Uh-oh...Worship Mascots?

My Sacramental Nazarene friends will not like what I saw at The Lark, an online satire of (and by) Evangelical culture. Of course, everything is just a joke here. But doesn't there have to be some truth in a joke to make it funny?

From my (admittedly hazy) memory of studying nineteenth century revivalism, it seems to me that the seeds for the kind of nonsense that is only parodied here, were latent in that movement. What's scary is that I can actually imagine this kind of worship taking place, and traditionally sacramental churches are not at all exempt. My understanding is that many Lutheran congregations in the Western U.S. are now adopting "happy clappy" worship. A friend told me that her sister had to travel quite a distance from her home near Berkley, CA to find a Lutheran congregation that says the Creeds weekly and takes communion regularly. Perhaps that's just Berkley, which is, of course, known for its weirdness.

I think any student of Church history ought to realize that Montanus has always been among us, whatever our theological tradition, and wherever we are.

While the subject of parody is still fresh, let me happily say that CPE, that liberal-protestant (and I do use "liberal" in the philosophical sense, and protestant in the cultural sense) parody of itself, is almost over for me. Only four more days! Two of those are taken up with evaluations and graduation exercises, so there are really only two more days.

Then, it is on to internship in lovely Boone, NC. My wife & I are quite excited, not least about the lower temperatures. The highs here in Columbia, SC have been in the high nineties, with the heat index pushing those temps even higher. Boone's high today was eighty-four. What more could one ask for?

Modern Times...

Bob Dylan's new album is set to be released August 29th. Here are some well-spoken words in anticipation.

Sacramental Nazarenes?

My friend Brannon has an interesting new blog that intends to encourage liturgical renewal in the Church of the Nazarene. Even though I am a life-long Lutheran, this is something that is especially heartening for me. Both of my grandfathers were pastors in the Church of the Nazarene. I remember the many worship services that I attended in my youth, waiting for the familiarity of the liturgy or for some sign of sacramental reverence. Yet most of these services consisted of a few praise choruses and a lengthy sermon, which left me sorely disappointed. I am still a bit confused by worship among Evangelical protestant churches; it often seems to me that they have jettisoned much that is good from our 2000 year old tradition. When we can't stand in continuity with the majority of our forbears, don't we cease to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

Still, as a seminarian, I have come to appreciate much about the formation I received from my grandparents (and my Evangelical friends). They take the Bible seriously. They take the Christian community seriously. They seem to hold onto the Church's public character (despite emotivist appeals in worship, and an over-emphasis on the personal spiritual life), when we mainliners are hard to distinguish from our secular culture. As an inhabitant of a mainline Church body (the ELCA), I received more formation from television and my secular intellectual schoolteachers.

We Sacramental Lutherans have much to gain from our Evangelical brothers and sisters. They can help us to take the public claims of the gospel more seriously. And we offer much to them, as well. For Luther (and Sacramental Lutherans) the sacraments are the locus of our encounter with the Holy Spirit, the "assurance" of our salvation-- not our own knowledge of our faith, as Philip Cary pointed out in an excellent recent article in Pro Ecclesia. The sacraments-- the Holy Eucharist in particular-- are what bind us together in Christ's body, uniting us despite our distinctions and disagreements.