Worship styles: An evangelical service
Submitted by Heather on September 12 1999 at 22:04:14
|
This is totally off-topic. :) I have to confess, though, that taking part here has been a real eye-opener; except when I was quite young, I've never before encountered evangelicals. In fact, the first time someone came onto RDC and told me that I must accept Jesus as my personal savior – you're going to giggle at this – I thought he must be a member of some weird sect. I've no one to blame but myself for this insularity, because I grew up in the Episcopal Church. For those of you who don't know of it, the Episcopal Church is descended from the Church of England (the Anglican Church), which was founded as a national church, in hopes that Protestants and Catholics alike could take part in its services. As a result, worship styles vary tremendously in the denomination, from very Protestant to very Catholic. I attend an Anglo-Catholic parish (that is, an Episcopal church that is Catholic in its worship) and have had only the vaguest of notions of how "those other guys" worship. I was therefore pleased when my husband Doug proposed that we attend service today at an evangelical parish, Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia. It turns out that today was the church's "open house," so in addition to the eight-page weekly bulletin – which revealed that the parish is heavily involved in charity work – we picked up a number of brochures about the parish. The brochure on the church's baptisms gave an amusing slant on the church's theological emphasis. The brochure says that Truro encourages baptism by immersion, and it adds that parents are offered two options: to have their children baptized when they grow older or to have them baptized as infants. Evidently fearing that the last statement will drive away all Bible believers, the brochure hastens to offer biblical support for infant baptism. It offers a dark warning to parents, though, that infant baptism is not enough: "It is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for our salvation. It is not a magic rite; it alone saves neither infants nor adults. It is a promise of God which is conditional on the receipt of the promise by the individual once he matures." The church complex is so large that one of its wings is filled with a bookstore; Doug and I visited it before service, and I immediately had the feeling that I had wandered into one of the Seventh-day Adventist bookstores of my childhood. The book covers mainly consisted of garish and sentimental modern art, while the titles ranged from Can a Bishop be Wrong? (one guess as to the answer) to Truths and Errors in World Religions. The latter was a pamphlet which began by quoting a series of Bible verses as "proof" that the Bible is the Word of God (a circular argument if I ever heard one). It turns out that the "truths" in the title consist of Christianity, while the "errors" consist of every other religion. I ended up leaving the bookstore very depressed, wondering whether I had wandered into a religion that was utterly foreign to all I knew. Doug and I got lost for a while trying to find the restrooms – the complex is enormous – but the restrooms were worth the trial: the women's room was filled with potted plants and wicker chairs, and the toilets flushed automatically (a feature I'd only ever encountered in airports). Eventually, we found our way back to the church itself, whose 500 seats were nearly filled. Truro is one of the loveliest modern church buildings I've ever seen. Upon entering, I thought that it was a colonial church that had been converted, but I learned that the church was actually built in 1959. The walls and pews are painted white, the carpet and pew cushions are dark red, and everything else is dark wood or brass. Aside from the organ pipes at the back wall of the chancel, the only large decoration in the room is a man-sized cross, suspended from the chancel ceiling: the four corners of the cross are decorated with the symbols of the four evangelists, while the center of the cross – standing out against a sunburst – reads "IHS." Dou g, who has gotten used to the pattern in Episcopal churches, leaned over and whispered, "Where's the prayer book?" (The Episcopal Church is a liturgical denomination, with set prayers.) Sure enough, there was no prayer book; in its place was the Bible, which I'd never seen in the pews of an Episcopal church. (All of the churches I've attended print the Bible readings for the day in their service leaflets.) I eventually found the Eucherist service reprinted – apparently without any major changes – in Truro's own hymn book. The regular Episcopal hymn book consists of older Protestant and Catholic hymns; Truro's hymn book consists of Protestant hymns from the sixties, seventies, and eighties. A second confession: I really hate modern services. Even the Episcopal Church's mild-mannered modern-language prayers make me cringe, and modern church music has a worse effect on me. When I first met Doug, he had attended folk masses all his life (he's a post-Vatican-II Roman Catholic), so for several years there, we alternated between his church and mine, and I had to put up with a lot of dreadful modern "folk" hymns which resembled only vaguely the folk music I love and whose verses were supposedly derived from the psalms, except that they always ended up being the same few lines about love and peace and joy. After church, I would go and read hellfire-and-brimstone sermons, in order to wash away the syrupy after-taste. So I was sitting in the pew, feeling rather gloomy (and also rather sleepy, because Doug had woken me early this morning), when suddenly there was a trumpet blast. It came from the brass band in the chancel (I take it this was a special "open house" treat), and it was followed by the longest procession I've seen outside of a cathedral service – the lay eucharist ministers alone (clad in white robes) consisted of sixteen people. Each section of the procession was headed by a processional cross or banner, while down the side aisles marched two of those banner-flags that can be waved (I don't know what they're called) – they looked like flames from a fire, and they were flourished by two teenage girls ("gymnasts in tights," Doug called them). Meantime, the congregation was roaring out the opening hymn at the top of their lungs, while up behind the altar, the rector (minister) – with a name tag discreetly pinned to his clerical stole – was banging on a tambourine. Several of the congregation members had their arms raised – I could see Doug looking at them out of the corner of his eye, trying to figure out what this was all about. I first encountered this custom at a Methodist convention I attended two years ago, and it seemed a bit silly to me at the time, but it seemed perfectly normal at this service, considering that the roof was about ready to burst open from the singing in the church. Doug leaned over and whispered, "Are you awake now?" Music is obviously the center-piece of Truro – after communion, we all rose to sing a Caribbean hymn, following the lead of a saxophone and drum set (the rector had exchanged his tambourine for a rattling gourd). During the psalm, the "gymnasts in tights" stood at the front of the chancel and accompanied the singing with sign language; occasionally they would dart into a new pose, turning it into a liturgical dance. It was all quite lovely. It had none of the forced modernity of the folk masses I'd attended, where stolid church members mumble along with the music – the congregation was clearly quite at home with the music, and it was presented in a lively but dignified manner. Precisely because the music was somewhat informal, the rest of the service seemed in harmony with it – I've attended far too many services where the ministers tried to combine formality with informality, with disastrous results. A few weeks ago, Doug and I attended a parish where the rector went straight from the rigidly ritualistic movements and chanting of an Anglo-Catholic service into an announcement period where he quizzed his flock about how their summer vacations had gone. Doug and I got about five yards out of that church before we fell into helpless laughter. Mind you, Truro had its whimsical moments; I never before attended a service where we were instructed to sing "Happy Birthday to You" (complete with organ accompaniment). The prayers were straightforward and close to what I was used to, except that there were no ritualistic gestures, not even a signing of the cross at the Gospel reading (I had to remind myself not to genuflect each time I left the pew). The sermon was on the Old Testament reading of the day, Isaiah's vision of God in the year King Uzziah died. I knew I was in an evangelical church when I heard John 3:16 quoted. :) Nor was I particularly surprised when the rector went on to quote John 3:18 (". . . he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.") No need for me to go home and read hellfire-and-brimstone sermons. Pleasantly, though, the rector directed these words, not at the "sinners" outside the church (as far too many preachers would have done), but rather at his own flock, which seemed to me quite in keeping with the Gospel message. What made the service very Anglican was that the rector formed his sermon around the topic of worship; raised as a Baptist, he said that he had worshipped with a Cajun jazz band in New Orleans, with a black gospel choir at Broadway, and with Franciscan monks singing twelfth-century chants. The rector said that Isaiah, in the passage we read today, was talking about the four steps of worship: seeing God, acknowledging one's sins, accepting forgiveness, and going out to serve. "Here am I," he quoted Isaiah as saying. "Send me." And the rector looked at us and said, "What we do here today is of eternal significance." And I have heard those words before, I thought to myself as we stood to sing, "Just As I Am." The last time I heard them was at my Anglo-Catholic parish. Heather |