I began falling in love with liturgy when I was about 17. I was taking my first biblical Greek courses in a private school setting where no one was qualified to teach Greek. In fact, no one did teach Greek, and the curriculum I was using was meant to be self-taught. My teacher, who was ethnically Greek, mentioned I should go to the local Greek Orthodox church and ask the priest to help me. I didn’t do that, but I was introduced to a church about which I knew nothing. I grew up Pentecostal, in the Assemblies of God denomination. We had a short stint in a charismatic, non-denominational church, but from the time I was about 8 until the year after I graduated (2004), I attended an AoG church. My maternal great-grandfather had helped establish the first and only Spanish speaking church in my home town, El Templo del Buen Pastor, or as it was known around town, Good Shepherd. From my great-grandfather, to my grandmother, then my mother was the single line of non-Catholics in our family. My mom’s dad and my dad’s mom and step-father were all Roman Catholic.1
At some point in my Dad’s life, when he was in high school, my dad knew he wasn’t Catholic. He didn’t really start following Jesus until I was in grade school and, as with many Mexicans who leave Catholicism for an Evangelical church, he came to regard the Roman Catholic church, not just as a misinformed or even wayward church, but as an apostate church from which would come the antichrist. In my earliest years, I thought Catholics were bound for hell and in need of salvation. The day my teacher encouraged me to go to the Greek Orthodox church for tutoring, she also told me her father was still Orthodox, that Orthodoxy was much like Catholicism, and that she believed people in those churches could actually be saved. That was because, as our Reformation-descended faith had taught us, salvation was by grace through faith, and not of works. Therefore, though there were things that Catholics and Orthodox believed which were wrong, if they had faith in Jesus, they were saved, they were our Christian brothers and sisters. I didn’t know it then, but that idea would revolutionize the way I understood Christianity, faith, prayer, worship, and my ways of knowing and being.
It was a canon event for me.
Fast forward a couple years, I had moved to Kansas City to attend a biblical studies program. The program, though not Catholic, used a lot of Catholic material in their prayer and devotional practices. I read St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Benedict, the Catholic monk Thomas Dubay, among many others. During my first year, I visited Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in south Kansas City. What was I? I was enraptured. I was enamored. I was mystified. I experienced something there that I had quite literally never experienced before and I wanted to keep it as part of my church experience. Since that time I have visited all kinds of liturgical churches, Byzantine Catholic, Roman Catholic, Serbian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, American Orthodox (the OCA is a descendant of the Russian Orthodox Church), Coptic (Egyptian) Orthodox, Lutheran, and Episcopalian/Anglican churches.
I became hooked, but not like an addict to their drug of choice, but like someone who never had access to clean water being brought to a living spring. I still feel that way. There are times when I miss the soaring music and passionate displays of worship and devotion or the spontaneity of following the Spirit in worship, prayer, or both. I grew up Pentecostal and that will always be my roots, it runs in my DNA, and I could never be anything other than “charismatic.” And yet, something about my disposition was already pointing me toward liturgical worship. Even as a child, I was drawn to cathedrals, chanting, candle lit prayer, and the mysterious. My parents have been uncomfortable at different levels at different times with my ecclesial journey, but they should have known when Hunchback of Notre Dame become my favorite Disney movie.
Becoming Anglican
There’s a lot of experiences and history between my first visit to Annunciation and Katrina and I attending St. Aidan’s Anglican Church, a history I would love to get into sometime, but not now. This includes going to another KC Anglican church and St. Aidan’s for a stint. We were working for a program affiliated with another church which eventually asked us to be part of their congregation in order to remain part of the program. What I found at St. Aidan’s was a mix of elements from the different traditions I had encountered over the years. This, I learned, was actually part of the genius of Anglicanism, and its sometime downfall.
Anglicanism is self-described as a via media, Latin for “middle way.” Originally, this was a description of their middle rode between European Protestantism (defined largely by the teachings of Luther and Calvin) and Roman Catholicism. There was a long and often violent process involved in this, but Anglicanism, rooted in England, sought an ecclesial form that maintained a deep and obvious connection with historic Christianity but was theologically2 Protestant. Since then, the via media has come to be the middle place between several points. Anglicanism, at least the branch to which I belong, seeks to honor what God has done in faithful branches of the church throughout the centuries, including where the Spirit has been at work in more recent decades. The late Thomas McKenzie describes the “Anglican Way”3 as a compass that is navigating its way to the Kingdom of God by keeping a faithful adherence and balance between the Evangelical and the Catholic,4 Charismatic and Orthodox, activist and contemplative, liberal and conservative, all while being missional. I might add one more pair, Scriptural and Traditional. I won’t go into everything a description of all these points, but if this interests you, I highly recommend his book, The Anglican Way.
As I’ve worshiped in liturgical churches throughout the years, I have read quite a lot on the logic behind liturgy and ritual. What I didn’t understand about it before my exposure and study, and what I think most Evangelicals (including Pentecostals and Charismatics) are missing, are why tradition and ritual are important to formation. Another way to say this would be that ritual and tradition are important to discipleship. James K. A. Smith, in his book Desiring the Kingdom, argues that human beings are “liturgical animals because we are fundamentally desiring creatures.” We are loving animals, and we learn to love through habitual, or to say it in religious language, ritual and liturgical practices. Because humans are bodied creatures, we learn about life and learn how to live through embodied practices, and the practices that are going to stay with us are the ones that we do ritualistically.5
What liturgical churches do is engulf us in ritual practices, at the very least on Sundays, but ideally throughout the week, that shape us into the kind of people who love the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They also teach us to love our neighbors by baptizing us in a service that is oriented toward a communal worship of the Triune God, culminating in the Eucharist, in Communion, so that our salvation through the body of Jesus remains the pinnacle of the worship experience. These weekly and daily liturgies help us remember who we are and to whom we belong. They include daily prayers and Scripture readings. That is precisely what I need. It’s not that this doesn’t exist in other, non-liturgical churches. Ever since I was a child in a Pentecostal church I was encouraged to have a daily “quiet time” where I prayed and read Scripture, but for me, without the structure, it was pretty hit or miss, and mostly miss. Maybe it’s my personality, but having a predictable liturgy, both daily and weekly, helps me connect with the Holy Spirit.
That is precisely why I chose to go to an Anglican church, and St. Aidan’s more specifically. What I found at St. Aidan’s was a group of people who loved Jesus and honestly desired to follow him. I know there are people who left because there were things they couldn’t jive with, and I’ve had my share of concerns in the last year, but overall, I cannot deny the sincerity of the people there. A common critique, and a valid one I must confess, is that liturgical churches are given to empty ritual, a feeling of contentment in having performed the rituals without having a vibrant relationship with Jesus, but this is not what I encounter at St. Aidan’s.6 “Vibrant” is exactly the kind of word I would use to describe the love I feel there, both for Jesus and for the people who come into the church. That love, in turn, is directed by the liturgy and its rituals appropriately.
Pentecostal and other Evangelical churches are prone to cults of personality. The climax of most Protestant and Evangelical churches is the teaching portion of the service, and that is because “the word,” Scripture, became the focal point during and after the Reformation. What this does, and I know I’m being a little unfair because human complexity is a thing, is open the door wide to cults of personality. If you’re a gifted speaker (whether in preaching or prophecy), your word can tend to become the focal point of the service. Now, I don’t know many Evangelicals, Pentecostals, or Charismatics who would outright say that, but the skeleton of liturgy remains because we a “liturgical animals,” and something is going to take it’s place as the climax of a worship service. Other Protestant denominations are more open and honest about the Preaching-of-the-Word as sacrament. Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed (Calvinist) theologian, made this argument in his Church Dogmatics I/1. Particularly in Charismatic circles, this emphasis has moved from preaching to worship leading, wherein music and musical performance has become the climax of the service. Whether preaching or singing are the “main event,” the issue is still that the high point of the service is attached to a human voice. There are good theological and anthropological reasons to have excellent music, singing, teaching, and preaching, but there’s an advantage liturgical traditions have over (so-called) non-liturgical churches.
In contrast to this, the pinnacle of the Anglican service is the Eucharist, where, according to ACNA’s7 catechism, To Be a Christian, “the Body and Blood of Christ” are “truly taken and received in the Lord’s Supper by faith.”8 This is one of the biggest draws I have to this tradition. The worship service is not about how good the music is nor how skilled the preacher is,9 because the whole service is oriented toward this encounter with the risen Lord in the signification of his Body and Blood. The point of the service is this moment where the whole meaning of our faith, from the Tree of Life in Genesis to the wedding banquet in Revelation, all meet as we share the Lord’s Supper as the children of God the Father, the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, in a unity created by the Holy Spirit. I like good music and, especially as a theologian in my own right, I love good teaching, but I don’t go to Sunday service for either of those. I go because the whole service is a movement of worship that climaxes with the union of heaven and earth, the divine and human, are recapitulated in the elements of bread and wine.
Scriptural Liturgy & the Book of Common Prayer
I became Anglican10 because of their liturgical methodology. Somehow, those stuffy Brits saw the importance of maintaining an embodied, acted worship. Don’t get me wrong, because church and state walked hand in hand in Reformation England, many decisions were made with political consequences in mind, but there were also theologians doing good work to create what has been called a “Reformed Catholic tradition.”11 This is demonstrated clearly in the most distinctive aspect of Anglicanism, the Book of Common Prayer.
The Book of Common Prayer, or as it’s often colloquially referred to, the Prayer Book, has quite the history that is about as tumultuous as the history of the English (Anglican) church. For now, just know that the first Book of Common Prayer was formed by England’s first Protestant Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer in 1549. In the spirit of the ever-growing Reformation, the Prayer Book was in the English language (instead of Latin like previous Roman Catholic prayer books had been) and it contained liturgies for morning and evening prayers and for Communion, as well as services for other occasion. Also in the Reformation spirit, the Book of Common Prayer is unbelievably Scriptural. This isn’t to say that the liturgies of other traditions are not, but one of Cranmer’s specific goals was to “purge away from worship all that was ‘contrary to Holy Scripture or to the ordering of the Primitive Church.’”12
The Book of Common Prayer is about worship. It’s purpose is to facilitate the daily worship of the Triune God for the community of God in a way that is beautiful, simple, Scriptural, in continuity with ancient church practices, embodied, and available to all, from the “least of these” to the greatest. The liturgy, from the first words spoken, “Blessed be God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” to the last, “Thanks be to God. Alleluia. Alleluia,” is one continuous act of prayer and worship. The services I knew from my days in Pentecostal and non-denominational churches were a conglomeration of pieces stitched together but without continuity. The simplicity, beauty, and continuity of the Anglican liturgy are undeniable. Personally, I find the liturgies of the eastern churches more beautiful, but theology shapes liturgy (and vice versa), and at this stage I cannot jump on board with some Orthodox theology and practice.
Returning to the topic of liturgy and ritual, and human beings as “liturgical animals,” I want to say with conviction, I think using liturgy and ritual in worship is not just good or okay, but true. I say “true” instead of “right” because this isn’t about doing worship “correctly,” it’s about doing it in a way that resonates with the way that God created us and the world, which is rhythmic, cyclical, bodied, and holy. As I said, there are things I miss from my Pentecostal and Charismatic days, but I can’t imagine a world in which I go back to that tradition. Liturgy has changed me, it has shaped and formed me, just like it supposed to, and I can never abandon liturgy.
Finally, and I’ve hinted at this with my comments on Orthodoxy, but I chose the Anglican church because of theology. Yet, I have more in common with Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox churches than not. When I say theology, I’m thinking of the secularizing trends within much of mainline Protestantism and some Evangelical churches. I don’t remember how I found St. Aidan’s, all those years ago, but, in part, I stay because they belong to a Province (branch) of the Anglican tradition that still maintains the supremacy and authority of Scripture, the literal resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and the uniqueness and exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the way of salvation. For all its issues (and I have plenty of issues with it), I am content in the Anglican Church in North America. You will not find, as you might at an Episcopalian church (also Anglican), prayers to foreign gods or elements of Wicca, a mocking of Scripture, a denial of Scripture’s authority, or any number of weird and wild things Episcopalians do. I think theology is important, and good theology is important, and faithful theology is most important. I wouldn’t necessarily identify myself as “theologically liberal,” though I can lean that way at times, but sometimes I truly question whether or not I am conservative enough for the ACNA, especially our diocese (region in the care of a bishop), but I am content for now.
Blessed Michael
Above, I’ve talked about a few, very broad reasons I have chosen to be Anglican. There’s a lot of work in front of me and I don’t know that I’ll every be fully settled. There are issues of race, patriarchy, and white supremacy that I would like to see seriously dealt with, and by “seriously” I mean that the issues be taken seriously and addressed seriously. But there is one more reason we ended up at St. Aidan’s verses the other ACNA church in our area, and that reason is the priest and rector (Anglican for “head pastor”) at St. Aidan’s, Father Michael.
Father (abbreviated as Fr.) Michael and I developed a sort of friendship several years ago when I first became interested in Anglicanism. We met for coffee a few times and talked theology, liturgy, Eucharist, and ordination. I disappeared from the church without saying anything, but a few weeks later, I explained why I had started going to a different church. We didn’t talk much, maybe at all, after that except the few times I visited St. Aidan’s. Every time I was there, though, he received me warmly.
It was over the course of many months through 2022 that Fr. Michael was there for me, and this while I wasn’t going to his church! For those who’ve been following this Substack for a while, you’ll remember a post I wrote about leaving my last church. During that whole process, I spoke often with Fr. Michael who helped me sort through all the things I was experiencing. When I had no pastor, literally no pastor, Fr. Michael was there for me. Without ever pressuring me to leave and come to St. Aidan’s he was there for me to talk to and pray with, and we did! Even when it came down to the point where I was sure I was going to leave, he never pressured me to come to St. Aidan’s. He wanted what the Holy Spirit wanted for me. He opened the doors to himself and, by doing so, opened the doors to St Aidan’s. When I had no church home, St. Aidan’s was there to receive Katrina and I. When we finally started going, Fr. Michael and his wife did not hide their excitement at the prospect of us in leadership, but when we said no, there was no pressure for us to do something for which we were not ready.
Fr. Michael has been a true friend and a true pastor, humble enough to hear me, bold enough to speak, and kind enough to help me follow the leading of the Spirit. I will be forever grateful for his ministry and the way he has shepherded me and St. Aidan’s.
I learned, just after he died, that my grandfather, my dad’s step-dad, was not, in fact, Catholic, but Baptist! He went to Mass with my grandma all the time and never talked, at least with me, about his own religious background, so I was none the wiser.
This isn’t quite an accurate division because theology explicitly affects liturgical form and ecclesiology (church form/government).
This is also the name of his book, The Anglican Way, published by Colony Catherine Inc. in 2014.
Big “C” on purpose!
Desiring the Kingdom is a philosophical, anthropological, academic text. If that’s not the kind of reading you like or appreciate, he has a “layman’s” version called You Are What You Love which is also quite wonderful.
I must be fair to the other Anglican church I attended for a few months some years ago in the Kansas City area, Christ Church Anglican, where I found an equally loving people, both of Jesus and people.
The province to which I belong.
To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 58.
Don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying these are not important, only that they’re not the “point” of the service.
This is a little loose of a definition of Anglican. I have yet to be confirmed, but I consider St. Aidan’s my home church and I am actively pursuing an Anglican life.
You can read many articles, like this one, about the “Reformed Catholic” idea on the Anglican Compass website.
Book of Common Prayer (Huntington Beach, CA: Anglican Liturgy Press, 2019), 2-3.
I love your thoughts, journey, and process. I am reminded of the formation of a child is through repetition… and how true is it for us as well!
On a personal note, I love the community/group of churches I am called to, but there are so many things I would elevate and others I would make smaller or less. My head and heart feel at ease in different expressions than the one I find myself in (not entirely, but in some thing). And then I think through how it all translates to an African context - and our community which is often lacking education, language, etc. What a journey!
I will be excited to see how Jesus facilitates worship, teaching, etc. That will be such a joy!
Thanks for provoking thought. It’s always a highlight to read.