Deciding I needed to be closer to the roots, I left the SBC in 2001 for the Episcopal Church and have never looked back.
The Episcopal Church provides deep, meaningful, rich worship, which is God-centered, rather than man-centered. It is worship that is un-obtainable in the SBC.

Erik

Thanks for the update on your being sent back home. Might we ask: what are you doing now, and do you have a ministry in sight? I certainly hope your talents are being used now!

Thanks for the response. About a year ago I picked up J.W.C. Wand’s A History of the Early Church who describes Hippolytus as the “most obscure of all the early church writers.” Yet Wand dates it as being in the second century and says later that the Apostolic Tradition is our richest source of information for the Roman Church of the second century.

Wand later addresses the Canons of Hippolytus as being a fifth century conservative revision of the Apostolic Tradition. So I have been trying to figure out which version Dix is claiming or if he is conflating the two. Thanks for helping me sort some of this out.

“Liturgy” http://www.liturgy.co.nz

God bless your venture of making connections
Bosco

Thank you for your article. This is an issue that has become my passion as of late. I thought it was limited to my former United Methodist Church in Cincinnati but upon further research, it is evident that it is a VERY pervasive problem.

Ergo, I am dedicated to raising awareness through whatever means are necessary. It is my hope that congregations, upon becoming more educated about this issue, care enough to demand more integrity, and that pastors, when they realize their secret is out, give the honest effort required to craft their sermons themselves or, in the alternative, give credit.

I began my spiritual journal as a teen when a charismatic girl asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart and I said “okay.”. We prayed and I know I was changed. That was 19 years ago.

Over the years in my search for learning and understanding doctrine and God’s will etc., I’ve found myself drawn away from my charismatic roots and more towards creeds and study. I’m not sure if I’m making any sense. More simply, I
got tired of the rah rah and wanted more meat.

Initially, I viewed “Hymnbook churches” as dead. As I child, my family didn’t attend church, not even once a year. I visited with friends and extended family on occasion. I was exposed to Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, United Church of
Christ and others. I was bored to tears. I hated the stand-up, sit-down, kneel and repeat. I didn’t understand the messages. I thought Joseph was Jesus’ father and if Jesus was God and God created the world, then who created Joseph? I didn’t know what communion was for. Liturgy completely failed at presenting me with the Gospel on my level. There was no living word for me and I had no desire to go.

When I started going to church with that charismatic girl (Church of God, with word of faith leanings), I heard the gospel message in a way I could see applied to my life. Even though I had already said a sinner’s prayer, it was at church
that I discovered that I was a sinner that needed a savior and that I needed to confess. I grew in this environment. I eventually grew to see it’s many flaws also, and became discontent.

When I began dating my now husband, I was still charismatic and discontent, but I had experienced many more denominations including episcopal, presbyterian, more
Baptist, various non-denominational churches, Lutheran and Apostolic. My husband was Wisconsin synod Lutheran and I hated his church. It was one of those dead churches in that the message seemed unrelated to the liturgy, and the liturgy seemed stale. I had since come to appreciate the rich lyrics of hymns, and to hate the empty choruses of my church. My husband regarded my church as a circus,
and by comparison to WELS, it was. I took him to a Missouri Synod church that seemed right about our middle ground and we stayed there. It has now become a bit of a mega-church and it’s getting too circusy for us with it’s performance art type of worship.

I wish I could find a church with balance. I don’t want scripture readings for the sake of fulfilling a traditional routine. I want to be taught on the scriptures that are read. If I don’t know the purpose of the call & response, how can I participate with my heart? I HATE organ music and the arrangements of many hymns. I long for rich spiritual songs with non-archaic arrangements. Liturgy has never made me see God as high and lifted up. Charismatic formats don’t really accomplish that either.

I’ve gone from thinking that sermons shouldn’t be planned but that the Holy Spirit should be allowed to lead the speaker… and that an education isn’t needed for this.. and that seminary was the cause of dead hymnbook churches – and now I long for a church with accountability, leadership that doesn’t change like the winds that I can trust in to explain the things I can’t learn myself through self study. I want ministers who know Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic and Latin as well as the customs and cultures of OT times and the apostolic age. I like what liturgy is supposed to accomplish or represent, and wish that it accomplished it in me during the service.

Recently, an internet friend of mine, who was a Hyper-Calvinist Presbyterian announced that she and her husband, after much study and research were converting
to Eastern Orthodox. That really threw me for a loop. She was the reason I looked into Calvinism. I kicked it around and it made me delve into the deeper mysteries of God. It changed how I view God, but I just couldn’t subscribe to all of what Calvinism believes. Now suddenly this girl was not only not-Calvinist, but interested in icons, theosis and deification. !!??! What did she see in it? I had never even considered Eastern Orthodox much in the say way that Catholicism is a non-issue in my book. It would be SO nice if I could trust a church to interpret scripture for me. It would be ideal if I could find a church that truly had right worship that hadn’t changed since the 4th century (or longer). Hearing what she said about her new church made me hungry for church again.

I should probably note that my husband and I have been shut-ins for about 18 months now. Our daughter was born with a genetic kidney disorder. She wastes electrolytes and is underweight. When she gets ill with vomiting or diarrhea, she requires hospitalization for IV fluids and sometimes NG tube feedings. Twice we put her in the nursery at church, and twice she was hospitalized from becoming sick from other children at church. If we sit in the cry room with her, our attention is do divided that we don’t feel we’ve communed with God so we simply stopped going. Our plan was to return when our daughter reached a reasonable body weight for her height. She’s not gained any weight in 9 months now and may soon be getting a surgical g-tube. Perhaps we’ll be able to return to church soon, but where?

Now that I’ve had a glimpse of a church that seems to have something I’ve been missing (but has too many other flaws in doctrine to consider it a real possibility), and we’re already discontent with the performance art services at our current church, I don’t know where to go or what to do. I feel lost. I feel like there is no good church and that we all
don’t have a clue. My friend believes that the Eastern Orthodox church hasn’t changed, (I strongly doubt that). I’m so ill over the divisions of the Protestant church. Eastern thought seems weird to me, but is that because it IS weird, or because I’m steeped in Western thought? What would Jesus have to say about ceremonial worship or hierarchal church government? Did the apostles really follow a liturgy? Was that format of worship as old as Abraham, or was it culturally relevant to their day and age? How did God intend for Christians to meet and remember him? You can say word and sacrament, but what did He intend for that to look like? *sigh*