Orthodox or Evangelical

[Milestoneworship]

I've recently been having a great dialogue with a Catholic worship leader from Sacramento, and I was wondering if there are lots of other Orthodox worship leaders that pursue contemporary worship styles.

So, are there a few orthodox worship leaders out here somewhere? By Orthodox, I guess I mean Catholic, Anglican, maybe even Lutherans. I'm fascinated that many of these churches with such a strong liturgical history would even consider contemporary worship music, but it seems that there are a growing number out there. Those of you evangelicals (like me) out there; what are your thoughts on this movement? Will it stick around in the Orthodox Church. Will lots more churches be hosting masses driven by electric guitar and drums?

[twc_admin]

hey Jeremy - great post ... pardon my ignorance, but would an Episcopal be in the "orthodox" group? (i'm guessing no, but though I'd ask) ... Joel (cecworship) is very involved in that.

[Milestoneworship]

Yeah, Episcopal is the American name for the Anglican church, so I guess that would fall under my blanket of Orthodoxy as well.

[worshiptheKing]

...of Orthodox as "very liturgical" I would put Methodist in that category as well. If so, several Methodist churches around here have very contemporary services. Music, presentation, video, etc. all contemporary.

[Stevie Nature]

Well, sorry for being a stickler, but the Orthodox church is the Eastern church that broke off from the Roman Catholic church in 1054 (I think technically is was a long process, but that the traditionally accepted date) over the issue of Papal authority and I think the iconoclastic controversy. This would basically include Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox and the like. Sometimes when we speak of a church being orthodox (with a small "o") we're speaking of a church being theologically sound.

As far as Catholics go, I have a guy I used to work with that played bass for a Roman Catholic church. I know he also used to play for "Worship on the Beach"; a Catholic P&W thing they did at the beach. The funny thing is that I think they did a lot of song that were very Protestant.

In the early stages of our churches development we met at a Lutheran church. I know they tried to be contemporary in their worship. Their worship team kept commenting on how much they liked our style, but that they really couldn't pull it off.

As far as the liturgical side of things I know of a lot of churches who are experimenting with adding liturgies to their services while keeping things contemporary. We had one really awesome chapel service in college that did this really well. They call this approach Ancient-Future. In general, I like the idea. We take the best from all of the church's worship throughout its history, be it 50 or 1850 years ago, and use it, while at the same time we're careful to contextualize it to our culture. I'm still working out the details as to how that would play out in my particular church. So far our church still looks like your run of the mill contemporary service.

[Milestoneworship]

I am admit that I am painting with a broad brush here. I was referring to Orthodox churches in the same way that Chesterton or Schaeffer would have referred to them. Any church that would not consider itself evangelical, by their definition, would be orthodox.

[Milestoneworship]

Found this...thought was relevant....

http://http://elizaphanian.blogspot.com/2007/10/guitars-in-worship.html

[worshiptrench]

On my weeks off I usually head to an Episcopal or other high church to experience worship in a different vein than my own. Sometimes I feel they capture the Sovereignty of God so well. An reading ancient creeds serves to connect me to the larger historical church. It's a nice reminder that it ain't all about videos and guitar tone, a trap that is easy to fall into.

There are liturgical churches adopting modern music. Some are hybriding it. To be honest, when I want orthodox worship, I want it nice and ol' skool as that medium seems to better serve the liturgy though I also like the ancient-future stuff. In the ancient-future model it just seems like one of them always suffers quality wise. Either they are an ancient proficient church that manages to train wreck their way through the modern or vice-versa. Budget and personnel obviously affect this as most churches cannot hire a full-time solid modern leader and a highly trained conduct a Bach oratorio ancient leader who can also meld together into a single service. Though that would be SOOOO awesome.

[Stevie Nature]

G.K. Chesterton often referred to himself as an "orthodox Christian", though he eventually became Roman Catholic. Apparently, he continued to call himself small "o" orthodox. Schaeffer, if you're referring Francis Schaeffer was a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which broke from the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America because of it's slide into liberalism. The "Orthodox" speaks to their conservative values, not their use of liturgy. If you're speaking of Frankie Shaeffer, Francis's son, he is a member of the Eastern Orthodox church. Again, hate to be a stickler, but I think it's important to properly define terms.

[Stevie Nature]

worshiptrench,

I agree. I've rarely seen a good hybrid service. Like I mentioned earlier we had an awesome chapel service at my college, that was a hybrid. Looking back on it, it might have only seemed awesome because it was my first experience with liturgy and a processional, and such. One of my former professor's church attempts to incorporate a more liturgical feel to things. It actually works fairly well. Both of these were evangelical churches trying to incorporate high church elements, not high church trying to incorporate contemporary elements.

[Stevie Nature]

I'm getting 'page cannot be displayed' from that link.

[Milestoneworship]

I guess that link's busted. Dang it...just cleared my history too...so I guess that it is lost to the WWW.

[ChadBrooks]

Matt Maher is a fantastic Roman Catholic worship leader who leads liturgically (the RC Mass) in a contemporary fashion, and he is a nice guy to boot. We use some of his movements during Lent at Asbury.

I think it is important that we continue to define the whole Orthodoxy/orthodox thing too. What hasn't been brought up is the mainline tradition, which would include Lutherans, United Methodists, and some forms of Presbyterians. Under the boundries that were mentioned earlier, Unitarian Universalists would fit!! Then their are the various free-churches who would feel comfortable underneath the "Evangelical" tag such as Wesleyans, Free Methodists, the Christian Church..etc..etc..

I remember going to a Catholic wedding and look at a hymnal and being astonished to find many Protestant Hymns. I think our brothers across the Tiber are alot more comfortable with us than we are with them in many situations.

I think the question being asked is more along the lines of folks coming from a more "high liturgy" tradition integrating contemporary songs in their service. All liturgy means is "work of the people", so no matter what you do it is a liturgy of sorts.

Most evangelical churches follow a liturgy that is highly influenced by the revivalism of the late 1800's and early 20th century. It is along these lines;

Greeting
Song(s)
Scripture
Sermon
Time of Response (Alter Call)

While a more classic format (mainline and RCC) follows a loose line of

Gathering
Word
Table
Sending

What is in question is the focus of these services, and some Protestant churches have changed things around to almost resemble both. In the Evangelical context, the sermon is the "high point" of the service, with everything being designed around that element. In a more Catholic manner (and to a point mainline) the focus on the service is lords supper/communion/Eucharist, with everything leading up to and descending from that position.

I think it is easy for many higher churches to insert a contemporary sound, because it doesn't change their focus-just the manner of delivery.

Sorry for dragging up an old post, this just really jumped out at me.