So, I Met Some Anglicans
Last week I was sitting in a local coffee shop, as pastors do, and I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of two guys sitting next to me. I could tell that they too were “professional” Christians. Once I saw that their conversation was wrapping up I went over and introduced myself. It turns out they were Anglicans! When I found this out my eyes lit up with joy. Weird, I know.
I have always been intrigued by the Anglican tradition for a few reasons. Tanya and I love all things British. Tom Wright, a theologian who has deeply impacted my theological journey, is an Anglican. And many of the worship leaders who were influential in my early days of leading worship were Anglican as well. I know that most of you reading or listening to this probably don’t know much about or care to invest your precious time into what Anglicanism is. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the details here.
When Tanya and I spent some time in the U.K. we went to a few different Anglican services and I really enjoyed the experiences. I have always wanted to attend an Anglican service here but I work on Sundays so that makes it difficult. Lucky for me my two new friends invited me to a Tuesday Morning Prayer service. I gladly accepted their invitation and attended the service on Tuesday morning. If I am honest I have to admit that the service was the most ordinary, simple, and slightly boring worship experience I have had in a long time… and you know what? I loved it. My soul soaked it in.
The Anglican tradition has lots of smells and bells just like my church tradition does. What I experienced wasn’t very different from many Lutheran church services. Things like robes, lots of kneeling and standing, responsive readings, and a short simple sermon made up the half-hour we gathered together. None of what I participated in was new, yet how I experienced God in this setting was completely new.
As I have been exploring this idea of God showing up in the ordinary parts of our lives I couldn’t help but be struck by the ordinariness of this prayer service. So many of the things the modern church relies on to create an experience each week were absent from this service. There was no band. There were no screens. There were no flashing lights. There was no charismatic communicator. There were about 15-20 people gathered in an older beautiful building sitting on hard wooden pews reading out loud together from an old book. There was nothing cool or hip about it. It was the opposite of cool and hip. Maybe that’s why I found it so refreshing. It wasn’t trying to look like the world. It wasn’t trying to be attractive. It simply was what it was. It was steeped in tradition. Tradition is often a dirty word in our culture, but in that moment tradition was a beautiful thing. It had a rootedness to it. It had a simplicity to it.
I have to admit that I was lost for most of the service because I was busy flipping through the prayer book just trying to keep up. But I could see how going through the same liturgy week after week, month after month, year after year over a lifetime could begin to form a person in ways that he or she may not even be aware of. There is something beautiful found in the ordinary and mundane if we are willing to look for it.
I am still trying to find the words to express why I was so impacted by this service. Honestly, I don’t think I would prefer to worship like this every week. I am also not by any means knocking any tradition that uses lights and a band and a charismatic communicator. Heck, my world is closer to those things than to what I experienced on Tuesaday.
But in a world that is always looking for the next new shiny thing, I often wonder if the church, God’s people, have fallen prey to the patterns of the world. Maybe we don’t need to be chasing the next worship hit, or the latest piece of technology hoping that those things will make God more tangible. Maybe all we need to do is slow down and ask God to awaken our hearts, minds, and bodies to what he is already doing in our everyday ordinary lives.
So, as we head into the home stretch before Christmas may we all take a few moments each day to slow down, take a few deep breathes, and ask the Holy Ghost to show us where he is moving in our lives at that moment.
Grace and peace ‘til we rise in glory.
P.S. This will be my last post for 2021. I’ll be back with a new post in the first week of 2022!
