Liturgy for the Non-Liturgical Christian

"Their first taste of ... liturgy is like sucking on a lemon."

We like to think that there are liturgical churches and nonliturgical churches out there. But actually what we have is a distinction between churches that are self-conscious about their liturgy and churches which like to pretend they don’t have one.

So writes Doug Wilson in Mother Kirk: Essays on Church Life. And he’s right. He’s right as I observe it from theory and from practice.

Liturgy is making a comeback among many in the the younger evangelical crowd. Yet it’s worth pointing out that most of these youngsters (and older folk too) who think they are moving from non-liturgy to liturgy as a kind of ‘adding to” in their Christian church experience, need first to realise that something entirely different is happening.

For to move from nothing to something has a spark and energy about it that is palpable. You can feel the zing if you have nothing liturgical about you at all, no religious framework that you can draw experience from, and then one week you become a Christian and find yourself in a church that has a set liturgy. Simply put, it’s exhilarating.

But here’s my experience with those who move from a longstanding so-called “non-liturgical” church frame (think the average seeker/attractional church) to a self-consciously liturgical expression of church (either a confessional church, Anglican/Catholic/Orthodox, or one of the newer independent churches that has rediscovered liturgy). Their first taste of such liturgy is like sucking on a lemon. And the expression on their faces as they do it only reinforces that picture. Read More