4 Lessons from Worship in Liturgical Churches

I was away from home, so I took the opportunity to attend two historic and liturgical churches. One of them was very traditional, while the other church was a little more contemporary, even including a familiar Chris Tomlin song in their worship.

As I participated in the liturgies of these services, I took note of a few things that evangelicals (at least those who are “non-liturgical”) could learn from these historic churches.

Participation

The congregations were engaged in the liturgy. In addition to congregational singing, the churches were invited to respond to God in the liturgy with praise and prayer and lay people were invited to read scripture.

Confession

I was invited (at least twice in one service) to take time to reflect and confess sin to God and the whole congregation together confessed our sinfulness before God as a part of the liturgy. By contrast, in many evangelical churches I am likely to be invited to confess sin to God only once a month at a communion service. They say confession is good for the soul—it instills humility, thankfulness, and reminds us of our need for redemption.

Doctrine

In both services I attended the whole congregation read with affirmation the Nicene Creed. I imagine that if evangelical churches did this more often, people would be a little bit less confused about what to believe about core theological issues. Confessing the creed regularly would reinforce good doctrine among congregants and it would serve as a guide as people read the Scriptures.

Trinity

Since I do not regularly worship in a historic-liturgical church, I was again struck by how integrated the Trinity was in their worship. Here the Trinity was not a mathematical puzzle. Rather, these liturgies were reminders that the Father sent the Son so that the Spirit would dwell within us to confess Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The liturgical expression of the Trinity was, then, an expression of the gospel.

My Departure

I left both churches feeling like evangelical churches would do well to be more intentional about what they include in their own non-liturgical liturgies.

At the same time, I also appreciated a number of things about my own tradition. For starters, I much prefer padded seats over hard wooden pews.

Leave a comment below by clicking here.

You might also be interested in these posts:

• Worship Lessons from Visits to Orthodox and Catholic Churches
• What’s Wrong with Songs that Worship the Holy Spirit?
• Theology in Worship and Music: Please Think About What We Sing

Andrew K. Gabriel, Ph.D., is the author of Touched by God: Experiencing the Holy Spirit (forthcoming) as well as three academic books, including The Lord is the Spirit. He is a theology professor at Horizon College and Seminary and serves on the Theological Study Commission for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. You can follow him on Facebook or on Twitter.