What fads are they embracing? INCENSE, CANDLES AND LITURGICAL PRAYERS AND A LECTIONARY!
Evangelical megachurches embrace liturgy
'It ties you into something that is lasting, trustworthy. And that touches a nerve in our culture'
(Dallas News) Step into a worship service at
Epiphany Church in Lower Greenville on a Sunday morning and you’ll smell
incense, see candles and hear ancient prayers read in unison. Sermons
align with the Revised Common Lectionary, and church activities are
planned around the liturgical year.
All of these are trappings of a liturgical church, but Epiphany is not Catholic, Anglican or Eastern Orthodox. Epiphany is a start-up planted by an evangelical megachurch and its pastor, Kurtley Knight, a graduate of George Fox Evangelical Seminary. Epiphany is a new kind of hybrid: an evangelical church that orders its services around liturgical practices.
Liturgical practice is a growing trend among evangelical
churches. Last month, one of the largest evangelical megachurches in
Texas, The Village Church where more than 10,000 people attend every
week, announced it would order worship around the church calendar,
observing Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost.
All of these are trappings of a liturgical church, but Epiphany is not Catholic, Anglican or Eastern Orthodox. Epiphany is a start-up planted by an evangelical megachurch and its pastor, Kurtley Knight, a graduate of George Fox Evangelical Seminary. Epiphany is a new kind of hybrid: an evangelical church that orders its services around liturgical practices.
3 comments:
When I was part of the Effingham County Ministerial Association while I was pastor of St. Boniface in Springfield, I used to tease the then pastor of Rincon's First Baptist Church about how liturgical the worship in his congregation was.
He was quick to deny that this was true. But then I pointed out that the weekly services followed a patter that rarely changed. The congregation stood and sat at prescribed times. The basket was passed at the same point in each Sunday service. The choir wore ROBES. They decorated the church for Christmas and Easter. And they even had statues on the front lawn in the form of a Nativity scene....
Interestingly, the evangelical pastor makes the following comment:
"I think it speaks to a lack of rootedness in our culture," Knight said. "It ties you into something that is lasting, trustworthy. And that touches a nerve in our culture."
To me, our problems in part have the same origin - lack of rootedness. True, we have the eucharist which, admittedly should be enough, but, it's how we get to the point of having the true presence on our altars and peoples perception of that process and, therefore the true presence itself that has been uprooted.
Call me a cynic but they are just trying something, anything that will set them apart from the crowd. When everyone is alternative then tradition looks unique.
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