A little history:
My wife and I spent our early years as adult believers in a church group outside of institutional Christianity in what some call the house church movement. Looking back (the decade of the 1970s) we naively assumed our corporate experience reflected that of the first century church. We had a love of the saints and a joyful corporate worship. We believed in the centrality of Christ in Scripture and that our salvation was complete in him. We didn't need creeds or confessions. We had Christ! Yet we lacked a solid foundation in the doctrines of grace and had a very low view of the sacraments. There was a simplicity in our worship (no guitars or other instruments - only a cappella singing) eschewing the “restrictive liturgical structure” of the organized Church. In practice the focus was on a subjective “experience of the Lord”. Too often that subjective experience (feelings) shaped our walk, defining faith and truth rather than Scripture. Ah, the blinkered idealism and ignorance of the young and some not so young. As our time there came to an end I was coming to understand that our brand, if you would, had some weaknesses.
Two years later I was in seminary for a Masters program in Biblical Counseling. After graduating we eventually found ourselves helping organize a small home church. This lasted for about three years or so. As with most non-institutional churches our little group ran its course, leaving us churchless. Now for something completely different!
Turning to organized Christianity, we began the somewhat foreign task of searching for a church. We sampled many of the offerings - Baptist, Independent Bible, Plymouth Brethren, Presbyterian, Eastern Orthodox, mega and small… and often we stayed home.
On Sundays as we set out to try a new church we would tell the children that we were going on another church “field trip”. Our attempts at pumping up their enthusiasm had limited success. Over time the children were less enthused and less amused. And my earnestness was likewise waning. I was already skeptical of organized Christianity and now I was becoming disillusioned. The similar rote offerings of songs, hymns, specials, announcements, gospel-less sermons, and the rare Lord’s Supper more often than not left us wanting. Where was the Lord in all this? Were my expectations unrealistic?
One Sunday morning we attended a service at an Episcopal church. It was the first time experiencing an Episcopal worship service (first for me, I think my wife had already been visiting). To say the least, I was sincerely surprised as the worship worked its way through the liturgy found in the Book of Common Prayer. I remember turning to my wife at one point and saying with surprise, “This is so Christ-centered!” It wasn’t supposed to be that way. After all, this service-in-a-book was the height of institutionalized and supposed fossilized Christianity! A change of mind had slowly begun. I tucked the observation away.
What followed were several years without regular church attendance. We bought a sailboat and lived on it. That was my diversion. Our boat slip was not far from the Episcopal church mentioned above. Spiritually, I was at best treading water. My wife was attending church, certainly more often than I.
Three years later, after moving across country, our church search started afresh. God (my dear wife as his instrument) was renewing in me a heart for Christ and his church. Below is something I jotted down and showed her during a visit to one evangelical church as the service plodded along:
“When one takes away the liturgy [the BCP in mind] with its Christ/Scripture centered content it is difficult, if not impossible, to replace it with something that doesn’t fall short of a holy worship - a definite problem for the modern church.”
In a word, when it comes to Sunday weekly services, modern day liturgies often tend to be pared down and rather shallow liturgical outlines which fall short of a hoped-for-worship of God centered around the finished work of Jesus Christ. Their default setting consists in some combination of hymns, praise choruses, a teaching, maybe a “special” performance, prayers for various causes or sick members, an offering, announcements (the Lord’s Supper a rarity) which settles into a kind of going down the list and check-marking the boxes. In the words of Dr. Michael Horton, the gospel is assumed if not forgotten. Well-intentioned but misguided Lite-Law-teaching all too often is the main staple of sermons. All in all, it can be more like attending a Christian Rotary Club meeting than participating in a Christ centered corporate worship of our God and Savior.
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