A Guest Post

Hebel's first guest post is by Michael Wells, of St. Hilda's Katoomba, and Lord willing a 2007 first year Moore student. It's a post from sydneyanglicans.net and you'll find the original context here (basically a debate, some how spinning out of discussion on the New Capital Works project, on whether or not liturgy still has a role in church). "As a 20's person, I want to bolster the case for liturgy, if it is owned and believed by the congregation. To a certain extent I think we have been sucked in to the secular idea that 'church' only exists on Sundays. So we try and do everything on Sunday, proclaim the word, worship together and try and make meaningful contact and fellowship. We rightly see that the church has a vertical relationship to God and horizontal relationship to others, and an outward one to those in the community. But do we have to cram all these into our Sunday meeting? I wonder whether by making all (almost) Sunday services informal, we miss out on the rich majesty of our God and the biblical significance of our meeting together, whether we swap true fellowship for a 15 minute chat over coffee and whether we are left with much to invite our friends and neighbors to. Traditional liturgy made the whole church service proclamation, in which the whole congregation participated, and my worry is that we slide into a position where only the precher proclaims. Perhaps we need to encourage young people to be creating not bland informality, but their own symbolically rich (yet biblically sound as a pound!) corporate expression and proclamation." - Michael Wells 10 points if you can name the Cathedral.