school attended catolic services…so when i would go over for the weekend to their homes, we would go to mass. i loved it! i loved the liturgy and candles and the architecture of awe. but, because i had faith forming in my young body and soul, i wasn’t put off by the differences, i was enamoured and it brought me in a new way closer to my Lord. it added depth and vitality to something that was already in me. yet, for some, i could tell, this was more of a cultural thing, and they knew all this liturgy by heart and were sleepwalking thru it all, maybe because they lacked the bigger piece…or more foundational piece of Christ-in-them…Christ-in-us or maybe they were just in a different season in their walk where they needed more of what was happening at the baptist church or the others. anyway, spoken worship and the catolic liturgy utterly enriched my own spiritual walk, even to this very day.
thanks for sharing that marc…
Comment by marc
12.17 pm on 27 Apr 2007
Hi Steve
I understand what you are saying but I think that’s the same with any worship.
Unfamiliar worship can be enormously exciting and the familiar can seem boring.
Its a matter of balance, not pinning your thoughts on the ‘there is only one way’ type of attitude. It’s important that we open ourselves to all forms of worship to see how we can connect to God.
Thanks
Comment by Paul
2.43 pm on 27 Apr 2007
Thanks Marc, i think rhythm is a good thing and therefore liturgy can help with maintaining that rhythm – but that makes me think, like you have mentioned as to how we are connecting our liturgy into our communal and individual lives – maybe we need to spend more time explaining and exploring the story/stories to add enrichment & depth to the words and generate cycles of renewed liturgy as a result as each generation translates the ancient rhythms and stories and expresses them for their own context and story.
I think that recontextualisation is key, to plant it in a rhythm and a tradition, otherwise we just have liturgy for liturgy sake and borrow across cultures with no idea of the context.
Comment by D.G. Hollums
4.18 pm on 27 Apr 2007
I think it has a powerful place in the very broad understanding of worship, and that is why I am playing around with the idea of introducing (small bits and pieces of it) into the worship times of Th3 Waters, but since we meet in public places, pubs, Starbucks, etc.. it should prove to be interesting. I will introduce it into the pastor core team and see what their thoughts on it are.
Pingback by Th3 Servants of Th3 Waters » Blog Archive » What do you think about this article…spoken liturgy during the OGs?
4.31 pm on 27 Apr 2007
[...] Here is an article from a friend Jason Clark. [...]
Comment by makeesha
4.48 pm on 27 Apr 2007
I think it’s important to familiarize one’s self with what one is praying/saying/singing. I think “mindless” worship is bad no matter ancient or contemporary and tbh, my charismatic experience with worship choruses is the worst offender of mindless relatively meaningless worship.
I really enjoyed Scot McKnight’s book Praying with the Church where he talks about this issue with a simple straight forward approach.
Rhythm is something we have lost in our western culture and moreso in low church protestantism. It’s something I think many of us are realizing we need. But that doesn’t mean we can just randomly and mindlessly grab whatever sounds interesting.
Comment by Paul
7.44 am on 28 Apr 2007
it’s a good point Mak, how we intergrate mind, body, soul so we are present to God’s presence, is maybe the centre of worship. Rhythm can help me have times to practice being present and contextualising those practices grounds them in my reality rather than as abstract aesthetics…
Comment by Jason
7.31 pm on 27 Apr 2007
Great post Marc, I loved this that you said, “I believe repetition serves to free us from the actual words of the liturgy and helps us connect to God with our souls; this is certainly one of my experiences in sung worship.”
Sung worship in the modern form can be about a fresh experience of cultural relevance, and the problem comes when it is disgarded for something new, even the revival of liturgy as an alternative experience for those of us that never used it. The power of singing goes to a new depth when we experience it lirtugically as you suggest.
Liturgy is not just about old spoken words, it is a mode of worship and confession, and can take so many forms, as you have rightly identified, or at least I think you have! :-)
Comment by marc
4.12 pm on 1 May 2007
Thanks mate – it’s getting itehrs to understand it that can be a problem.
Comment by Becky Collins
9.01 pm on 7 May 2007
ps. I don’t think it’s that I/we/others don’t understand that, it might just not work for me/us/them in the way that singing doesn’t for some others – we all connect and communicate in different ways and even if this is one of your faves, it might never be someone else’s – I think that’s why we all set up and attend such different churches!
Comment by Becky Collins
8.59 pm on 7 May 2007
Warning: Ramble.
hello marc! Interesting post, made me think – as you well know from our many infrequent chats ;), I’m a person that grew up with the traditional repetition and liturgy thing, and that sometimes switches me off out of habit. Communal reciting always pings up memories of sitting on a hard pew in church, not understanding anything that I was saying, reading from a small hardback book with very tiny writing, and listening (and inwardly chuckling as I grew older and more aware) to everyone trying to show off that they a) could say it loudest and with most conviction, and b) that they knew it SO well, they didn’t EVEN need to look at the book!
I guess it just loses meaning for me because of that, and because I don’t naturally connect in that way as well as I do in sung worship – but then again, I certainly don’t love every worship song and sometimes up the front you have to pretend for a while so that others can follow you in, even when you don’t ‘feel it’, so it’s not just that I love the singing – maybe if I do the liturgy thing, and don’t feel it, it might happen sometimes too – actually it often does in dedications, because I really think about what I’m saying then. I guess we all just connect in different ways, and not always the ways we think we will… but I did leave my previous 2 churches because I think they got too caught up (and still are) in what they SAY rather than what they DO… but then do I/ others now get too caught up in what we FEEL?
hmmmm….
I agree with first-poster-David though, it’s not that people necessarily don’t ‘get’ it, maybe just that it’s not always very well done… maybe it would be good if we singers could try some short readings or response-things in the middle of sung-worship sets, I think the atmosphere is there for the people who usually find that stuff more awkward, and then they (we) may be more ‘in the mood.’….?
Comment by marc
11.53 am on 11 May 2007
Hi Becks (mesg 9)
I can understand your feeling of when you were a child, I had that upbringing as well I didn’t understand it too, but in our conetxt we don’t have the pews and we are no longer children and understand the meaning of the words. it is deeper and it is a powerful thing to speak with one voice.
I think you are right we can get caught up in the whole ‘how we feel’ and I can understand why…quite simply, it’s nice to feel the persence of God in your life but should not be the focus of our worship…that should be God and Him alone.
The best thing about our church is we do do what we say.
Comment by marc
9.10 am on 8 May 2007
Hi Becks
I think it’s important to open ourselves up to the different ways we can connect to God.
I understand what you are saying but i’m not really sure if worship is about what works for us. Maybe God should be the focus of our worship and how we feel…well maybe that is not the priority anymore.
Maybe we can end up just cosuming what we like an disposing of the rest which sadly is a reflection from the society we live in.
You are right that there are many different churches out there but that reflects the difference of protestant belief not styles of worship.
But we do have to look at our worship and push forward the boundries as the Vineyard has done always with worship for the church. The influence of hungry has been great within worship but that was 10 years ago.
There are questions I am pondering at the moment:
What is the next step forward for the CCM style of worship or has it gone as far as it can?
How can we capture the histroical Christian tradtion of worship and use it in our current context?
Why I am meeting more evagelical christians who are looking backward to our past for other ways to connect?
Comments are now closed.