"Christian worship is serious holy play that reveals the world as it really is rather than what it thinks it is. ..We should attend Church in fear and trembling not knowing where we will be led each Sunday."

I think this is an interesting conclusion that doesn’t exactly follow from the rest of the article. It seems that Sellick will go to non-liturgical worship with more fear and trembling. Most of us going to a liturgical worship know only too well where we will be led each Sunday and find the place boringly familiar. Surely set orders need to be peppered by the unconventional and free worship set into some kind of structure. Is the whole thing as either/or as Sellick suggests?

Oh Yabby, a crustacean after my own heart.

We are drowning in endless mind-numbing religion, will this ignorance ever end?

What an amazing world it would be without it.
Religion won’t be leaving us any time soon . . . . . we can only dream about that time in the future when fear and ignorance makes way for love and happiness.

RigPig

Peri

Im not confusing means and ends atall. The child certainly gives us hope for the future but the virtuoso plumbs the depths of human experience and shares that with us. Liturgy,done well,points usto fuller and richer ways of being human together.

Liturgy,to a great extent, is determined by theology. To dismiss the differences as simply due to fashion is to miss the point entirely. There is far more to these liturgical differences than mere fashion. The differences reflect profoundly different theologies and very different motivations of the participants and leaders. Some people seek a personal experience and value the emotional highs associated with certain sorts of worship. Others value the communal nature of worship and see it as binding and identifying. Some find in worship the discipline of listening to the whole word of God even the bits they dont really like or understand.

You say that you are interested in how people are motivated but your oversimpilified 'analysis' that these are just fashion differences is obscuring to you the fascinatingly different motivations that determine the types of liturgy that the various churches practise.

To confess my own bias...I have little time for pop-worship as I find it shallow, unedifying and self-serving. Its focus is usually on personal experience and personal salvation which I regard as a corruption of Christ's teaching. Atthe same time I recognise a real danger in the traditional liturgy that there isa tendency to try to 'preserve' it asa kind of museum piece. There is no reason why the liturgy should not have variations, change & evolve but unless the changes make sense the result will be fractured, truncated and inadequate. The inevitable consequence of inadequate theology and inadequate liturgy is that intelligent people, quite rightly, walk away. The church becomes irrelevant and 'cultish' where it should be universal and prohpetic.

Elsewhere in this thread someone described the liturgy as 'a form of entertainment' and that IS what it has become,unfortunately. When it remains true to its form as the universal and prophetic proclamation of Christ then itis not entertainment at all but serious business.

Yabby, companionable crustacean as Rig Pig says, there is a hell!
You’ve got to believe it – because the Pope said so only a week or so back. What more evidence do you want than the constraints imposed on the congregations that Sells would lead?
Hell doesn’t dwell in the gentle halls of the Taoists, or the Buddhists, the Uniting Church--. But, perhaps it also resides in the halls of some of those Presbyterians who would spurn Robbie Burns.
It is far removed from the sunday sunrise over the ocean, the predawn birdcalls in some part of undisturbed bush, or the ripple of a clear mountain stream – where I prefer to be.
No hell there, away from the crowd maddened by being told what to think – or rather, nor to think – for themselves. Being lectured by some individual destroying the joy of living in the present; someone permitting no enhancement of the wisdom of the father by the wisdom of the sons (and daughters) to continue accumulating over ensuing generations

Yabby, RigPig,

You are absolutely right in your observation that the church in ignorance and with no little touch of superstition portrays God as your 'imaginary friend'. I too yearn for a day when religion of this sort has been relegated to the pages of history books.

I do not, however, believe that ALL religion is necessarily of that sort. Perhaps God is the idea that this world could be better, that heaven is something that could be realised here and now and that all living creatures might enjoy this life to the full for as long as it lasts. No religions of personal salvation can achieve this because they appeal to the individually selfish side of humanity and defer 'reality' to the 'imaginary' world-hereafter. Something different is needed. If a religion, or philosophy, or whatever you might want to call it, heightened people's awareness that conciousness, self-awareness, the ability to love, fear and be angry are somehow special and gives us the opportunity to 'self-create' a better way of being in which all can share then couldnt we call that a spirituality and wouldnt it be worth pursuing. If you follow through this sort of logic then I think you arrive at the conclusion that 'salvation' of the individual is impossible without 'universal' salvation.

Here is a starting point.... "The fullest enjoyment of life is only achieved when it is achieved at once for all living creatures." If you dont believe this then try enjoying a one-person party!

Perhaps even Jesus had an idea something like this when He said "Whoever seeks to gain his own life will lose it."

We are not as far apart on this as you think, waterboy

>>There is far more to these liturgical differences than mere fashion. The differences reflect profoundly different theologies and very different motivations of the participants and leaders<<

Fashions in music can also reflect profoundly different concepts and structures. Twentieth century composers who leaned towards the atonal were convinced that the classical genre was boring and stultifying. Others such as Samuel Barber and Ralph Vaughan Williams remained primarily romantic, while other fashions such as Philip Glass' minimalism also wax and wane.

What these folk have in common is music. Where they differ is in their interpretation - their theologies - and this is reflected in the fashions in music that come and go.

In the mid-sixties, "free jazz" appeared, a movement led by musicians such as Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp. Those who were brought up on a diet of Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan and Charlie Parker considered it little more than "noise", but it had its adherents who firmly believed that it was a highly evolved form of music.

So they too saw their worship of music to "reflect profoundly different theologies and very different motivations of the participants and leaders", but in the end it turned out to be just another phase.

I am a little surprised that you don't have a more charitable view of Hillsong. I happen to know quite a few of that congregation, they are predominantly young, and they are very much Christians.

I am sure there will be other fashions in liturgy that come and go, and some that will stay. But I cannot understand why in some corners of the Christian world there are people like Sells who become agitated when others of their faith choose a more approachable service to attend.

After all, as Sells himself points out:

>>Christian worship is serious holy play that reveals the world as it really is rather than what it thinks it is<<

Guess what. In the world as it really is, there are many ways to skin a cat.