The Liturgical Challenge
We often experience liturgical practices in the church as something akin to initiation rites or membership rituals. You do THIS thing in exactly THIS way, and now you are one of us. And then you worship in THIS fashion and sing THESE songs to solidify your sense of being included in the group.
Even in churches which claim not to be liturgical, there are routines and habits to the elements and flow of a worship service. In many cases, those routines can feel like they’re intended to make people feel like they belong…and to make those who, in their eyes, DON’T belong feel excluded.
But “liturgy,” literally translated, simply means “the work of the people.” It is the form our gatherings take…whether scripted or habituated. At New Wineskins, for instance, our liturgy is highly informal and unscripted, but it tends to follow similar (and, over time, familiar) patterns.
And ultimately, it’s the community’s choice whether those practices and patterns are intended to be welcoming and inclusive or hostile and exclusionary.
This week at New Wineskins our Easter season series “From Fear to Transformation” continues with the third part of our discussion video from The Work of the People featuring author, speaker, and activist Brian McLaren titled “Toward the Other.” We’ll talk about how liturgical practices, specifically the sacraments of baptism and communion, can either “reinforce an identity of hostility or build a deeper sense of solidarity and hospitality,” to use McLaren’s words.
Please join us this Sunday, April 28, in the New Wineskins Virtual Theology Pub powered by Zoom for Part 3 of our 4-week journey From Fear to Transformation as we talk about the Liturgical challenge and how we can shape “the work of the people” into a path of openness and acceptance.
6:00pm ET: Happy Half-Hour (informal meet & greet time)
6:30pm ET: Presentation & conversation begin
We’re using a single discussion video from The Work of the People for the the full Eastertide series. Feel free to view the entire video at your leisure, or use the following approximate time stamps to locate each week’s session (you’ll need to manually navigate to each segment of the video using the video player’s time slider):
April 14 — Introduction/The Historical Challenge: 0:00-4:15
April 21 — The Doctrinal Challenge: 4:15-8:25
April 28 — The Liturgical Challenge: 8:25-10:00
May 5 — The Missional Challenge: 10:00-13:31
View our third session here (time stamp 8:25-10:00)
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