For Seekers and Protestants, we offer this book by a former Protestant pastor who is now an Orthodox Priest. It is the story of his, and his community's, conversion to Orthodoxy.



To order this free book:

"Discovering the Rich Heritage of Orthodoxy is published by Light and Life Publishing Company.
Excerpts from "Discovering the Rich Heritage of Orthodoxy" (Part 8)

ABOUT CONTEMPORARY WORSHIP

...many people today complain that such worship [liturgical worship] is dead, cold and impersonal. Much contemporary evangelical and charismatic worship is a direct reaction against the state of liturgical worship of "traditional" churches.

The first point that must be made is that liturgy is neither dead nor alive. People are dead or alive. Liturgy can be either good or bad, true or false. The problem in many Reformed churches is that the liturgy has been reformed to death. In most such churches there is no understanding of worship as an ascent into the heavenlies, as a participation in the heavenly worship. The priest is not seen and understood as an icon of Christ our heavenly liturgist, who is at that very moment leading our worship. There is no sense of being surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. And the heart of the liturgy, the participation in the Eucharist, has been cut out of most of the services. The typical Protestant church celebrates the sacrament 2-4 times a a year... Even then, the Eucharist has become less sacrament and more memorial service. What is left over and called "worship" is little more than the husk of liturgy. No wonder people think liturgy is dead.

Are we not justified then in creating our own worship services? Are we not free in Christ to worship Him as the Spirit moves us to worship? In response to such questions, I came to understand that other questions had to be answered first.

For example, I began to consider the following. Jesus said that He would build His Church and that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it. He said that He would give the Holy Spirit to the church and the Spirit would lead it into all truth. What then are the implications of the fact that for nearly 2000 years the Orthodox Church has maintained "a living continuity with the synagogue, the Temple and the early Church? For over 1300 years the Liturgy itself has remained unchanged. No one questioned this as anything other than Divine provision, until the Reformation. Even then the key Reformers (Luther and Calvin) maintained the liturgical shape of worship. Only the so-called radical reformers began to scrap parts of the service. Yet they were considered to be heretics by the Reformers as well as the Catholics and the Orthodox...

I realized that the worship of the early Church was more like the worship of the Orthodox Church than that of my...congregation. I recognized that I had had no authority to make up my own worship. Who was I to oppose my opinions about worship to the consistent teaching and practice of a 2000-year-old church?

To be continued...

More from this book in future weeks.