Why Wesley?

[GraceSeeker]

I do apologize if you feel that my comment was rude. It wasn't meant to come across that way. I don't want to condemn anything that is helping people worship the Lord.

Apology certainly accepted. Thank-you for receiving my critique in such a grace-filled way.

My concern is with churches that rely more on the liturgy than they do seeking the presence of God.

I can understand why one would be concerned if one has witnessed this sort of practice. I have to say I would have shared that concern more until a few years ago when I found myself serving in a Lutheran Church and among pastors who loved liturgy. The thing is, for all of their liturgy, they were seeking God just as much as (often times I think even more than) those non-liturgical churches I had grown accustomed to when I was in seminary in Kentucky. Many of them were so non-liturgical, and in their own mind "spirit-led", that they looked on even the use of a bulletin as too much scripting of the service. As my seminary prof asked, do we think the Spirit is restricted to directing the worship leader only on Sunday morning? Those pastors who I knew in the Luthern Church took seriously seeking the Spirit's leading long before Sunday morning as they designed entire services, not just sermons, that were meant to help lead people into the presence of a holy God.

Many liturgical churches are involving themselves in things that have just become routine.

It seems to me that this might be a criticism of individual pastors or worship leaders, but not really true of entire denominations of churches.

Sometimes the preaching is weak and un-biblical. Sometimes it is a book report on something the pastor read during the last week.

I suppose sometimes it is. The thing is that I don't find that to be something that is limited only to liturgical churches. Some of the shallowest sermons I have ever been "privileged" to have heard have been in non-liturgial pentecostal churches where I wondered if they got their sermon ripped from a page in an "Our Daily Bread" punctuated by lame jokes that were old when I had heard them 20 years before.

Formalism can kill the soul. Lifeless externalism can be a drag on our spiritual life.

Of course. But again, I would suggest that formalism is not limited to liturgical churches. Non-liturgical churches can be just as locked into certain forms. One of those "no bulletin" churches I spoke of above still had a set pattern in which they ordered their worship service. They may have thought that they were responding to the Spirit's leading, but curiously the Spirit led them to repeat the same pattern week after week for an interminable number of years. The said the Lord's Prayer at the same time in the service every Sunday and in the same way so that it had a sing-song tone to it. When moved to a different spot in the service many, who had been reciting it from memory for years, suddenly didn't even know how to start it.

I have no argument with any of the rest of what you said:

The church needs to be about the business of praising God, preaching Biblical messages, and urging the congregation to make a personal decision to surrender their hearts and lives to Jesus. There needs to be preaching against sin and all forms of wickedness. John Wesley liked some liturgy in his worship, but he tried to preach souls out of Hell.

Having said all that, I want to acknowledge that there may be churches that use a lot of liturgy and they are doing all the right things. If this is church that you are referring to, then I would encourage you to attend. No denomination has a corner on the Kingdom of Heaven. Just find a place where your soul is being fed and where they are trying to pluck souls out of the fires of Hell.

Ken

 

[GraceSeeker]

Then, what is "liturgical"? I always assumed that you could do it in a barn too, and my "low church" is very liturgical, but I've been told by pastors who favor "High Church" that since we don't have all the trappings of robes and censers and such, that we are not High Church. I was under the impression that High Church is not the same as Liturgical.

These links might help with your question:
The Difference Between "High Church" and "Low Church" from the Christian Resource Institute
"High" and "Low" Church from an Anglican perspective

 

[BryanW92]

These links might help with your question:
The Difference Between "High Church" and "Low Church" from the Christian Resource Institute
"High" and "Low" Church from an Anglican perspective

Thanks for posting that. I'm still confused. According to the article:

""Low Church" is a neutral term that simply describes a type of worship that does not follow a prescribed order of service, that does not follow certain liturgical patterns, and does not make use of developed ritual, ceremony, or worship accouterments like vestments."

My church does all of that, except for vestments, yet our prior pastor accused us of being Low Church all the time.

 

[circuitrider]

Thanks for posting that. I'm still confused. According to the article:

""Low Church" is a neutral term that simply describes a type of worship that does not follow a prescribed order of service, that does not follow certain liturgical patterns, and does not make use of developed ritual, ceremony, or worship accouterments like vestments."

My church does all of that, except for vestments, yet our prior pastor accused us of being Low Church all the time.

Well it is certainly possible that he was just wrong. For a service to be liturgical the "proscribed order of worship" has to fit a liturgical pattern. You can have a service that is three choruses a poem and a sermon and that be your "prescribed ritual" but that wouldn't be "high church."

Compare your order of worship to "A Service of Word and Table I" in the UMC hymnal. It is fairly liturgical, at least from a Methodist perspective.

 

[StudentofScripture55]

I consider myself a Wesleyan because I resonate both intellectually and emotionally with the Wesleyan understanding of grace as being God's active presence in the lives of us as human beings.

Additionally, I agree that God's gift to us as human beings is prevenient grace, the gift to us as Christians is justifying grace, and the relationship with God that we nurture as Christians is through the process of sanctification. Furthermore, this relationship entails both personal responsibility and accountability, as well as social responsibility and accountability. As Christians, we simply cannot live our lives in ways that run counter to God's purpose; but we also are to be compassionate in the way we live towards "the Other", the poor, the downtrodden and marginalized by society.

In sum, I truly believe that faith is the core of who we are as Christians; but I also believe that faith without works is dead. Wesleyanism, in my view, provides an excellent and useful framework and guide for Christian life.