Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Malaysian influence as church turns to traditional English worship

http://www.lichfield.anglican.org/pressr/articles/2007/070515a.htm

[Diocese of Lichfield] 16 May 2007--A Wolverhampton church is to follow the example of churches in Malaysia - by offering a traditional Anglican worship service every week.

The existing Sunday services at St Philip’s Church in Bradmore, Wolverhampton (the parish of Penn Fields), are in a lively contemporary style with modern hymns and worship songs led by a music group. But later this month the church will go ‘back to the future’ by offering an alternative act of worship of a more traditional nature. The new service will follow Anglican liturgy with traditional hymns played on the organ or piano and will use hymn books rather than a PowerPoint presentation.

The Vicar of Penn Fields, the Revd Jeremy Oakley, said the new service was influenced by a visit he had made to Lichfield’s partner diocese of Sabah in Malaysia. He said: “The Anglican Church in Malaysia is organised into parishes like in England; but here we tend to have parishes which are evangelical, charismatic or catholic and so on; and this tends to be reflected in the style of worship of that parish.

“But in Malaysia the individual churches offer a full range of services to suit everybody’s taste. So they may start at 6.30 on a Sunday morning with a traditional choral service; and follow this with a lively praise service; and then a service in one of the many different languages spoken in Malaysia, and so they continue throughout the day....

No comments: