There it is in black and white: I am observing Lent this year.
I was raised classic southern pentecostal. I wouldn't have chosen any other upbringing. I love my heritage and it's history. The stories my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather would share of the power of God always thrilled me and made me want to experience all I could of God's presence. The main things I was taught as a child were that "what God once did He is still doing." "The God of the book of Acts is the same God we serve." "When it comes to His presence never settle for anything less or for anything more." "We are to seek to be a New Testament church."
I was also raised with the belief that God had delivered us out of the apostate church of "mainline-ism" and that all of the trappings of the historical churches were not only absent from the New Testament church but were, at the least, a distraction to worship and, at worst, Satan's plan to return the church to an Old Testament concept of priests, rituals, and sacred days of rules and regulations.
My exposure to church history growing up was mostly limited to the revival movements of the past. We revered the names of John and Charles Wesley but scorned what the Methodists had become. We lauded the bravery of Martin Luther but would never have stepped into a Lutheran church. I remember listening, with fascination, to my father wax eloquent in the pulpit about the martyrdom of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley but never knew anything about their life outside of their final moments and certainly nothing of the Church of England. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were very familiar names but we always focused on the aspects of their lives as it related to awakening revival rather than what they believed about serving God in plain old ordinary day to day living.
I began this journey of opening my mind to participation in the historical churches about five years ago when I began a personal study of the history and development of the English Bible. (Extraordinary story - full of the most fascinating people and events! I'll have to do a few blogs on that sometime). As part of that study, I took a trip to England and spent two weeks with an evangelical Anglican rector. You have to understand my background to understand this next statement: I was shocked to find that he was...well...a Christian. End result: I fell "in love" with this 70-something year old Scottish man and stuck to him like glue all over the countryside of Great Britain. By the end of the trip, I am sure that he was quite ready for me and all my questions to return to the other side of the pond!
As he took me to places like St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and Canterbury he patiently explained to me all the significance of the different things we were observing. I remember, at the beginning of the trip, standing with him in York Minster and asking "Doesn't all this seem rather a waste? Think of all the starving peasants who gave to build this edifice...couldn't that money have gone to better things?"
Have you ever been yelled at by an elderly Anglican minister? It's not a lovely experience. He began to point out to me how the height of the ceiling naturally lifts the eyes heavenward. Did I not think that these people who lived in mud all their lives needed something to pull their eyes upward? He gestured to the beautiful stained glass that told the stories of Jesus' life and ministry and reminded me that my precious books would have meant little to these people who couldn't read but could come and learn of God's love and the existence of beauty in the world through the architecture of the Cathedrals. Did I not realize that every aspect of this building and its services had been painstakingly planned and developed to attempt to import some of the creative majesty of the Almighty to this terrestial existence? I was sternly rebuked.
He made his point. It was on this study adventure that I began to realize that I had much to learn about God and about worship. That there was wisdom, depth, and a reverence that I was not experiencing and that, just perhaps, there might be something I could learn from the historical church experience.
A few years ago I read "Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail" by Robert Webber and realized that I am not alone in this learning process.
Now, before anyone gets too excited and writes me off as having "gone over" to the Ecumenical Dark Side and starts checking for my name at the World Council of Churches website, hear me on this: I am Pentecostal through and through. If it was reasonable, I would paint my house turquoise (only people in Springfield would get that one). I am a member of the Stanley Horton Fan Club. However, I am open to the very real possibility that God's people are much bigger than our movement and that, perhaps, resources like The Book of Common Prayer might be actually beneficial to me in my devotional life.
Anyway, I wrote all this to explain why this year I have decided to participate in the liturgical lenten season. It's a new experience for me and it may be the only time I ever do it. But, then again, maybe this will be a regular thing for me. I will be blogging on it through the next few months. I already have some great notes from the Ash Wednesday service last week at St. Cecilia's Cathedral in Omaha. I'm looking forward to sharing with you the things that I am learning on this journey.
And, I'm sure, my elderly Anglican rector friend would look down at me and say, "You have much to learn, Grasshopper."
