Liturgy as Counter-Story

Derek Poole of CCCi came to the Mission yesterday as part of our occasional series of encounters with alternative voices.  I began these in the early part of the year as an opportunity for the pastoral team at EBM to hear from some people who might have something to contribute to the develop of the community as we head towards the Skainos development.

I asked Derek to lead us in a conversation about alternative visions of church and he was his usual provocative self. He spoke of the need to create intentional community, not just gather for meetings. He spoke of the need to be connected to the brokenness of the world, and about the need to take seriously the existence of evil and not just teaching people how to be good.

What really captured my attention was the need to be creative in our use of liturgy as spiritual formation. We’ve led seminars and workshops on this before so in part it was nothing new, but he always produces a new spin.

He described liturgy as the place where the character of God encounters the character of world. I’ve thought a lot about this in the last few days. This idea I think where liturgy which is genuinely ‘the work of the people’ voices an alternative story to the story that the world tells. Both stories vie for our loyalty, but unless the liturgy of the church is organic to that community, indigenous perhaps, and carefully crafted, it cannot offer any like as compelling a story as the story the world offers. And unless this liturgy is repeated often, we forget.

Liturgy is the counter-story to the story of the world. It subverts that story.

Otherwise we’re just gathering for meetings.