Praying with Anglicans, and my Mother

Most of my life, I have heard how terrible high church worship is. It's repetitive, not heartfelt, uses man's words and not God's words, and everyone just drones on together with no one giving any attention to what they're saying. It's works righteousness at its worst: people coming just to churn out yet another prayer so that God will like them better.

And yet...

Long before my mother met my father and became a member of the Church of Christ, even longer ago than the dark times when my mother wasn't sure that God was worth worshiping, she was an Anglican. And it seems that while you can take the girl out of the Anglican church, no one ever quite got the Anglican church out of the girl. I remember how she would speak of incredible Christmas services. I remember how much she valued and longed for the corporate prayers and intercessions, read together as a community. She truly loved to worship. I remember seeing that on her face many Sundays. But I know she also loved the worship of the Anglican church.

So it is curious that I now find myself a PhD student at an Anglican theological college. Having been there this past week for their research conference, I participated in the prayer service each morning. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much. Despite my mother's insistence that Anglican prayer was beautiful and valuable, the other voices in my life had been rather louder (not to mention longer lived!). I went partly for the experience, partly to be involved with my colleagues, and partly, just a little, to see if I could see what my mother saw.

And I did. I wouldn't say it's the best way to worship – I don't know if there is a “best” way to worship – but one could do a lot worse. To take up a few of the issues my own people have had with this manner of worship:

1) Regarding the droning: Every once in a while in a Church of Christ, there will be a short reading, and the reader will say, “let's read this together.” Invariably, it's terrible. It sounds rather like the Borg, “resistance is futile; you will be assimilated.” It also tends to sound very disjointed. But gather a group of people who are accustomed to it, who have been trained through practice to put just a little emotion in their voice, and to observe the punctuation marks, and it comes off quite nicely.

2) The accusation that it's “man's words and not God's words,” is patently false. We spent much more time reading and praying scripture than anything else. There were two hymns. Most days there was a total of eight “man written” sentences that were prayed in the entire half-hour. There was an open time for people to pray for requests on their hearts. All the rest was scripture. Each day saw one Psalm, one reading and one prayer from the Old Testament, and one reading and one prayer from the New Testament. Most mornings we were reading or praying the majority of five chapters of scripture, from a broad cross-section of the Bible.

3) The accusation that it's not heartfelt is unfair. I can tell you that's not what I saw among my fellow students. And really, who are we to judge another man's servant? We look at them and say the service is repetitive, and we would be right. They could look at us and say that our services are haphazard, and in all too many cases they would be right. Scripture nowhere teaches us a set plan for worship. We're all working this out the best way we can. I find it hard to condemn them for a service so thoughtful and so saturated in God's word.

All that being said, I do understand the concern of such worship becoming rote. I do think that when done well, I prefer the style of worship that I have known in the Church of Christ, which allows just a bit more room for expression and tailoring a service to the needs of a congregation. I have some rather serious theological disagreements with Anglicans, disagreements that aren't disappearing any time soon. But I take no issue with their worship. I see now, I think, what my mother saw: a depth and beauty and thoughtfulness, and a deep rootedness in the entirety of God's word. We could learn much from that. And I do look forward to worshiping with them again next year.

A Thousand Stories

I'm really not up to date on popular contemporary music, never mind the avant garde jazzy whatnot that Starbucks tends to play. I was thus all the more surprised when, as I sat researching at Starbucks this morning, a naggingly familiar guitar intro caught my attention. As I listened, I found myself shocked, then delighted, as the familiar intro resolved into familiar words:

“I've heard a thousand stories

Of what they think you're like,

But I've heard the tender whisper

Of love in the dead of night

And you tell me that you're pleased

And that I'm never alone.

You're a good, good Father

It's who you are

It's who you are

It's who you are

And I'm loved by you,

It's who I am

It's who I am

It's who I am.”

Starbucks is the place of a thousand stories. They have worked hard at aligning themselves with the values of progressive millennialism. Sometimes this manifests itself in good ways, such as creation care, fair trade, and sustainability. Sometimes it manifests itself in unfortunate ways, such as their obvious support for a culture increasingly centered on self-definition. And yet out of their speakers comes a song that rejects the thousand stories, to proclaim two simple truths. God is a good father. We are loved by God.

Starbucks is a sort of microcosm for how society at large likes to see itself: soulful and sensitive, welcoming and inclusive, accepting of everybody, ultimately tolerant. And yet this song got airtime. This song, which while not having the deepest theology has the most important theology. God is a good father – and fatherhood is something painfully lacking in our society. We are loved – and love is something that is painfully lacking in our society. There are a thousand stories we hear every day – but only one of them is true.

And if a song like “Good Good Father” can get airtime at Starbucks, maybe that's the message that can get Christians a hearing in today's world of a thousand stories: that God is good, and that he loves us. Doctrine can come later – doctrine must come later – but let us start with the most basic truth that the world has forgotten: that the true story of God is that God is love.