together church

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul makes a statement that I’ve always thought somewhat extraordinary: “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” It makes Paul sound either really arrogant or really spiritual. After all, Christ is the perfect Son of God. Who does Paul think he is?

But these last six months have given me a greater appreciation for imitation as a spiritual practice.

In the nondenominational evangelical tradition I am most familiar with, there’s a lot of telling people what they should do to be like Christ. Pray more, read your Bible a lot, love others, go to church, repent often, worship authentically. Those who are enduring trauma, loss, grief, addiction, illness, and other kinds of suffering are often met with “Biblical counsel” that sounds a lot like Job’s unhelpful friends: Have more faith! Confess more sins! Read more Scripture! Claim more promises!

There’s a lot of “Do as I say.” But Paul said, “Do as I do.”

In my migration from that tradition to High Church liturgy for the first time, this is where I notice the starkest contrast.

The Anglican liturgy is built on worship, prayer, and Scripture, and is entirely oriented toward the culminating event of partaking in the Eucharist together. We sing praises together; we stand and hear the Scriptures together; we kneel and confess our sins together; we sit and receive the Word together; we break bread together; we celebrate and rejoice in the God of our salvation together. Some of my favorite moments in each communion service are when we all rise from our knees to hear the priest recite the “Comfortable Words” (which are Matthew 11:28, John 3:16, 1 Timothy 1:15, and 1 John 2:1) and when we all shout “Thanks be to God! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” together after the closing hymn.

These centuries-old liturgical practices, rooted in Scripture and bathed in a long history of the prayers of the saints, provide a framework for us to actually do what we say, not merely say what to do. Strip them away, and it makes sense that in my previous tradition, so much time on Sunday mornings is devoted to hearing from a man rather than meeting with God.

I don’t think everyone needs to become Anglican or return to High Church liturgy, even though I love it and wish I could share my love for it with everyone. But I do think all churches would benefit from giving people a model to imitate, not just sermons to hear.

For example, I do not remember a single time in my 30+ years of churchgoing that we were prompted in church to confess our sins (outside of an altar call, of course). I do remember hearing plenty of sermons about how confession should be part of my prayer life. But most people learn far quicker by doing something than by being told what to do—especially if they get to practice it together, week after week.

What if we modeled confession by actively including confessional prayer? What if we modeled unity by reciting the Apostles’ Creed together? What if we modeled the importance of prayer by weaving it into every portion of the service, instead of just the beginning and the end? What if we modeled spiritual quiet time by inserting periods of silent contemplation? What if we modeled the authority of Scripture by speaking it directly to the powers of sin and death that threaten us, rather than just telling our suffering people to read more of it and move on?

I keep thinking of that old cliche, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” A model is a picture. As any parent who’s paying attention knows, children do what they see us doing, not what they hear us saying—and it’s no different with the children of God.

I know that liturgy and practice and doing-together is no cure-all. No tradition is immune from legalism or moralism. Plenty of people have made an exodus from liturgical traditions into nondenominational ones the very same way I’ve left nondenominational evangelicalism for liturgy—and we are all just searching for the freedom of Christ, with His easy yoke of grace and mercy.

Personally, my life in evangelical traditions was marked by an individualistic pressure to do it all, and do it alone. Everything came down to my faith, my sinner’s prayer, my fruitbearing, my testimony, my prayer life, my quiet time, my sin, my gifts, my service. Every sermon could be distilled down to applications for me, what I needed to do to be a better person, wife, mother, disciple, church member, or what have you. It even shaped how I studied and read the Bible, looking primarily for practical principles that were peppered with a lot of the word “should,” and leaving very little room for the kind of slow, agenda-free meditation that actually lets the Scriptures do the work.

We still have sermons in the Anglican church, and I love them. But more importantly, we have an hour and a half composed of marinating in Scripture readings, Scriptural prayers, Scripture-inspired hymns, and the Scriptural sacrament of communion. Together.

The burden is much lighter together.

I am not the Body of Christ, and neither are you. Only we, together, can be the Body—only we, together, can be what He intended His disciples to be. And it has to mean something more than being in the same place at the same time one morning a week, because we can do that with anyone.

It has to mean more than a set of worship songs and a great sermon, because we can get that on YouTube.

It has to mean more than a creed and a set of moral expectations we all adhere to, because we can get that in any religion.

What is “more”? It’s the kingdom of heaven. It’s new creation. It’s Isaiah 11 modeled in real life. It’s the living proof that Jesus really did conquer sin and death and the powers of evil that would leave us otherwise lost in our natural human state of greed, hatred, self-preservation, and lust for power.

“The wolf will live with the lamb.” The rich will sit at the table with the poor. The women will be on equal footing with men. The children will be as valuable as the adults. The outcast will be welcomed in. The powerful will kneel down to serve the powerless.

There really is no passable counterfeit for this. We’re either living it or we’re not.

In the Anglican liturgy, I get to live it: There is no difference between how I participate as a woman and how everyone else does. The same is true for my children, and for anyone else who walks through the door, no matter who they are or where they come from. No one preaches from several steps higher than the congregation or performs worship from a stage. There’s no distancing or dividing over differences on secondary issues. I felt more like family on my first Sunday there than I had in 6 years of attending my previous church every week.

That’s “more.” That’s everything.

Thanks be to God. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!