The Why Behind Our Worship: Liturgy (Week 1)

This week in Sunday Sessions, join Becca Ferguson as she teaches about why the way that we worship in our main service at CVC - to put it another way, why our liturgy - matters. She will consider both theological and practical considerations in answering this question, looking first to the foundation of Scripture, and then to both church history and our current practices and rhythms today at CVC as well.

Week 1 Handout Link

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Well, thank you guys for being here. It looks like it's gonna be a cozy group, which is a lot of fun, because I think that can, I don't know, help discussion be personal, which might not be what you were hoping for, but I think it'll make the class better if we're all able to share with each other. Um so I'm gonna get started. Yeah, if you don't have a note sheet, we have some note sheets for you outside. There are pins out there too. Um, and it's not necessary, but it'll help you kind of follow along and look at some of the things that we're gonna be talking about today in writing in front of you, which sometimes I like to do. A couple of quick announcements. Some of you guys, most of you guys probably know this. We do have an updated men's and women's ministry calendar for 2026. It includes dates for the fall, and those are outside. They're also in the foyer. We also have, well, I wanted to remind you where you are, the why behind our worship, a mini-series on liturgy and ordinances. We did have to shift the dates because of the snow day last week. So we're gonna be meeting the first, 8th, and 22nd, because I'm out of town on the 13th. So if we had started last week, you never would have even known that. Um, except now it's going to affect our class a little bit. So we will take a break and then come back. And this is gonna be on the podcast. As you can probably see, I'm wearing this little microphone. So if you need to miss a week and you want to catch up, you can. Um, and then just a reminder: Ways to Find a Life Group, women's breakfast coming up on February 7th. Um, and that all those cards are right out in the foyer. So this class is called The Why Behind Our Worship. Hopefully, you know where you are. Um and it's going to be an introduction into liturgy and ordinances. Um, but you might wonder why are we talking about this? You know, maybe not too much because you came, but why are we talking about the why behind our worship? Why does the way that we worship matter? Um, and this class, I'll talk a little bit more about this, was built on a class at Emmaus that I took last fall. But when I was talking to Joe about wanting to bring that content to Sunday sessions, he was kind of like, Becca, I don't know that people are necessarily gonna know why they should care about that. You know, like why should we care about liturgy? Why should we care about our ordinances? And so as we were discussing those things, we came up with the title, The Why Behind Our Worship, right? Because we know that worship matters. And when we talk about liturgy and ordinances, we're really just getting one step back and saying, okay, why does the way that we worship hold significance? Theologically and practically, and so that's what kind of brought us to this class, the why behind our worship. And this week, specifically, we're focusing on the idea of liturgy or the order of service and why it matters. Next week, we're gonna look a little bit more at ordinances. So for us, that'll be baptism and the Lord's Supper. And then the last week, we actually have a couple of options. So as we kind of move through the class, we can talk about what we're gonna do that last week. We might look at my paper from my class last semester a little more closely, The Liturgy of the Body, examining implicit communication about embodiment and the body in aspects of liturgical theology in low church baptistic evangelical churches, which is like the longest name ever. So we might look at that like why do our bodies matter in worship? But I really would love to kind of listen to the feedback and the questions that come up in this class, and we might spend our last week just diving deeper into topics from the first two weeks. So we will find out together. But today we're talking about liturgy, the order of service, why it matters. Next week we'll talk about baptism and the Lord's Supper, and then we'll land the plane together in our final week. So I mentioned my class at Emmaus. Last fall I started a doctoral program at Emmaus Theological Seminary. It's right here in Cleveland. If you know Corey Wilson from City Church or Paul Morrison, they and some others are kind of the team behind that seminary and this degree program. It's a doctor of theology and ecclesial theology. So it's like a little bit less academic than a PhD, and it's focused on ecclesial theology, theology for the church. So one of the things that I'm experimenting with with you all is taking what I studied in a class at Emmaus for 16 weeks and condensing it into a Sunday sessions mini-series. So at the end of this, I'm gonna ask for your feedback on hey, that was interesting, or it really wasn't, that was way too long to be talking about those things, or that felt so short that it almost wasn't helpful. Because I'd love to continue doing this in the future as I keep taking classes. I'm doing it part-time, so it's gonna take me a skinny minute to get through. So this is something that we could do at CVC for a little bit with different classes. So you can help me decide if that is worth doing. So again, today we are looking at this idea of liturgy. And first I want to walk through the outline that you have on your handout. So today we're gonna talk about why understanding liturgy even matters. Why does understanding the order of service, the way that we worship, why does it matter to us? Next, we're gonna look at the idea that every church has a liturgy. Then we'll look at the idea that liturgy is shaped by both theological and practical considerations. So our theology and our practice shape the way that we worship. Um these are both really important, but they're not equally important, the practical and theological considerations. Finally, we'll look at what church history can teach us about liturgy, and this is where we just don't have the time to spend that we could in another world, right? So we're just gonna look at the liturgy of the early church and then some significant liturgical changes that happened during the Reformation. Because we're a Protestant church, we're a Baptistic church, and so the Reformation really opened the door to the developments that kept happening that shape a lot of the way we do things at CBC in ways we don't always think about. So we're gonna take a minute to look at that, and then we'll kind of close our time considering our liturgy today and taking some time as a class to look at, okay, what have we talked about today and how can we apply some of those ideas to even what we do here at CBC in the way that we can understand that. So let's get started. But first, let's pray. God, I thank you for this group. I thank you for this class, and I thank you for the opportunity to dive into some of these big ideas. Lord, uh, we know that we don't have to study these types of things to be saved by you. You invite us to invite you to be our forgiver and leader, and we just really need to understand the gospel to do that. But then you invite us to continue to grow in knowledge of and relationship with you throughout our lives. So, God, I thank you for Sunday sessions. I thank you for the people in this room and the opportunity we have to dive into some exciting topics today and over the next couple of weeks. We love you, Lord. May this time challenge and encourage us, and may it be a pleasing offering to you. In your name, amen. So we're gonna start by doing an exercise together, focusing on the idea of liturgy that's gonna help us this week and in the weeks to come. So on your handout, you'll see a couple rounds of reflection questions, and we're gonna take a moment now, or discussion questions really, to discuss these questions before we move forward. So, these first questions, um, when you think of the word liturgy, what are the first words, ideas, or pictures that come into your mind? So there's no wrong answer. Where do these initial ideas come from, do you think? Your past, something you've read, something you've experienced. And then finally, does the word liturgy connect in your mind to the ways that we worship on a Sunday morning at CBC? Why are we not? So you guys can take a couple minutes to discuss those things and then we'll process them as a class. So don't be afraid to turn to the people next to you, group up a little bit, um, and chat a little bit about these three questions. Thank you. Okay, we'll go ahead and come back together. I'd love to hear, I heard from like a couple people what you guys were talking about. Um so Cindy, what did you guys discuss? Or what were you thinking about? Yeah. How many of you guys have a Catholic background? So almost everybody. Well, I I raised my hand for you, but I didn't. And then Jan and Larry and so everybody else did. So yeah.

unknown 8:46

I don't think I had the question.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Oh, Catholic background? Partly? Okay. So yeah, that's certainly gonna shape the your understanding of the word liturgy. Like Claire and I were kind of talking about the ways that that is the case. Because our background, our experience, shapes our understanding of theology. We're even gonna look a little bit today about how practice shapes theology and the practices that we grow up with in the church, either from childhood or from the way that we came to know God initially or know about him. They shape our theology in ways that we see conscious ways and even in subconscious ways too, which is fascinating. So thank you guys for talking and discussing. We've talked about how our ideas are shaped by our experiences, our past, our preconceived notions of different types of worship or different groups of people, and it's really good and helpful for us to acknowledge our background noise as we start to examine the way that we worship here at CBC. Because just as these ideas of liturgy and ordinance, as we'll look at next week, have some connections already to ideas or experiences in our minds, it's the same with the way that we think about worship at CBC. We all have thoughts about what happens on a Sunday morning here. These thoughts may be, I'm so glad that we worship the way we do. Or we might think, I'm so glad we worship the right way at this church. Or I really like the music here. Or you might think, I wish we practiced the Lord's Supper more often. Why don't we do that? You might think, I'm so glad that we preach from the Bible. Or, I wish we read aloud more. Or, this is what I've heard, I wish our music was quieter. Or I wish our music was more traditional. You might think, I'm really glad CVC isn't like my old church. Or, I like CVC, but I wish some things in the service were more like my old church. Now, some of these thoughts, like I said, are conscious. Like you might walk in and be like, it's so loud, and consciously think that. But some might be subconscious. You might never have really reflected on them a lot. But the thing that all of these thoughts I just mentioned have in common is that they relate to our liturgy, our order of service. Merriam-Webster is a secular dictionary, and it is not always the first place I go for theological definitions or ideas, but their definition of liturgy is actually so broad that I think it's helpful today. So Merriam-Webster defines liturgy as a rite or body of rights prescribed for public worship, which that's pretty formal. But basically, liturgy is what we as a church choose to do when we worship together. What are the choices we make about the way that we worship? What are the choices we make about what we're not going to do in worship? What we as a church choose to do when we worship together. So that broad definition and these questions we talked about bring us to our second point for today, which is that every church has a liturgy. There's a writer named Justin Taylor, and he writes for the Gospel Coalition sometimes. And he wrote in a blog post for the Gospel Coalition, he said, to be sure, some may associate the idea of liturgy with high church formalism and rote tradition. So high church is like really, really formally liturgical, like the Catholic churches some of you guys came from. But in reality, every church has a liturgy. No matter how simple or complex, how short or long, each church's order of service expresses a set of theological values. That's really important. Each church's order of service expresses a set of theological values. And in turn, the literal the liturgy gradually inculcates, that means instills, these same values in the church's members. So Taylor, this is, it's kind of a complicated sounding set of sentences, but Taylor's basically saying, although we may think of a certain type of church service when we hear the word liturgy, this word can be applied to the order of service for any church. And as we're gonna continue to look at throughout this mini-series, the way that the church chooses to worship both reveals its values and teaches its values in a way that folds them into the life, expectations, and spiritual worship of each one of its members. I'm gonna read that one more time because we're gonna come back to this again. The way that the church chooses to worship reveals its values and teaches its values in a way that folds them into the life expectations and spiritual worship of each one of its members. So we're gonna come back to this, and this is why liturgy matters, right? Because it shows us, when we think about what we do at CVC, it shows us what matters to us as a church, and then it starts to teach people what matters. And so if we're not bringing our whole selves to the decision-making process, which I think CVC does responsibly, but but if we're not, that's a big deal for multiple reasons. Uh because what we do in our worship together shows us what matters and teaches us what matters. So for some of us, this word liturgy carries those traditional connotations. Some people attending CBC might even think, like, we don't do liturgy here. Like liturgy happens at churches that are a lot more formal than this. Because we may bring with us as we step into CBC and as we think about liturgy, experiences with traditions that explicitly and often use that word, right? We don't use that word here. You don't walk into CBC and hear someone be like, here's today's liturgy. Um but again, whether we use the word or not, every church has a form of liturgy. Because every church has a roadmap when it comes to the way that we worship corporately or when we worship as the church body as we gather on Sundays. When and how long are the announcements? How many songs do we sing before the sermon? How long is the sermon and what do we do if it goes too long, which sometimes we experience? How often do we practice communion? When do we sit and when do we stand up? What types of songs do we sing? How is prayer incorporated into the service? Where and when and how often do we practice baptism together? What type of materials, scripture, pop culture references, the book of common prayer, shape the way that we choose to worship? All of these are ultimately liturgical questions, even though some of them feel weightier than others, right? Like the question about announcements. It's like, does that really matter? But if we take, you know, 30 minutes for announcements, which we would never do, then we're narrowing our space to do everything else. So even things that don't seem super important go into this. And it's good for us to recognize this because it allows us to not only understand our own church a little better, but this understanding allows us to think about the why behind our worship. Why do we worship the way that we do here and not in a different way? How are we to hold and understand our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who worship in a way that's different than us? How are we to understand cultural differences and theological differences? And how are we to understand how those influences shape liturgy? How should we think about categories like choices in liturgy or order of service that can be flexible, things that are really aren't eternally significant, and choices that shouldn't change because of our beliefs in theology, right? Because some of these things are a matter of preference, they're important, but not as important as those matters of theology. Studying liturgy allows us to address and answer these important questions in others too. And that final question, that final thought, helps us keep in mind and brings us to this point that liturgy is going to be shaped by both theological and practical considerations, and they're both really important, but not equally so. Like I just mentioned, there are lots of different types of questions that make up the liturgy and can be involved in liturgical conversation. That is, that can be involved in how we talk about the what that goes into worship. And most of these are worth considering, but some of them are more important than others. For instance, the consideration, should we teach from the Bible? This is an important and baseline question, and all true and Orthodox Christian churches will say yes, right? Like Christian churches will teach from the Bible. But even if truly practicing Christian churches answer yes, it remains an important question, and it's a theological one, right? If you were to walk into a church that never opened the Bible, that would tell you something important about where you were. And a different type of question, though, might be: what type of worship music should our church gravitate toward? Traditional or contemporary? Now there's a theological component to this question that I'm gonna get to in a moment, but there's also a stylistic component. Assuming that the theology of our worship music is solid. So assuming the songs we sing say true things about God and allow us to learn about Him more and worship Him together rightly, that's the theological piece. So if though if the answer to that question is yes, then from there it doesn't matter theologically what style of worship music we decide to use. There are theologically robust old hymns. I grew up in a super traditional blue choir robe, uh Southern Baptist Church in South Carolina that only sang old hymns. It was a really big deal when we got screens because we used hymnals for so long. So, like that kind of gives you a picture of my church that I grew up in. But there are also theologically right and true contemporary Christian songs, like a lot of the songs we sing at CBC, right? Those are not mostly traditional old hymns, but they say true things about God and invite us to learn about Him together and worship Him together rightly. But if churches are not aware of and thinking of this difference, it's possible to get caught up in the stylistic and forget about the theology, right? So it's possible for people to become very concerned about the style of worship music or the lights on the stage. And it's not that these things don't matter, because they do. We want to do all things with excellence, but we can ask those questions and forget to be asking the more important question. Are these songs true and right? Are they biblical? Do they point us to Christ? Do they help us worship God as He truly is? And do they show us who we truly are? Sinful, redeemed in Christ, called to good works as a response to the gospel, but not as a way to save us. When we know what is theological and what is practical, we can make informed decisions about both. And this isn't in my notes, but I think honestly, this can be a type of spiritual warfare, right? If we're really focused completely on things that matter less and forget to think about things that matter more, not at CVC, but in general, right? If churches forget to be concerned about theology and get caught up in stylistic things, that can be a way of pulling them away from what matters most. So it's important to have these explicit conversations. Because when we know what's theological and what's practical, we can make informed decisions about both. And in our conversations, we can say, hey, this is the baseline, like this is what's most important, and we have to be in agreement here. But then we can actually change over time with some of these things. We're even better equipped to make changes in our churches because we aren't threatened by practical or stylistic changes, not threatened in a deep what is true sense, but we're also equipped to be unwavering about truly theological issues. So, for example, will CVC stop building our teaching on the Word of God? No, we're not gonna stop doing that. Will we maybe incorporate more hymns? Maybe. Are we gonna stop practicing the Lord's Supper together? No, we're never gonna stop doing that. Will we start using a digital worship guide instead of printing one each week? Yes, we already did that. With mixed reviews. Some people love it and some people are not fans. But these clear categories help us think deeply, rightly, and carefully about the things that matter and the things that matter most. Any questions before we keep going? We've kind of been laying a foundation for the rest of our time this morning. Great. If you have a question, you can like interrupt me. Yes. That is great. That's actually a great segue because we're gonna have a little discussion and then we're gonna look at we're gonna look at that. So thank you. That's a perfect question. So before we move on, I do want to continue to create space for you guys to process this with each other. Before we look at some church history and specifically how the early church uh organized its liturgy and some of those changes that happened in the Reformation. So take a minute to talk about these questions. Number one, what's something that's been interesting to you so far this morning? What, if anything, has been confusing or challenging? And then how has our conversation this morning changed the way you might explain the word liturgy to someone at CVC who asked you what that word meant or asked you, like, hey, do we have a liturgy at all? How would you answer them? So take a couple minutes and then we'll come back together again. All right, so what are some of the things you guys talked about? Um, Luke, what did your table talk about? Yeah. Yeah, Luke and I met in college where I was going to the church that I we're married, in case you didn't know that. Um we met in college and he started going to the church I grew up at. And so I feel like for you, a lot of a lot of your experience there was like wrestling with the really different worship style. Because like I mentioned, the church I grew up at, like blue choir robes, big choir, hymnal books, traditional Baptist hymns, and Luke grew up in like a pretty contemporary non-denominational Presbyterian context. So I feel like that was a little bit of a culture shock. Um and so you were parsing out like what is theological and what is stylistic or practical, and how do those things matter? Like we didn't have words to say that at that time, but that was what you were doing. Um, which, yeah, we all kind of go through that at some point. So thank you guys for continuing to discuss. I think talking about the things we're talking about, like you guys discussing them, is really what helps us remember things well. So that's why we do that. So let's jump back in. We spent the first part of this class kind of laying the groundwork. And now I want us to take a brief look at two distinct periods in church history that can teach us a lot and have also shaped the way that we think about not only the past, but also our present and the way we worship here at CBC today. So now we're gonna look at, okay, what can church history teach us about liturgy? Looking at the liturgy of the early church a little bit, and then liturgical changes during the Reformation. So church history can show us, in some cases, the liturgies of the past. One of the books I read for Emmaus last fall was just a book of different liturgies, and I have some of my books up here. So this book is just a book of different liturgies used through different time periods, written out with a short blurb written about each one and its author. So Liturgies of the Western Church. It's by Bard Thompson, and it looks at church orders of service. Uh so one of the ones it looks at is by Justin Martyr, who lived around 155 A.D., Hippolytus, a church leader around 200 A.D., jumping forward, Martin Luther, one of the reformers in 1523, John Calvin, another reformer, Protestant reformer around 1542, and then John Wesley, kind of the father of Methodism, around 1784 and more. So it just jumps around, it has translated into English, uh, examples of liturgies or what churches were doing, who wrote them, and then a little blurb about them. So it was a fascinating read. And when we're able to read actual liturgies, like when we can actually see, okay, what did Martin Luther's church or what did he say the church should do around this time, we get a clear picture of what really mattered to people in different churches, in different cultures, in different periods of church history. So was communion really central? Um, was singing a key part of what was going on? Was the preaching of the word of God really important? We get to see all of these things firsthand when we encounter written preserved liturgies. But this isn't always something that churches preserve really well. So can you think of the last time you hung on to a church bulletin, right? Like we don't always we don't always keep track of these things because in the moment it feels like we don't need to, and then we don't have them anymore. That that's changing in like the digital age. I do have a friend who has some like church bulletins from the 90s from CVC, and those are a lot of fun. Um, but like most people don't hang on to those. Uh even now, because everything's digital, like I'm sure they're somewhere, but I don't know where they go. You're right, like they just are some, hopefully we're saving them. I don't know. So we don't always have actual orders of worship or written liturgies to rely on. Think of how much more true this would be like 400, 500 years ago. Um, even if they saved them then, they might not have made it to us now. But we do have, in addition to like firsthand sources, writings about liturgies to help us too. Some of which are primary sources from throughout church history, and some of which are secondary sources written by historians studying those periods. And in my class, we kind of looked at both. Um, some of what we read was in the digital library, and some of it was, because some of it like it wouldn't, I wouldn't have bought it, it would be like hundreds of dollars for a book that I needed a chapter of. So we read them digitally, but some of them we bought. This is Ancient Christian Worship by Andrew McGowan. We read some other ones. I'm gonna leave these up here so you can take a look at them. And while there's so much we could focus on as we talk about history, like I said, we're just looking at two time periods today. And first, we're talking about the liturgy of the early church. So when we think about the order of service in the early church, I think sometimes we can look back and think to ourselves, like, that must have been perfect. They must have had no disagreements, they must have really known what to do, because the apostles spent so much time with Jesus and then it rolled into early churches. Like, how could they have made mistakes or had disagreements? And there are like a couple ways in which I think we see this as true. So in developing the first churches, the apostles and those after them, they did not, like we do, have to wade through 2,000 years of church history to decide what is right in worship, right? Like they didn't have that in the same sense. They did have the words of Jesus echoing in their minds, make disciples, baptize them, teach them, that we have in Matthew 28. And I think those conversations being so recent did help them. But even back then, God and his sovereignty allowed for discussion, disagreement, and creativity in his church right from the beginning. Right? And, you know, the more you study scripture in church history, you see some of these disagreements, some of these ways that people were not always agreeing. In many ways, the early church was very sure of that mission, right? They knew that they were to go to make disciples, baptizing and teaching them. But they were left with the task of figuring out okay, how do we help people know how to do this who come from a Jewish background, right? Who've grown up in the temple? What can we learn from Jewish worship and what can we bring with us from Jewish worship as we consider what this new type of church should look like and be in some of those practical considerations? And on the flip side, from those coming to the church, coming to invite Jesus to be their forgiver and leader from a pagan religion or from Roman or Greek culture, what did it look like to develop church in a way that made sense to those people? Even Jesus himself, during his life, we see reaching into people's lives in ways that made sense to them, right? Jesus shared agrarian stories that touched on aspects of life in rural Palestinian society because he knew those would resonate with people. He hosted suppers for his disciples that in some ways looked like regular suppers people might have had on special occasions during that time period. He dined with people in their homes as a way to step into their culture and lives and share the good news with them. And so, in many ways, the early church continued this work that Jesus started, blending together some aspects of temple worship at first with elements of Jewish worship, along with some elements of what Jesus had done with his disciples. Teaching in the synagogue, Jesus did that, but also sharing with them in small groups over supper everywhere he went. And the early church leaned on some elements of Greek and Roman symposiums, blending together breaking bread with study and discussion about important topics, where there was teaching, and different people could share various relevant things that were put on their hearts and minds by the Holy Spirit. And so, even in the development of the early church, we can see that the church was already wrestling with some of the elements we have to think about today. And this is also stuff that you start to talk about if you look at missions work, right? Like this is what missionaries are still thinking through today. We come now from a culture where Christianity, we have a script for it, right? Like even if you encountered someone on the street and you were like, what do Christians do? They'd probably be able to be like, uh, they celebrate Christmas, like they sit in pews. You know, like we have like thoughts about like what Christians do. They come, they're really like they really like the Bible, you know, people would have that. But when you go into unchurched areas, you're faced with the challenge of saying, okay, I know the truth of who God is. I understand the Bible, I want these people to know Jesus, but how can I start talking about these things in a way that makes sense to them? So we rely on the Holy Spirit, but then also a lot of times there are things in culture we can use, like Jesus did when he said, Okay, I have these parables, I'm gonna speak in language that people here understand. Um, Jesus didn't come to the agrarian Palestinian society and say, okay, so when you get on a train, you know, like that wouldn't make sense. Um, and that's obvious, that's an obvious example. Um, but the early church was wrestling with some of these things too. They really clearly understood what could not change, right? The mission, the story about who Jesus was, the truth of the gospel that was gonna save people's lives. Like that was clear. But then the details of some of how like how is church gonna happen? Jesus didn't leave and say, okay, here's the liturgy for the first service. Copy this one, right? Like, in some ways, probably the leaders in the early church would have really liked that. Like, we would like that, you know? Like, I just want to know, God just tell me exactly what we should do. God allows for creativity in these things and discussion, and in some way he's glorified when we're able to collaborate in these things. So that was kind of an aside. Uh, this isn't to say that the core activities of the church were built around practical or cultural considerations, right? That was not the foundation. Looking at early church gatherings, we can even see in Acts 2.42, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Teaching, prayers, fellowship, bread breaking, these things shaped the early church. We see throughout Acts and the New Testament epistles that in the early church, in Scripture, there was space made and held for teaching from elders, for prayer, for singing, and for testimonies to be shared about God's goodness. As we're going to look at a little bit more next week, Jesus did command that the Lord's Supper occur, as Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 11, and the baptism of new believers to take place, as we see in Matthew 28 and elsewhere for both, after his resurrection and ascension. And these practices continued in early churches and on into history, right? Christian churches kept baptizing, they kept practicing communion. And teaching about Jesus, teaching from the Old Testament, and eventually, once it was written, the New Testament, continued to be extremely important too. That kept being the case. But decisions made surrounding the ways in which these practices were practically fleshed out were, from the beginning, influenced by culture and custom of the surrounding society. Which is good news for us today, as our liturgies today continue to be founded on scripture and on the practices given to us by Jesus, but also influenced by the reality of living in our world today. So today at CVC, people who are homebound might worship online, right? That was not happening in Jesus' day. Obvious example. We see the lyrics to the songs that we sing as they're shown to us on screens. We typically listen to preaching that goes about 30 to 35 minutes, depending on the day. And there are lots of considerations that go into that, but one of the considerations is like how long a person today can realistically listen to something. So if you went to John Chrysostom's church, he was an early church father, he lived a long time ago. You might have had to stand depending on your health. He has this whole writing where he's like, if you're healthy, you stand over here, if you're a man, you stand over here, if you're a woman, you stand over here. If you're not healthy, you can sit. But like it doesn't sound like he loves that. And then you might have to listen to a sermon that lasted for an hour or more while you were standing. And that was just normal. And people went, right? Like now when I think about that, I'm like, I can't fathom people being like, I want to stand for an hour and listen to John Chrysostom talk to me. Um, and all of these are practical considerations more than theological ones, right? Like, it would it be good for me to stand and listen to the preached word of God for an hour and a half every week? Probably, it would be good for my soul. Are people gonna do it? Probably not. So, like, we're blending the theological that does not change with the practical, uh, just like these people were. But as we make these decisions, we're in good company because the church has been faced like with decisions like these since its inception. And that's just one small thing we can learn about liturgy from looking at the early church. We can be reminded that in the essentials we must never change. We're doing the same thing now that churches were doing back then. We must always preach and teach about Jesus, grounded in Scripture. We must always pray. We must create space for worship and fellowship and study, and we must always be taking the Lord's Supper and baptizing new believers. These are not negotiables for us. But we have room for charity for ourselves and other brothers and sisters around the world in some of the details of liturgy, of the order of service. Some may use hymnals and use old hymns, some may use screens and use modern songs, some may use their phones or their memories, some may sit in pews, some may sit in chairs, some may sit outside on the ground. Some may look at a Bible in a book, some may use a phone, and some may know it by heart. Some people may not have a copy at all, some may not know how to read. But when the essentials are found, we can be called the church and we can worship the God who calls people to himself, both in the days of the early church and now. So that allows us to think about just one small piece of the liturgy in the early church. But I also want us to take a little bit of time to think about liturgical changes during the Reformation. Now, to talk about the Reformation necessarily opens up conversation about a lot of other things, right? But to keep it brief, suffice it to say that in the years between the early church and the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, as Protestants understand it, in the years between those things, the Roman Catholic Church in the West became more and more bogged down by allegiance to things other than the essentials of the gospel. So if you talk to a Catholic, they wouldn't say that. But generally speaking, that's what Protestants say, okay? Like the church was getting bogged down by these things that weren't the essentials. Some of these things today we would say were outright sinful and wrong. So indulgences, for example, whereby the Roman Catholic Church raised money for itself by telling people they could pay the church money to be forgiven of sins. Not good. But some of these things were not so much sinful as they were perhaps not the best use of time, such as really strict rules about what priests should wear and why and when, right? Like not necessarily sinful, but maybe not the best use of time. Or really strict rules about when to sit and stand, just a lot of rules that weren't on the essentials. And so some men that we now call the Protestant reformers, so Martin Luther and John Calvin are two well-known ones, but there were a lot. In the 1500s, they were saying, hey, this isn't right. The church is doing what it shouldn't be doing, and it's not doing what it should be doing. The people don't understand the Latin that's used in most of the church services. They can't understand it. And they don't understand that saving faith and forgiveness come through Christ alone and not through priests or confession or indulgences. And so these reformers set out to change lots about the way the church was being done. But one of the things they set out to change that was really practical was the order of service in the church or the liturgy. And I don't think until I read this book that I really understood how much that was a part of some of what they were doing. That a lot of these reformers spent time both thinking about, okay, what should go in the order of service in churches and what shouldn't, and then seeking to implement that in different churches under their leadership and influence. And you can see some of that in this book and elsewhere. At first, Martin Luther, this is true for John Calvin too, and many of the early reformers, at first they were just writing and teaching about things they felt needed to change, right? Like that was what they were able to do. They wrote. But as their ideas and teachings gained ground and in some cases gained political backing from princes and other important people, these reformers came to be able to shape the liturgy of the church too. So it went from theoretical to practical for them. Because one of the interesting things to me about the Reformation that seems odd to us today is that nobody in the 1500s was really promoting religious liberty as we understand it. So Luther was saying the current state church is wrong. Like the church that the government is upholding is wrong. So we need to have a new one that does things better that the government is still in charge of, which to us, it's like we're so steeped in religious liberty that we're like, why wouldn't you just have a church that isn't run by the government or with the government? But they didn't even have a concept for that yet. And Calvin at one time was basically running the city of Geneva exactly as he wanted it to be run. He was kind of a little bit in charge of everything, which is like crazy that a church reformer was like just running the city. And he was even involved in killing a couple of heretics who wanted to worship and live differently and stopped in his town, which is like a little bit of a dicey part of his history. So if you were in my church history class in Sunday sessions, you did hear some of this. But one thing the reformers understood very rightly was that the way people worshiped and what they understood about worship in the church would shape their faith in meaningful and important ways. So for Luther and Calvin and later reformers like Ulrich Zwingli and others, many of the other reformers who basically began Protestantism, it was extremely important that people knew what was going on in church. That they came and they knew what they were doing and they knew why they were doing it. Because when the church was not spoken in the common language, like when preaching was happening in Latin and most people didn't speak it, one of the problems was that people didn't know what was happening in the order of service at all. And so the reformers, one of the things they wanted to change was they said, people need to come to church and know what's going on. Because they need to understand the gospel in order to accept it. And they need to know why we're doing the things that we're doing, because if they don't, they're not going to be able to know Jesus in a saving way. If they come and they hear things they don't understand and they leave and they do that every week, we're doing something we shouldn't be doing, but we're also losing something we should be doing that we find in the pages of Scripture. Scripture should be read in the common tongue, whether German or French or English or something else. The reformers, many of them believed sermons should be happening and lengthened and preached in a way that people could hear and understand and apply them. Communion should be simple, and the rules about who can take it and who cannot should be clear. Baptism, whatever form espoused, whether by immersion of adults or some kind of infant baptism, because not all the reformers agreed on that, but it should be taught about and understood too. There should be a robust and intentionally taught theology of baptism and other things. The common thread here is that the reformers believed that the church was a place of worship, yes, but that people had to understand in order to worship rightly. And so they built these liturgies, these orders of service that helped people understand. Some of them took iconography out of churches. So some of the reformers removed all religious art because they thought, like, that's too distracting. People might start worshiping the pictures, and like we just want them to know that they need to worship God. They said it was distracting and potentially idolatrous. Ulrich Zwingli, one of the reformers that came after Luther and Calvin, he actually recommended practicing the Lord's Supper less often in the church because he said we're doing it every week, and people think that it's saving them, and it's not. It's a picture of what Christ has done, but we don't want them to equate it with their salvation. So that was a consideration of his. The reformers felt clear about what should and shouldn't happen in the church, and many of them risked their lives for this, which is also hard for us to really wrap our heads around today, because we don't have to. But they risked their lives so that people would be able to understand how to know and follow Jesus in CVC language, that they would understand how to invite Jesus to be their forgiver and leader. I get excited because you start to see the thread, right, between what they were doing and what we still get to do today, in part because of their work. So to put it broadly, the Reformation can teach us that the decisions that we make about how we worship and how we teach about worship are incredibly important. Because as I mentioned earlier, and as we looked at in the Justin Taylor quote, worshiping in the church allows us to worship God and also teaches us how we should worship Him too. So we shape our liturgies and then they shape us. So this is something that should be done intentionally, and we see that the reformers felt that way too. Like I said with the liturgy of the early church, we're in good company when we want to intentionally teach about liturgy and when we want to be intentional about what the order of the service is. So that's something that does happen really intentionally here at CVC. I think that's another piece that when you go to a church, you might not see all of that work, right? Because it's work that happens during the week as we think about that a lot of different people are involved in, right? I get to sit on the teaching team meeting every week where we talk about the sermon and we have a team of staff members that look at the passage for the week and then discuss it and help the preaching pastor wrestle with any questions he has. That's that's a team of us. I'm not on this team, but there's another team that thinks specifically about the order of the service, okay? How are the songs that we're singing preparing our hearts for the scripture we're gonna be reading together? How do the songs we sing at the end? End of our time together, allow us to respond to what we heard in the sermon and what we saw in God's Word together. What other elements are we bringing into the service? And what are we deciding not to do anymore? Because we want to create space and have enough time for the things that matter most. So I want to encourage you today that these conversations are happening here. But if you have questions about the way that we do things, or if this class kind of stirs up more questions, like we're all better when we lean in together, right? And when we are all thinking about the way that we worship. So I want to encourage you. I really hope that this class can kind of be a launch point for continued discussion and study, because there's no way we can say all that could be said in three weeks. But hopefully we open the door to some new ways of thinking and some new ways to continue to learn together. So we are going to have a little bit of time. I have a last discussion question. What's something that stood out to you or challenged you today and why? But we're actually just going to do that as a whole class. So I'm going to pray for us and then we're going to have a little bit of time to discuss and then we'll be done. God, thank you for this time. And I just thank you for your word, first of all, because how incredible that we have scripture that you have given us so that we can rest in the essentials, so that we can rightly understand how to know you and walk with you. And Lord, I thank you too for the gift of your church. You told your people to gather together to do these things. And Lord, it's still happening. How incredible. That we can look back at 2,000 years of church history and see the ways that you have been faithful. Lord, I ask that CBC will continue to be a place that is unapologetic about the essentials, where we teach Scripture rightly, where we share the gospel fully, where we help people worship you. And Lord, I pray that you will allow us to have wisdom in the other considerations that go into our liturgy. That you will guide and shape the conversations we have and the choices we make, that we might worship you and help others do the same. We love you, Lord. In your name. Amen. So I'm gonna leave these books up here, too, if you want to come look. Some other books are The God We Worship by Nicholas Waltersdorf. It's an exploration of liturgical theology. It is kind of a bear, but it's really interesting. Desiring the Kingdom. It's part of a cultural liturgies trilogy by James K.A. Smith. And then finally, this is like to preview next week. This is Baptism in the Early Church, History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries. One guy named Everett Ferguson wrote this and he did all the translation work himself, which is incredibly intimidating to me. So he like writes at the beginning, like, basically, like if you think if these translations look different than some you've encountered, it's because I did them all. And I'm like, oh my goodness, what a power move! Like to just be like I translated all the Greek and Hebrew in this whole book, mostly Greek. So any questions? Does anybody have any questions about anything we've talked about today or where we're going? Yeah, that's that's what I'm hoping, Jan, is that like this can just be something where it's kind of like the door's been opened and you're gonna start seeing it everywhere you look, which is exciting. So thanks. Any other thoughts or questions?

SPEAKER_02 47:25

This is good.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

Thanks. Thanks for being here. Yeah, I'm excited. We're gonna keep diving in. And eventually, I'm behind on the podcast, but it will be on the podcast so you can share it with other people. Thank you guys so much for your time. I'm gonna round up a couple more people. We do need to flip this room for collide, so if you're able to stay and help with that next week, we don't need this many tables, so there will be less work for us to do next week. I'll probably have them put chairs there for collide. Anyway, I'll be right back, but if you're able to stay and help with that, that'd be great. If not, I understand that too. I know some of you guys serve different places. Thank you so much.