Several years ago, at the beginning of my seminary journey, I read Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Allure of Liturgy for a New Generation by Winfield Bevins. Bevins’ background is in church planting, and as he explains in his book, Bevins stumbled into planting a more liturgical church than he was previously accustomed to. Today, Bevins is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).
Ever Ancient, Ever New is an exploration of what Bevins identifies as a revival of young people actively seeking more ancient and traditional liturgical forms of worship. The book came to my attention because Bevins taught at Asbury Theological Seminary, where I was a student, and because he spoke at the Free Methodist Church’s 2022 Southeast Regional Conference, which I attended as a ministry candidate. But I was also drawn to it because I had already caught the liturgy bug.
A Craving and a Movement
My longing for liturgy was influenced in part by nostalgia, as I missed the monthly communion liturgy of the small United Methodist church I attended when I first became a believer in the 2010s. Then, in 2019, my studies in Wesleyan theology in the FMC’s Course of Study led me to discover the Book of Common Prayer, and I quickly found out why John Wesley treasured it. The daily offices became my daily constant. I began visiting Anglican churches and found that I felt more at home worshipping according to the prayer book than anything my local Methodist churches were doing. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I am part of the movement Bevins describes.
Even though I had known for years that I enjoyed traditional liturgy, I had trouble believing that a broader movement was taking place. After all, the largest and fastest growing churches that I observed were “seeker sensitive,” with worship more akin to a concert than a traditional Christian liturgy. However, I began to meet others with stirrings that were similar to mine. A close friend from high school told me that he and his wife had been attending a traditional downtown Methodist church because they’ve “been craving a more traditional and liturgical service.” He said they often go to Roman Catholic Mass as well. After beginning seminary, I made several friends who had left their churches for similar reasons and migrated to the ACNA, Lutheran churches, Roman Catholicism, and even Eastern Orthodoxy. I began to realize that something was happening, and it was bigger than just me. After observing this trend for several years now, I know that I’m not crazy and I’m not alone in my longing for liturgy.
Why We’re Longing for Liturgy
It is important for church leaders to pay attention to why there is a growing interest in liturgy and a move towards more liturgical churches. In his book, Bevins highlights the many benefits of traditional liturgy. A new generation is realizing that there’s something we’re missing when our worship service is a 30-minute rock concert followed by a 30-minute sermon. There’s something we’re missing when we don’t take the Lord’s Supper as often as we should. There’s a richness that’s missing when we omit common prayers, creeds, and corporate confession from our life together as the Body of Christ. My soul realized it too and yearned for it. The way that many evangelicals do church is a recent innovation and does not catechize its members as effectively as the rhythms of a traditional liturgy.
The way that many evangelicals do church is a recent innovation and does not catechize its members as effectively as the rhythms of a traditional liturgy.
As many in liturgical studies have noted, everyone has liturgy. Even if the liturgy of your church is to stand up and sing familiar songs, sit down for a sermon, hear an altar call, and be dismissed, that is still a liturgy. It is the form in which you conduct worship. Your liturgy, whatever it is, is a physical and theological statement that reflects where your priorities are and what you believe about God and the Church. One of the most attractive things about more ancient or traditional forms of worship is that they establish rhythms that echo throughout our daily lives and turn our focus constantly to Christ.
Immersed in a Christ-Centered Drama
Liturgy calls us to be part of a larger narrative, a drama, that is the center of our spiritual formation and grounds us in ancient truths that are often lacking in evangelical and seeker-sensitive churches. That center is the gospel in the person of Christ. This is expressed through attention to the church calendar, patterns of confession, encouragement to pray the daily or divine offices, and a common worship environment. As Bevins says about liturgy:
As we come together week after week, we are slowly formed by the words, prayers, and sacred rhythms of the liturgy. The poetic words, the prayers, and the reading of Scripture leave an imprint upon our souls, and the practices shape us into the men and women of God. The beauty of these rhythms is that they form us passively, almost without our knowledge. This formation is not contingent upon our mood or temperament when we enter the service. Simply by agreeing to participate and join with the existing structure and rhythms, liturgy has the power to change us.
Liturgy is attractive to me because, by God’s grace, I am unabashedly on fire for Jesus, and I want to pattern every second of my life after Him. Liturgy helps me to avoid a part-time faith.
But Isn’t Liturgy “Dead Religion”?
A common criticism I hear about intentionally liturgical churches is that it is “dead religion” and there is little room for the Holy Spirit to freely move in worship. I have a couple of questions for people with this objection. Firstly, is the Holy Spirit so limited that He cannot move unless it is in a certain type of worship service, the one you feel works best for Him? Secondly, if it is evidence of “dead religion,” then why are young people craving it and flocking to it? There certainly are expressions of liturgy that can be stifling. But there can equally be very charismatic and seeker-friendly liturgies that are stifling, in fact I would say some increasingly are. There truly isn’t dead liturgy, because even the lowest of low churches has a liturgy of some sort. There are only spiritually dead people doing liturgy.
It is in fact some of the most spiritually alive young people who are craving liturgy. Bevins explains,
Many young adults have shared with me how they are tired of seeker-friendly, consumerist approaches to the faith in which they observe and absorb the work of others. They no longer want to be entertained; they want to participate. Liturgy ensures that each person has the opportunity to participate in the worship of the church, and it keeps us from being passive spectators who simply observe and consume knowledge. The rhythm of liturgy invites us to join the story of God and, perhaps surprisingly, prevents our worship from becoming static or growling stale.
In my own relationships, and in my years on social media, I’ve come across numerous testimonies that confirm what Brevin says. One young woman on Twitter (X) writes, “In 2018 I became another Protestant 20-something to discover that liturgy is actually really great. I am officially a Millennial Christian now! When do I get my membership card?” Another young man writes, “As a millennial, I grew up in an era where everything was informal, dressed down, profane. Flip flops at church. I detest it, now. I want liturgy, historical confessions, beauty, truth, and goodness. I wear a coat and tie to church. It’s formal. A sign of respect.” Yet another young man writes, “I’ve been struck by how I feel a closer affinity to other evangelicals doing liturgical renewal than I do to certain kinds of Reformed identity within my own denomination.” As a final example, another millennial writes, “What do I love? the ancient Orthodox liturgy. My life is always changing. I love that my worship is stable. This is a POV that Lutherans who think contemporary worship is for me should consider.”
Both-And, Not Either-Or
Finally, a return to more ancient practices should not be viewed as a dismissal of the charismatic movement of the 20th century. In fact, a sacramental faith emphasizes encounter with God, and this has clear overlap with charismatic movements which emphasize the same. In his book Evangelical, Sacramental and Pentecostal: Why the Church Should Be All Three, Gordon Smith argues that a return to liturgy and the ancient, sacramental nature of the church does not require us to dismiss the evangelical, charismatic, or Pentecostal streams of tradition. Rather, it balances them out in a healthy, full, and ancient expression of Christian worship. Smith writes, “All three, taken together, are the means by which the benefits of the cross are known and experienced. The three—Spirit, along with Word and sacrament—are then the means by which we abide in Christ as Christ abides in us.”
We sell ourselves short of vast dimensions of rich, biblical spirituality when we ignore the 2000 years of tradition that we stand on, and we also sell ourselves short when we ignore how the Spirit is moving today.
We sell ourselves short of vast dimensions of rich, biblical spirituality when we ignore the 2000 years of tradition that we stand on, and we also sell ourselves short when we ignore how the Spirit is moving today. Thankfully, there are churches across the denominational spectrum—from Baptist and Methodist to Anglican and Assemblies of God—that are being led by people with this same conviction, and are incorporating more ancient liturgical practices into their Spirit-filled communities. They are seeking God while leaning into the fullness of Christ-centered worship in an ancient pattern. I’m not alone in wanting to experience the sanctifying power of weekly Lord’s Supper, and to hear passionate Reformational preaching that convicts the soul, and to listen in awe to the glorious sound of a pipe organ, and even to worship with my hands in the air to the latest good worship song. How we experience Christianity doesn’t have to be an either/or, one-dimensional faith.
The Spirit is Moving
While many evangelical churches face decline, and many mainline churches face existential challenges as they compromise the faith, the Holy Spirit is moving behind the scenes, carving out a movement in the next generation that crosses denominational boundaries and is more united in shared theological and liturgical convictions than they are with many in their own denominations. This movement is mostly silent, though it is starting to find its voice. And, if my story is any indication, there are those who are a part of it who don’t even know it is happening. That’s the power of us all having the same indwelling Holy Spirit! Parallel movements can happen that do not even encounter each other initially but are clearly connected and share an uncanny resemblance that can’t be mere coincidence.
Dr. J. Steven O’Malley, one of my former professors, has documented that this was exactly the case with the revival that spawned the Wesleyan movement amid the First Great Awakening. The First Great Awakening was a mere part of a movement of the Holy Spirit across the world, and we are still coming to understand just how vast it was, from touching a group of children in Silesia to the fields of Britain to the frontier of America and even as far away as Siberia. Could we be in the midst of the formation of such another great movement? I pray so.
While I am committed to an expression of faith in the pattern of the Wesley brothers, I am excited by the potential for a generation to recover the faith once delivered through liturgy that transcends denominational traditions. This was, after all, one of the Wesleys’ priorities as they pursued “primitive Christianity.” It deeply affects how I pastor and will continue to push me toward a deeper understanding of the things of God as I minister as an “original Methodist” in the Anglican Way, serving in the ACNA.
An earlier version of this article was published on The Earnest Wesleyan.
