One of the big surprises for anyone trying to create sustainable emerging church is what has sustained worship and faith for 2000 years.
As Phil Siloan Thompson (an ex-Pentecostal leader) writes:
"First, until the twentieth century, virtually *all* Christians in every age used liturgy. And second, they all used versions of the *same* liturgy. Over the centuries it developed into variations like Byzantine and Gallican and Tridentine and Lutheran, but Christian liturgy almost
always had the same basic elements - and that held true for the Ethiopians, Nestorians in Iraq, Mar Thoma believers in India, and Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists in England.
Reading these widely-separated traditions' Sunday Mass/liturgy texts, you can see how they all reflect the same original form of worship, shared by pretty much all of Christianity, at least until the twentieth century.
The glaring exception is the new anti-liturgical tradition, originating with groups like the Quakers and flowering in the Charismatic movement. That's when I realized that I had spent nearly twenty years in a marginal, out-of-the-mainstream kind of worship."
The reason liturgy matters is because it provides the backbone for the whole worship of the church. Church and spirituality is firstly communal. Other prayers said during the week at home or on the train etc. then flow from this and have a solid reference point. Liturgy is mentioned in Acts in chapter 13. Guess what they were doing when the Holy Spirit spoke to the church to send out Paul and Barnabas? Many translations falsely use words like "worshipping the Lord", but the Greek is clear- the were "liturgising" Check it out! And liturgy for Jewish people at that time had a specific meaning- a set prayer/worship service, not a spontaneous free-for-all.
Check out: http://www.philthompson.net/index2.html
