How Shall We Worship?

For quite some time, many in the Episcopal church have wondered if we were falling behind other churches because of our style of worship. We see the wild success of mega churches which have been able to appeal to a wide audience by using popular culture translate the gospel message. It seems however that, at least for some, pop-style Christianity is wearing thin. There is growing hunger for ancient and traditional forms of worship. Here's an excerpt from an interesting article by Mark Galli in Christianity Today about evangelicals discovering liturgical worship.

We've recently featured in CT's pages a story about evangelicals who are
attracted to liturgical worship, but in the context of American youth culture,
many wonder why. The worship leaders wear medieval robes and guide the
congregation through a ritual that is anything but spontaneous; they lead music
that is hundreds of years old; they say prayers that are scripted and formal;
the homily is based on a 2,000-year-old book; and the high point of the service
is taken up with eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a Rabbi executed in
Israel when it was under Roman occupation. It doesn't sound relevant.

Yet many evangelicals are attracted to liturgical worship, and as one of
those evangelicals, I'd like to explain what the attraction is for me, and
perhaps for many others. A closer look suggests that something more profound and
paradoxical is going on in liturgy than the search for contemporary relevance.
"The liturgy begins … as a real separation from the world," writes Orthodox
theologian Alexander Schmemann. He continues by saying that in the attempt to
"make Christianity understandable to this mythical 'modern' man on the street,"
we have forgotten this necessary separation.

It is precisely the point
of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange,
new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world
they need is more of the world out of which they've come. The world the liturgy
reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world
it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day.

You can read the whole article HERE.