Why Millennials long for liturgy

[davdavis]

Note: It is not my intent in this to offend confessional Anglicans.


Gracy Olmstead in an article titled "Why Millennials long for liturgy." subtitled,"Is the High Church the Christianity of the future?", in the January, 2014 issue of "The American Conservative", Rhapsodizes about the phenomenon of young adults leaving Evangelical Churches for "liturgical churches" like the Romanist, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox. She argues that some are drawing hope that these millennials represent the Christianity of the future.

I experienced a recent example of this in the congregation of which I am currently a member. After 11 years in the OPC and before that having belonged to small congregations I find the Church I am in currently to be disturbingly "high church". The other Sunday morning I attended a Sunday school class and discovered a young gentleman in the class was teaching about the advent season. I entered the room and immediately observed lighted candles. For the next hour I heard extolled the importance of a more liturgical worship.

During the course of the class I was informed that there were traditions like Joseph being over 90 when he married Mary linked to the notion that Mary never consummated her relation with Joseph. (i.e. the Dogma of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary.) The class was then told to bring cushions the next week so that they could kneel while praying to "get out of their comfort zone." I was not there.

This is not surprising. One of the things Ive noted how often liturgy and ceremony are substitutions for ideas and beliefs. Olmstead's examples of conversion to the "Church of the future" are people like Bert Gingerich of the Institute on Religion and Democracy whose journey from the United Methodist to Reformed Baptist to Anglican is celebrated by Olmstead, citing his love for the Beauty of the Eucharistic liturgy. Another example is a Jesse Cone who grew up in the Presbyterian Church In America (PCA). Attending Biola university he moved to Anglicanism then to Eastern Orthodoxy, "blown away bay the worship, doctrine and Tradition. She concludes with the apostate minister Jason Stellman who raised a Baptist moved to Calvary Chapel to the PCA ministry, to Romanism citing the Church fathers and the "liturgical beauty of the mass."

What do these individuals have in common? For one thing they all seem to have been Church-hoppers who, blown by every wind of doctrine drift from one group to another. They all seem to be obsessed with the externals of liturgy and the delusion that the "high church" of the Middle Ages was the same as the Church of the early fathers. Rather than a dramatic change of belief , they seem to have simply ran in search of someone putting on a better show.

As to the early Church, Does anyone really imagine that in the early Church facing persecution, meeting in hiding were focused on ceremonies and liturgies? No Cathedrals and masses. how dull and unsatisfying these early Christian services must have been. There was only Christ and that seemed to have been enough for them.

History show that the high liturgy and ceremony came with the corruption of the Church in the Middle Ages, as it became more wealthy and worldly. like Barnacles on the hull of a pure and pristine faith, the liturgy more and more replaced the Word of God, until the people became taught that salvation is ceremony and the scrtipures were walled off from the people.

It is interesting that none of the great revivals of Christianity were brought about by liturgy or ceremony but by a more faithful preaching of the Gospel. Reform movements of the past always moved to a simpler form
of worship to point people not to the pageantry of the high church but to Christ.
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[Elizabeth]

Well, if they are going to kneel to 'get out of their comfort zones', why bring cushions?

I think, in our age, people yearn for something of permanence. It's likely a reaction to broad American evangelical silliness, where there is little place for reverence and awe.

 

[Unoriginalname]

I think, in our age, people yearn for something of permanence. It's likely a reaction to broad American evangelical silliness, where there is little place for reverence and awe.

I agree. I think some of the draw of High Churches to the "young folks" is that they at least look like something that went on for a while. In broad evangelicalism, we sort of have a perpetual reinvention of the wheel going on. The High Churches can at least claim some sort of historical standard. I think the fad of "authentic" worship is dying out, authentic in the sense of seemingly random and people want more intentional worship. As Reformed folks, we do have a reason for why we worship the way we do and I think we ought to teach the rationals. We are not like the broad evangelicals at the mercies of what the praise band leader thought up in the shower. We also rejected the High Church for multiple reasons and I think we need to explain why that is the case.

 

[arapahoepark]

They like liturgy and tradition but loath the history of its evolution and it's theology. It is nothing but a very, very, (I could go on) shallow movement by the ignorant.
I am not against a liturgy but that should not be a reason one changes congregations.

 

[Jack K]

It's likely a reaction to broad American evangelical silliness

Agreed. Some of the "high church" worship services, despite excesses we might like to see eliminated, may even be better overall than what you get in many of today's evangelical churches, where the liturgy consists of nothing more than a series of songs plucked from Christian radio and a sermon/talk that may or may not have much scriptural depth. In short, people have good reasons in some cases to check out a high church alternative. They're looking for depth, a liturgy with a gospel rhythm, and a link to the church through the ages. These are good things.

Not that anyone should leave a church that professes the gospel for one that doesn't. But many parts of the evangelical world need to wake up and return to biblical services that have depth with a better, gospel-rhythm liturgy.

 

[Leslie]

In my situation I get to church in this country perhaps 6 times a year, when in Addis Ababa over a weekend. I don't know the national language, only the local tribal language, and that not well, so there are not many options. The local churches near our residence use a mish-mash of tribal language and Amharic. For a long time there seemed to be only one English-medium church in Addis, a place that majored in showmanship. The noise that they called music was abominable. Then I found an English-mediium episcopal church, solidly evangelical, happily multinational, liturgical but not overly so. The liturgy was hard to get used to, but with time it wore on me. I now leave the services with an appreciation of grace, an awe of God, and love for other believers. It's a big contrast to the other place that provoked anger. The funny thing is, the physically larger generic evangelical church attendance is diminishing. The episcopal church is packed out, even Sunday evenings, and growing.

 

[Pergamum]

How has the author proved his assumption that Millenials in general like liturgy? While a small demographic out of all Millenials might like liturgy, it seems that the young are even less formal and more casual than their parents. Plus church attendance is not growing but rather shrinking among Millenials.

 

[Hamalas]

I think the take-away for us in the Reformed camp is to clearly and persistently explain why we do what we do in corporate worship. For many in the Reformed camp (and I'm including many in the leadership as well) we have no biblical framework or principles which govern what is and is not commanded for the corporate worship setting.

 

[cjayengel]

I think another part of the trend is that so many Millennials are tired of the megachurch-entertainment settings. But at the same time, they disparage of doctrine and theology. If you aren't going to be entertained in Church, nor do you come to Church to learn and engage the mind, what else is there to fill up a service? Enter liturgy. Anyways, that is what is seems like to me from people I have met.

 

[BibleCyst]

I'm a millennial, and long for "high church" liturgy. I just find the kind of "liturgy" (if you can call it that) that evangelicals espouse to be shallow, vain, and void of any meaning. It's full of mysticism, and I need something more concrete than my emotions to put my faith in. I've been frequenting an LCMS church and find their liturgy so comforting. It seems as though the confessional Lutherans have retained their rich liturgical heritage, whereas the Reformed are more influenced by evangelicals (though, there are exceptions that go both ways). Anyway, CBN did a report on this once:

Anglican Fever: Youth Flock to New Denomination - CBN.com - YouTube

 

[Claudiu]

I'm a millennial, and long for "high church" liturgy. I just find the kind of "liturgy" (if you can call it that) that evangelicals espouse to be shallow, vain, and void of any meaning. It's full of mysticism, and I need something more concrete than my emotions to put my faith in. I've been frequenting an LCMS church and find their liturgy so comforting. It seems as though the confessional Lutherans have retained their rich liturgical heritage, whereas the Reformed are more influenced by evangelicals (though, there are exceptions that go both ways). Anyway, CBN did a report on this once:

Anglican Fever: Youth Flock to New Denomination - CBN.com - YouTube

Ditto, except instead of Lutheranism, I find the answer in Reformed worship. It took me a while to realize what the confession/catechism really meant by "the common means of grace." But once I have come to better understand the idea, I love the simple worship found in the Reformed church. The focus is on Christ. We see him in the communion, and hear him in the Scriptures. Vision has it's place in religion, but language is more important in my opinion. It is through the Word preached that the Holy Spirit convicts one of sin and turns his attention to Christ, the Prophet, Priest and King. We are not left without image. We see Christ in communion. But even more, we hear him every Lord's day. I'm afraid that this latter point is missed in the High Church. God has primarily worked through language, and it is the ear that is more sacred, if I can use that word, than the eye.

 

[TylerRay]

I love the simple worship found in the Reformed church.

I think that part of the reason for young Christians flocking to liturgy is precisely because they have never seen Reformed worship. They may have seen contemporary worship, fundamentalist worship, or high-liturgical worship; but they haven't seen Reformed worship. The most serious, reverent, and rich worship they have seen is high-liturgical worship.

Another reason is much the same for which high-liturgical worship has been popular for more than a millennium: it appeals to the flesh. The Christian faith is spiritual, and is communicated (primarily) in propositions. The worship Christ has instituted is the same. High-liturgical worship, on the other hand, is full of a superstitious significance being applied to liturgical actions, holy days, and titles that are neither commanded, nor are helpful. What these things do give us, though, is something to grab hold of and put our faith in. It's something we can see. Thus, it is a step toward statuary and iconography.

 

[yeutter]

One of the things I appreciate about Anglican liturgical worship is it strikes a balance between emphasis on the incarnation and substitutionary atonement. I have observed the same in the comparatively new WELS Lutheran liturgy.