May 09, 2011
National Day of Prayer
Last week while attending the National Day of Prayer a woman’s “amens” mixed with “yes, Jesus” were said throughout the public prayers. I considered her to be a sister of faith with a more charismatic bent, but I was surprised to learn that she was Catholic. Most of my knowledge of Catholicism is of traditions, ritual and structured worship. I’d wondered if their denomination was changing, or if I’d met my first charismatic Catholic. I’m now pondering how structured worship may in fact restrict the Spirit.
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Gail;
-----I was baptized in the Montrose Christian Church when I was fifteen. I was almost eighteen when I started regularly attending church by my own commitment, a Pentecostal church in Grand Junction. All of that church’s aspects were directed towards feeling, meaning, and involvement in the Spirit. Although the services had structure, the structure allowed a looseness for the Spirit’s engagement. I grew accustomed to the excitement of experiencing what oddity was going to pop up in a service next and the wonderment of why such an oddity had popped up.
-----Then I moved back to Montrose. I debated whether to attend that dry Christian Church again with my dad and his precious bride, or go worship with the Pentecostals. God was my Father for honoring, but my parents were my brethren to honor. I reasoned that the Christian Church approached my Father through the same Christ as did the Pentecostal church. Although it was the dry church, abandoning my parents just to quench my thirst for my bent would dishonor them in some judgmental aspect. So I decided to honor my Father through honoring my parents, and I again attended the Christian Church with them.
-----Indeed I found it to be dry - “dead” - as the Pentecostals had taught me to think of such churches. Everything was done in ritualistic structure to the point that something might become profane if done out of its proper order. And the music was that plinkety-plunk piano stuff of lyrics teetering on the verge of tripping over the intent to sing a ditty precisely the way it was sung before. Blah! If I were going to remain spiritually alive in this Spiritless environment, then I was going to need a survival strategy.
-----As you well know of me, my strategy was a careful analysis of these people and this environment. What about this ritualism gave them a concept of being spiritually alive? And was this concept actually useful? The only way I could gain any information for analysis was to try on their moccasins. I quickly learned that if you mentally attend the words and actions of the rituals, cross examining them by the Scriptures, there is a great deal of meaning going on in them there proceedings! In fact, it was the kind of meaning I liked, meaning that came through the engagement of the mind rather than of the emotions. But it was meaning that emotions followed all the same. I came to love the Christian Church. And the more I learned of its history and philosophy, the more I agreed with what it was, ritual and all.
-----Ritualistic structure is something the individual must mine for meaning by his own sincerity, although it can more easily be passed off as just another hole in the mountainside. If there is any restriction of the Spirit in structure, it is the same restriction made by the looser Pentecostal services - the restriction of the Spirit to a service. The worship service is just a small, periodic pinnacle of our new lives, usually 4 hours at most out of 168. Turning the Spirit loose in those other 164 hours sharpens our picks and shovels for a more efficient mining of the 4 hours, however structured or flowing they might be.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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