²³ But a time is coming, and even now has arrived, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” – John 4:23-24

There is a growing trend of Evangelical Christians moving away from the emotionally driven expressionist worship to traditional liturgical worship!  There are a number of books on the subject such as ‘Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail’, ‘Evangelical is not Enough’, Earth Filled with Heaven: Finding Life in Liturgy, Sacraments, and other Ancient Practices of the Church’, ‘Becoming Orthodox’, ‘To Be Christian: An Anglican Catechism’, and ‘Spirit and Sacrament: An Invitation to Eucharistic Worship’ among others.  What I am about to share is a high level look at my journey to liturgy.  Actually, in the Anglican Church, we practice the three cords of worship found in the historic Christian Church which are Liturgical, Evangelical and Charismatic.

My journey did not involve any of the writings mentioned above, these I have discovered after the fact.  I  am about to share part of my story that many have asked about.  I share John 4:23-24 above because those verses have been a light to everything I do in regards to cultivating my faith and they have been particularly profound in this season of faith.  They also remind me of the doctrine of illumination and the importance of continuing to read our Bibles daily; I have them underlined and highlighted, but one day I read them and it was like I saw them for the first time.  The light went on in my soul as the Holy Spirit determined that my heart and mind were ready to take my faith journey to the next level.  If you read the bible regularly, you have likely had similar experiences as have I, but this one was profound for me, and that is why I am writing this today.  My church tradition calls these punctuations in our faith, a spiritual growth spurt so to speak.  We recognize our physical development from infancy, our first smile, our first word, crawling, our first step, potty training, walking unattended, speaking, asking questions, etc. In this process we move to self-awareness, develop likes and dislikes, know pain and pleasure, up to adolescence, young adults, mature adults, and finally to senior adults.  I have never thought of my spiritual life in these terms and I don’t recall anyone ever explaining this to me.  Perhaps I am late to the party, but that is of no consequence, what is important is that I believe that my spiritual growth had flatlined, but God in His loving kindness would prompt me to get unstuck and that is what I am writing about here.

There were some key events in moving in worship that I did not realize at the time.  I do not recall the order of these events because I was unaware that they would become a significant part of my story!  I do recall though that I had a growing dissatisfaction with church, largely because it had become a time to acquire information, but severely lacked communion with God or any sense of being in relationship with God.  I knew the right answers should anyone question my faith, but never really felt connected at church.  Worship was typically high energy and entertaining, but more exhausting than refreshing. The teaching was good, I think I have always been blessed to have good teachers, but the church schedule was an exercise in busyness with “Big Church”, Sunday school, mid-week bible study, prayer meetings, small groups, plus whatever weekly activity was occurring at the time… men’s group, college group, singles group, conferences, etc.

One day my Aunt died and I went to her funeral.  This was the first time since receiving faith that I attended a Roman Catholic Service.  It was good, I remember thinking that I agreed with about 90% of what they shared.  The material was familiar as I grew up Catholic, but now I understood it.  Another thing that happened was that I received an invitation from my friend Alan who was being ordained as an Anglican Priest in Southern California.  Alan was my college pastor, a long time friend and now serves as my Spiritual Director.  His ministry ‘UnhurriedLiving.org founded with his wife Gem has been a fruitful endeavor which has blessed me in many ways.  At his ordination, I reconnected with a mutual friend who has been on the Canterbury trail himself, so we began to discuss many related topics over a couple of years.  There were other connected events during this time such as conversations with one of my Aunt’s who works for the Roman Catholic Diocese in Los Angeles, as well as two friends who converted from Southern Baptist to Roman Catholic.  The significance of this is that they both graduated from Southern Seminary, the official seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).  Prior to enrolling at Moody Theological Seminary in Chicago, I had strongly considered going to Southern, but though I loved the school and was a member of the SBC, I knew that I would be moving away from that denomination upon moving to Chicago.

In parallel to these events, I had begun revisiting many of my books on church history.  I recall doing research because I was planning to write an article for Reformation Day which is October 31, the annual celebration of Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses calling Rome to repentance.  In my readings about the Reformation, the English Reformers, John Calvin, Thomas Cramner, the various movements to interpret and reproduce the Bible starting with Tyndale Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the Church of England commissioning more than 50 scholars to produce the King James Bible, I began to feel some connectedness to my historic roots as a Christian.

So I did what anyone would do these days, I pulled out Google to search for an Anglican Church in Chicago.  I found The Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton Illinois, which also serves as the Cathedral for the upper mid-west Diocese.  Not knowing anyone there, I went over one Sunday morning in the fall of 2018.  The choir emerged to sing my favorite hymn, ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’ penned by Martin Luther on Psalm 46.  I have loved this song since I first received faith and even have a playlist with various versions of ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God!’  The procession begins, the clergy comes in, the presentation of the Word of God, and everyone singing, it was overwhelming.  I had not felt this connected in community in many years and tears flowed, I instantly felt I was home and I was with family.  The statement, “now we join our voices with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven” was a visceral awareness that materialized in my heart!

Later on I would take some classes at church and eventually be confirmed as an Anglican, joining our global family of about 84Million members.  This has been the richest part of my faith journey to date, my communion with God has been strong, receiving the peace of Christ in a more consistent way has been amazing, understanding the power of sacrament has been life giving.  To me this is significant as most of my faith journey in non-denominational evangelicalism has treated the Lord’s Supper in a very casual way, almost disrespectful in not emphasizing the importance and the historical significance.

One thing that I have never considered, but something we practice is the importance of having our children participate in the service.  I grew up in churches where we would shuffle the kids off to Sunday school while the grown-ups went to adult church, but one thing that we emphasize is the formative impact on children to worship God with family.  Kids are always watching our behavior and will mimic it, so to be able to watch Mom and Dad worship, especially during their formative years up to age 9 to 12 can have a huge impact on the life of faith they will lead.  I am often impressed to see our Rez children and teen agers who know, and recite from memory, the Lord’s Prayer, the Nicene Creed or the Prayer of Thanksgiving among others.  For several years I had the blessing of helping raise my niece and nephew and they have both shared with me that I had some influence in their faith, prayer life, and their desire to know God and His Word.  To me that is a great encouragement, so I would encourage parents to get your kids in church with you.  They take note of our language, our eating habits, the entertainment we engage in, how we drive, etc. so influencing them by allowing them to see the practice of faith in community will have eternal benefits!!

One final thought that I have considered and am asked about often is related to personality types in worship.  I do believe that my communion with God in this liturgical setting is stronger because I am an introvert.  However we also have extraverts in our church and I grew up Evangelical as an introvert.  That said, I do think that each Christian will eventually, if they are growing at all, have a stronger hunger and thirst to go deeper.  The biggest lesson I learned was that I had mistaken information for transformation, so the accumulation of Christian flavored information does not do a lot for the transformation of our hearts if it is not applied in personal and corporate worship!  Paul calls us to test ourselves to see if we are in the faith, Jesus says that we will know genuine Christians by our fruit, so the question to ask ourselves is what holds our affections? And what is the strength of our affections?  Do I love God and love people and is that reflected in my life?  It is hard for me to see my own fruit, but those who know me best have encouraged me by what they see, and I think that has a lot to do with the top-down formative worship I practice, in which God is the subject and object of worship, and I do not have the burden of performing; church these days is refreshing, restful, and is continually bringing the formation of Christ in me.  If you feel stuck in your faith, distant from God, disconnected at church, having doubt, wandered, or seeking to find the rest that Jesus offers us, then I would invite you to email me and perhaps we can have a conversation.  I am seeing that God is using this part of my story to help folks, so I would be glad to engage with anyone needing some guided encouragement!