Why Our Church Does Liturgy?

why does our church do liturgy
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[00:00:00] Luke: Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor

[00:00:10] Cameron: Luke. And I'm Pastor Cameron.

[00:00:11] Luke: And this is the Uncut Podcast. Where we have honest, uncut conversations about faith, life, and today, as we're recording this episode and potentially if you're in the room, If we get this uploaded later today, uh, it's the eclipse eclipse day eclipse day So it's probably too late for us to give you a psa warning about not staring into the sun, but

[00:00:34] Cameron: don't do it

[00:00:34] Luke: Don't do it.

[00:00:35] Luke: Um Also, don't be pagan. Um Don't do anything weird Um, yeah, I was I was thinking about, this is solely, not what we're going to talk about, but I was thinking about, like, this morning, like, what would it have been like to have been like a medieval peasant and like, just randomly one day the sun gets covered over and you're like, what?

[00:01:04] Cameron: It'd be interesting. Yeah,

[00:01:08] Luke: who knows? I'm sure it happened. Oh, I, it did. It did. It definitely did. I'm sure there's historical records about the first eclipse

[00:01:18] Cameron: that was

[00:01:19] Luke: documented. And, you know, but I'm sure like the classicals, like the Roman and Greeks knew about them and had them charted and stuff to a certain degree because they had the moon phases charted.

[00:01:31] Luke: So like lunar calendars and stuff like that. But during medieval time, when, you know, all that. Knowledge was really lost to the mass majority of western civilization. Mm-Hmm. like, you know, medieval west was weird. Mm-Hmm. like the plague. Mm-Hmm. like people thought, like the world was ending with covid.

[00:01:52] Luke: Mm-Hmm. . Covid didn't even get close to touching How many people died Of the bubonic? B plague. Bubonic plague. Yeah.

[00:01:59] Cameron: Um, or the Spanish flu. Or, or the

[00:02:01] Luke: Spanish flu. Um, like, yeah, there have been some cataclysmic events on planet Earth.

[00:02:08] Cameron: Um,

[00:02:08] Luke: so

[00:02:09] Cameron: largely lost on us in the 21st century.

[00:02:13] Luke: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[00:02:14] Cameron: So

[00:02:15] Luke: anyways, we're not here to talk about the bubonic plague and

[00:02:18] Cameron: or the eclipse, really the

[00:02:19] Luke: eclipse.

[00:02:20] Luke: Really? We're going to talk about

[00:02:22] Cameron: liturgy.

[00:02:23] Luke: Everyone's favorite topic.

[00:02:24] Cameron: Yeah. Now, um, you don't even know what that is. I mean, liturgy would be. Um, I would say to like, just make it a little bit, maybe to draw a caricature of it, liturgy is what you experience when you go to the Catholic church or the Episcopal church or really any church that has, I wouldn't, and there's going to be a caveat later on about this, right.

[00:02:51] Cameron: Or any church that is considered like high church, Episcopal, Lutheran, Catholic, whatever Even some more traditional and Methodist churches have they have a pretty significant liturgy Presbyterianism Um, uh,

[00:03:07] Luke: mainline denomination. Yeah.

[00:03:10] Cameron: And liturgy is what you would basically experience as the order of service on a Sunday morning or for, uh, for a church service, and it would look pretty much the same.

[00:03:22] Cameron: Every week in terms of the elements that you went through so there would be like a call to worship and the pastoral prayer and a call and response and a scripture reading and A song and then another scripture reading maybe another song and then a creed. Yeah a creed recited message If you're in a, you know, if it's a communion Sunday, then there's kind of like a whole separate communion liturgy that's built into the liturgy of the main, um, service.

[00:03:59] Cameron: And you go through that. And, um, and it's been a way throughout history to bring order to the worship, to maintain its orderliness. And, um, to help, um, I think one of the things that is distinctive about liturgy, at least in my experience or understanding is that liturgy represents a, a tie to, um, historical worship and communal worship, where it's not just one guy's.

[00:04:43] Cameron: design of how we're going to exist on a Sunday morning together as a community, but that it, um, envelopes and encompasses the entire community where there's maybe a call and response and a call and response and a call and response or a mutuality of prayer and confession and response to the word. So, um, we, if you walked into conduit.

[00:05:14] Cameron: Um, and you ask the random person, is this a liturgical church? What do you think that they would say?

[00:05:20] Luke: Well, they would say no. They would say no.

[00:05:22] Cameron: Right, right. Um, but if you ask one of us, is this a liturgical church? What would we say? Yeah. Yeah. We would say yes. Right. Uh, why?

[00:05:31] Luke: Because every church has a liturgy.

[00:05:33] Luke: Cameron,

[00:05:33] Cameron: yeah. Every church has a liturgy. But what do you mean by that?

[00:05:36] Luke: Like. Like, the way you kind of just defined a liturgy, right? It's, it's the thing, it's, it's, like, at its, at a very reductionist, let's just talk about it from, like, a practical standpoint for a moment, uh, before we go, like, super, before we talk about its theological components.

[00:05:56] Luke: But, like, from a practical component, it's what happens when and how in the service. It's, like, the order of service. Um, and, and, Each element kind of is essential to its part, plays a role, and that element generally looks somewhat the same week to week. And so, your service or the church, like, one of the reasons why, like, people would come into our church and say, oh, well, this isn't a liturgical church, is because of the way our service kind of looks, right?

[00:06:35] Luke: We maybe have somebody who's like, Hey, everybody, we're gonna start worship. You know, it's a good day to praise the Lord called worship right there. Uh, we start out with, uh, a song. Usually of higher tempo, um, into a more, slightly more reflective song. And then we exit out of that through prayer. That's extemporaneous led by somebody who's giving them announcements.

[00:07:02] Luke: Um, sign up for this thing, this is happening, talk about the vision of the church and what we're all about. And then prayer into the sermon, sermon, and then prayer out of the sermon, lots of prayer, uh, mostly extemporaneous from somebody on stage. And then, um, and then worship team comes up, they do three to four songs, um, starting a more, contemplative and reflective space, moving slightly more energy and praiseworthy towards the end.

[00:07:37] Luke: And then we, you or I, come up, whoever was preaching that week, at the end of the last song, and we kind of say a benediction, which is either a form of, again, an extemporaneous prayer, or a passage that we preached on, or something that relates to the message and or theme from the day. And that's pretty much every single Sunday.

[00:08:00] Luke: Um, you know, occasionally with communion thrown in there once a month. Um, and that's what it kind of looks like. And all of our prayers kind of follow a similar structure. And if you were probably to line up, Um, are like extemporaneous, which I, by that, I mean prayers that were just kind of spontaneously praying.

[00:08:22] Luke: We don't have necessarily planned a lot beforehand that you, you would, if you could run those through like an AI thing, I bet you, they could come up with a list of maybe 15 themes that we just like repeat over and over and over again.

[00:08:38] Cameron: Yeah.

[00:08:38] Luke: That's, and that's the same thing that will probably happen in 90 percent of.

[00:08:44] Luke: non denominational churches.

[00:08:46] Cameron: Yeah. Well, yeah, it could be, you could, you might say that like liturgy is another word for pattern. Yep. It's a pattern.

[00:08:59] Luke: It's the pattern of worship.

[00:09:00] Cameron: Yeah. And it's the way that like, it's pretty predictable, honestly. Um, but you'll, what we have found and what we are finding is that We, we have mixed in here some, what could be considered more traditional aspects of liturgy that are, they kind of skip outside of the pattern.

[00:09:30] Cameron: Yes. Um, and it's, it's, it's caused some people some distress.

[00:09:38] Luke: Yeah. We talked about liturgy and stuff and communion, I think last year on the podcast, we took several episodes to kind of talk about some of this stuff before, um, because we were making the change. And since we've made the change, we on a.

[00:09:56] Luke: Somewhat regular basis will hear comments about the liturgy either Questions or comments kind of like what's going on? Why are we doing that? And yeah,

[00:10:09] Cameron: or people saying I don't like it because it's too

[00:10:12] Luke: Catholic

[00:10:13] Cameron: Catholic. What do you think they mean by that?

[00:10:16] Luke: well, I like I I grew up in like you know, uh, non denominational, missional, like, let's get back to the Bible kind of church.

[00:10:29] Luke: Um, and, you know, the way it was described to me as a young kid, um, I thought pretty much all the mainline denominations, this is a characterization that I don't believe is true, but this was the way that it was described. religion outside of my church was talked about, I had this idea that if you were in a mainline denomination, or if you were a Catholic, that like, all that was, was just people doing robotic motions, thinking that they were being saved by doing robotic motions, by saying certain things, or doing certain things, getting up and kneeling and all of that, and just doing it because they were told to, and that if they were doing that, that was the, The dead works that were described in like Paul's writings and things like that.

[00:11:18] Luke: And so I think that that's at least where some people are kind of coming from is they're like, well, is us, is us not doing this, like doing this thing. This feels like potentially works, or this feels like inauthentic and, um, robotic and forced. It's generally kind of awkward if you've never been a part of it before or something like that.

[00:11:45] Luke: I think that's where people are kind of coming at When they kind of say, isn't this really Catholic?

[00:11:52] Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. I think the, it being forced is what, and it being robotic is really, I think at the heart of what people, why people kind of like, um, bristle. Yeah. Bristle against it.

[00:12:10] Luke: And we do have a fair amount of, uh, former Catholics.

[00:12:14] Luke: Mm-Hmm. at our church.

[00:12:15] Cameron: Yeah. Um, but I think that they, like a lot of the things that I've heard is that it has, the liturgy feels like it has less meaning when we're forced to say it or when it's like pre planned. Um, and that's for me, I think a deeper, maybe it's a theological issue or maybe it's a like Practicum issue or whatever, but what the difference between like spontaneity versus planning and how both of those are measured in authenticity, like, um, like, I mean, we've heard, we'll, we'll hear things fairly regularly about how, like, if it's not spontaneous, it's not the Holy Spirit.

[00:13:13] Luke: Yeah,

[00:13:14] Cameron: because the Holy Spirit is only spontaneous, right? It's only extemporaneous. It's only off the cuff. Like the Holy Spirit never plans never like that's just not what the Holy Spirit does or is or whatever. Um, and, um, I think part of the question that I have about literally liturgy in general is, um, Does spontaneity bring meaning or significance to it, or is, or is there meaning and significance in the thing itself and our refusal to engage in it?

[00:14:04] Cameron: It's just a refusal to recognize the truth of either what's proclaimed in it or the actual act of worship in it. Um, because I think there's a, some, so there's some bit of it. It's where I feel like it's a, we feel like we have to bring meaning to the words by making it authentic. Like it's, it's us that makes it real rather than the truth.

[00:14:34] Cameron: That is explicit and implicit in the words that actually makes it real. And we are just participating with the truth that's being proclaimed. I think for me, that is where the rub is, is that people want to bring meaning to it. People want to bring meaning to the truth where it's actually the opposite way.

[00:14:59] Cameron: It's the opposite. Like the truth brings meaning to us. And so when we participate in the proclamation of a truth that's already substantiated and formed and we're doing that as a community, then it brings meaning to us, theologically speaking, as a community, meaning like it's no, it is no less real. In fact, it's more real.

[00:15:26] Cameron: For me to recite the words of scripture then, um, around confession, it's more real for me to recite or read the words of scripture on a, on the topic of confession than it is for me to muddle through my own understanding of confession, saying it. Something about confession and somehow thinking that my spontaneity is more theologically significant for the moment of worship than the recorded words of Christ.

[00:16:02] Luke: Well, that was, that was the, that was the impetus. That experience right there was the thing that initiated this whole Movement to include a structured communion liturgy, right? Like you, we were like, cause we weren't doing this. We were, we're still doing communion. We just weren't doing a communion liturgy.

[00:16:24] Luke: And like my experience was like, all right, I finished my sermon. And now I need to say something about communion that connects to the sermon somehow, which was always a unique experience, because sometimes the sermon did not always lend itself to directly tie into communion. Um, and then I'm up there and I'm talking about communion and I have like, I don't know.

[00:16:50] Luke: Ten different books running through my head about communion and it's theology and it's meaning and it's significance And what does it mean? What does it not mean? What you know, how do I hold my own personal convictions about? Communion and know that there's other people out there who maybe have different convictions about like what's happening at the table and and Navigating all that and I'm trying to say all of that off the top of my head.

[00:17:16] Luke: Mm hmm Um, or at best I've kind of written down a couple notes ahead of time to try and like navigate that like when I was writing my sermon, um, but always felt like, did I do that right? Did I say something wrong? Did I say something right? Uh, if one of my college professors was to like, you know, it was really about like all communion.

[00:17:42] Luke: Would he come up and say, Luke, really? Was that kind of, You know, were you similarly was that kind of what you were experiencing or What was it from your side of the experience that you were feeling like moving from that extemporaneous space to to the liturgy

[00:18:01] Cameron: I just felt like it Yeah, in a way I I just felt like yeah, it was our extemporaneous words about communion ended up being um, it could be like not confused As being our own, like our own understanding of it.

[00:18:23] Cameron: But, um, like, like I already said, I just, I didn't feel, I don't feel like what the, what the experience of community needs or needed was my own interpretation of it. It like, like it felt for me like a moment to just shut up and be silent. Like Cameron, you don't need to. Drone on and endlessly about, you know, how you see community and how it fits into your sermon and how it's, this is a reflection of your church.

[00:19:02] Cameron: And like, Christians have been practicing communion literally since the time of Christ, and there's nothing special about the way that conduit was doing communion before, and I felt like there was value and depth in a connectedness to the Christian tradition that allowed us to step outside of our own world.

[00:19:36] Cameron: Like our own effort at bringing meaning to it by describing it in our own words, um, people might walk away. From the communion table thinking, wow, my pastor did such a great job explaining that. And what I want them to walk away from the communion table with was a deep sense of experience with Jesus that was initiated by an authentic act of confession of their sins.

[00:20:08] Cameron: proclamation of the gospel over them, reception of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, a connection with the rest of the community that was doing it and a, um, and an extended time in the presence of God rather than like a, wow, isn't our pastor so good at explaining communion? Um, and, um, I'm, I have been quite amazed at the way That people will just completely throw the baby out with the bathwater and just say I'm not like Like I won't even come to church on the first Sunday Because I hate the communion liturgy so much and That for me is like that's an issue of their heart And it's a hardness of heart.

[00:21:05] Cameron: Um, but it's also just shows me that they've never. They never actually listened to or participated in what it was that we were doing because, um, like it is, it is the retelling of the gospel story, what we try to do in every kid's, um, Sunday school class, what we do from the, try to do from the pulpit, what we do in all of our Bible studies.

[00:21:31] Cameron: It's a retelling of the gospel story. Right. It is a, it is a reminder and a proclamation that through confession and reception of faith in Jesus, there is forgiveness of sins. And, um, and that we, we practice or not, not that we practice, but we, we walk out the. Gospel drama in the participation of bread and cup.

[00:22:02] Cameron: We, we enter into the drama of the gospel, um, uh, as a, as disciples of Jesus, just like he did with the 12 disciples that night. Um, and I think that when, if someone were to pick this up and read it with honest eyes, I don't know what you could possibly say that you'd be upset about and be upset about.

[00:22:30] Cameron: Because it is, um, it is like, if I was thinking about the yesterday as we were, um, uh, in worship, like right before we went into the community, if I had to, if I had to go through this and attach a scripture reference to everything that there is, that is scriptural in here. There wouldn't be enough room on the margins.

[00:22:56] Cameron: Oh, no for me to draw arrows with scripture references. It's it is Paraphrastically the entire scripture. Yes from creation to final redemption

[00:23:09] Luke: Yep,

[00:23:10] Cameron: like and so well, I just think if we're gonna do something we should just read like we should just recite the scripture Okay. Done.

[00:23:19] Luke: Mm hmm. Done. Yeah. There's plenty of quotes for scripture in there.

[00:23:23] Luke: Yeah. And even when it's not, it's a condensing of scriptural thought. Or it's a paraphrase. It's a paraphrase. In

[00:23:29] Cameron: a better way than I would. Yeah. Say, well, why don't you just do it spontaneously? Like, why would I do something spontaneously that is like all over the pages of scripture? Mm

[00:23:38] Luke: hmm.

[00:23:39] Cameron: Yeah. Yeah, like I I don't I get no I don't get it.

[00:23:42] Cameron: Oh,

[00:23:43] Luke: well, it would it would take us like I Don't know two hours at least to read all the scriptures, right that Communion liturgy contains.

[00:23:54] Cameron: Yeah, I think there is a portion of it a large portion of it that at the end of the day People just don't want to be told what to do

[00:24:04] Luke: What No, Cameron

[00:24:08] Cameron: at the end of the day You There is just still, even, even those who express faith in Jesus who are like, you can't tell me what to do.

[00:24:20] Cameron: Right. I'm my own boss. I'm my own Lord. I chart my own course. I practice my faith the way I want to. Um, there's a little bit of that in all of us, but it, uh, becomes, um, it becomes, um, as a pastor, at least that's, those are the types of like heart postures that worry me for people. Um, because where there is no submission to something that's easy, there definitely won't be submission to things that become difficult.

[00:25:09] Cameron: You know, um, it's like, um, yeah, when, when, when there is, when there is difficulty in submitting our heart, submitting our hearts, submitting our will to something so obviously like rooted in truth and scripture, then when things become Um, really when the stakes are extraordinarily high, uh, and the pressure is really on, um, then there's not a high likelihood of submission of will.

[00:25:48] Cameron: And when we live lives that are consistently, uh, Um, odds with, or in struggle with who is Lord of my life. Is it me or is it actually Jesus? Um, then we end up just kind of. Aimlessly. We were a ship without a rudder and, um, and we, we drift in, we drift in damaging directions. So that from a pastoral perspective, that's my fear for people.

[00:26:21] Cameron: I'm not saying that you have to like this liturgy specifically, but it feels to me like a little bit of a microcosm of. An issue of lordship for people. Um, and I was thinking that I, I think I, I was just, I was saying it tongue in cheek, but I think I actually am going to take this and like.

[00:26:42] Luke: Hyperlink

[00:26:43] Cameron: it.

[00:26:43] Cameron: Yep. Hyperlink every single scripture reference. Yep. And offer it to people who are like, why are we doing this Catholic thing? Yeah. Actually, we're doing this scriptural thing.

[00:26:54] Luke: Yeah. Well. You know, the thing too is that the communion liturgy is, I was thinking this at the beginning when you were talking, and it is, it's anti consumeristic, because a lot of the way that which we, our modern liturgy, the way we do church, is a lot, if somebody up on stage does a thing, and we maybe say amen, or go hmm, and, Communion liturgy, or this communion liturgy, is something that we do together as a community.

[00:27:31] Luke: Like, I can't do the communion liturgy by myself. I just can't. Because it's meant to be done as a church, when two or more are gathered, right? And so, when we are the church, we can do this together. And it's something that not you or I get up and do and we make happen. It's a,

[00:27:57] Cameron: like, We're not individuals, right?

[00:28:01] Cameron: We're a body.

[00:28:02] Luke: Yeah

[00:28:04] Cameron: we are a body and We have a head that is Jesus Christ like We like the rugged individualism of Western of the Western world is antithetical to the practice of, or the witness of scripture, which describes the church as one. Yeah. United one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God, one father, uh, over us all, um, complete unity.

[00:28:33] Cameron: Um, and, but, um, so like even, even like corporate confession, why would we be, why are we corporately confessing everything? Jesus is my personal savior.

[00:28:49] Luke: Yes,

[00:28:55] Cameron: but he's also, he has also come like to redeem, not just you personally, your individual cute little soul, but like all, all of creation is bound up in the curse of sin, including us as a community of people.

[00:29:13] Cameron: Right. And so as a community, we have sinned as a people. We have sinned to look no further than the Israelites, right. As a people, they sought, they sinned. Right. Right. Um, and as a people sacrifice needed to be made for their atonement. Yeah. So there was one sacrifice made for the atonement of the people, not the individual Jew.

[00:29:35] Cameron: Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Um, and so there, um, Yeah. The, the communal aspect to our faith and to the practice of our faith is not, cannot be overlooked.

[00:29:48] Luke: Yep. Yeah. I, it's, we are the body of Christ. Do you think What would you say to, I know what I would say, but what, what, what, what would you say to the person who's like, what would you say to the question of, do you have to feel or have your heart be authentically aligned with the truth before you say it?

[00:30:18] Luke: Say it or confess it. No, why not Cameron? Why why shouldn't I? Why should I say the communion liturgy? Why should I say the communion liturgy even if it doesn't feel like it's coming out of an authentic Place in my heart where I feel it already

[00:30:39] Cameron: Because we are not a people that Operate on feelings we operate on truth like and the truth for us is the authority of God's Word Mm hmm.

[00:30:51] Cameron: So if this was like a You know, like a completely nonscriptural communion liturgy that was not grounded in like the words and truth of scripture that I would say, you know, maybe, you know, if you're not ready to. Say that or believe that don't sure. Right. But we, um, when we, when we enter belief is not a like belief is not like a linear process.

[00:31:15] Cameron: Like you either one day you don't believe in the next day you do believe, um, it is often, uh, It is often the process of the building of faith. And so then the question would be like, well, at what, what, at what point of the intensity of your belief, would you be ready to confess with your mouth? Also, I would say that like the act of confession.

[00:31:40] Cameron: Um, actually helps to build belief and actually helps to build faith. Right. Um, so I think in generally, that's what I would say. Would you say something different or along those same lines? Yeah,

[00:31:53] Luke: I think I'd say something around the same lines. I would say that like, maybe we've overemphasized this, like, um, there is there is a part of ourselves that can choose.

[00:32:12] Luke: Like, um, you know, that can choose. faith and can choose confession of truth, even if we're in a moment of not particularly feeling it or something like that. You know, there is a, um, place of like, okay, like why do I, why should I pray? Why should I read my Bible? Should I, should I do it because that's what I want to do?

[00:32:41] Luke: Or should I do that because that's the thing that I need to do or ought to do. And It's great if you wake up some mornings and you're like, Oh, I want to do my morning devotional, right? This is, like, we'll talk about morning devotional since that's like a discipline that pretty much any evangelical, non denominational Christian is going to be familiar with.

[00:33:05] Luke: But if you only do your devotionals on days you want to, where you're like, wow, it's coming out of an authentic place, I'm going to do it, how often are you going to do your devotional? Right? Well, well, what if you get up and you do it because you know it's the thing you need. You need Jesus today. Let's sit down and spend some time with him before I go throughout my day.

[00:33:27] Luke: And you will have days where you just kind of go through it and you're like, Didn't really meet with Jesus. Don't feel like I met with Jesus, but I showed up and I'm gonna trust that Jesus was there and in it and it's gonna bless my faithfulness. And then some days it's going to be like, whoa, that was like, like, I just felt like I had a coffee with Jesus or something like that.

[00:33:49] Luke: And you, you, you operate in both sides of the spectrum. If you only do it when you feel like it, you're not going to experience much benefit from it. You do it because of, like, this kernel of faith, or this commitment, or this belief, and saying, like, I want to want it. I want to believe it. I want to believe it.

[00:34:15] Luke: And so, like, showing up and saying the communion liturgy, or any liturgy, is a, like, is a showing up, and this is truth that I want to form me, and I want it to, like, It kind of becomes this whole like, you know, we enter into this chicken or the egg Thing of like does our confession and does our belief? uh Have to come from

[00:34:44] Cameron: does it form us or do we form it right?

[00:34:46] Cameron: We're not giving it meaning by our belief Yeah, it's giving us Meaning as it develops belief in us.

[00:34:54] Luke: Yeah. Yeah I don't know. It's maybe it's just the American individualism, we just all feel like we found the Bible and that it's up to us to like, magically reinterpret what the Christian faith is. Or make it our

[00:35:08] Cameron: own.

[00:35:08] Luke: Make it our own somewhere, somehow magically. Um, we're afraid to be connected to all of the Christians that came beforehand. Um, when I, when we talk with people who really struggle with Catholics and Catholicism and stuff, and there's, I'm not Catholic, we did a video where we responded to some Catholic critic, a Catholic critic, someone who was, uh, a Catholic who was criticizing Protestantism.

[00:35:38] Luke: Um, and it was amazing how many things we agreed on and how many things. That like, I don't know, there's a reason we're not Catholic. I'm not saying go be Catholic, be Protestant, right? I chose, chose to be Protestant for a reason. Um, but I think some people, the way that they kind of talk about Catholicism and other churches and other like faith expressions, You would seem to, they would seem to kind of default think, I don't know that they think through this implication, that there weren't any Christians until the Reformation.

[00:36:11] Luke: Like, there was the early church, which was like a magic little time of like a couple hundred years. And then, around like the first, certainly by the time of the first pope, the church disappeared. Yeah, for a century or two. Um,

[00:36:24] Cameron: longer than that, the church disappeared until Martin Luther decided that he was going to start a church again, start a

[00:36:30] Luke: church again.

[00:36:31] Luke: And, and then you've got Lutheranism and Calvin and all of that. And like, I'm like, well, Were there no faithful churches, no faithful Christians?

[00:36:42] Cameron: Yeah. They were just called Catholics.

[00:36:43] Luke: Yeah. Um, the other thing, the other thing that I have to, I sometimes challenge people who like, cause like more and more, like there was, you know, the rise of non denominationalism is still relatively new.

[00:36:58] Luke: Um, so everyone was coming out of denominationalism. And now you've got people who are growing up only in denominationalism, and they don't maybe understand, but they're like, well, Like all those crazy things like baptizing babies. That's like a big one or Liturgy and all this other weird stuff. Like that's that's not christianity.

[00:37:20] Luke: That's not Biblical and i'm like well Do you think that non denominationalism is suddenly the ones who've only gotten it right?

[00:37:29] Cameron: Right.

[00:37:30] Luke: Significantly enough so to be counted the church in the last 50 years? Yeah. Like, like, you, you, you realize because like a lot of people like to be like, well, like Calvin and Luther and like, rah, rah, the reformers, right?

[00:37:45] Luke: Yeah. I'm like, well, you probably wouldn't like Calvin's church very much, to be honest with you.

[00:37:52] Cameron: Go read, no, that wasn't Calvin. Was it Calvin that wrote Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God? No, that was,

[00:37:58] Luke: um, Jonathan Edwards. You wouldn't like Jonathan Edwards. Um, You wouldn't like Luther like Luther didn't want to separate from Catholicism.

[00:38:08] Luke: He wanted to reform reform it That's why it was called the Reformation and Like the amount of things that Luther and Calvin these other reformers that we like trumpet Shared in common with the Catholic Church would probably make you go Oh. And so I'm, I don't know, I'm not saying that you, you know, 'cause there's things you don't, I'm not saying that you have to believe those things.

[00:38:36] Luke: Right. But I am, I'm saying that I think sometimes the position we pigeonhole ourselves in pits us against the majority of Christians who've ever existed. Yep.

[00:38:47] Cameron: Yep. Yeah. People, people think, they look at me like I have two heads when I say that. I enjoy going to mass when I have opportunity. I'm not Catholic.

[00:38:58] Cameron: And, um, and you know, according to them, I can't take the Eucharist. Right. I can't participate in communion while I'm there. Um, but I do enjoy. Worshipping there because I understand that what's practiced there, I don't go there like trying to bring my sense of application or meaning to it. Right. I go there because there's a formative process that happens in the proclamation of the word and in the praying and in the, uh, scripture reading and in an opportunity to join with other Christians in the practice of faith.

[00:39:35] Cameron: Yep. Yeah. What do you mean you like going to a Catholic church? Do they make you pray to Mary? Uh, no, they don't actually. Um, but anyway, this is not like a

[00:39:52] Cameron: anti or pro Catholic conversation. No, it's not. What is liturgy? Why have we chosen to do it? Right. What is the, like, what is the kind of the content of our liturgy? Um, And, uh, and

[00:40:08] Luke: yeah, it's

[00:40:08] Cameron: still the, so, uh, issues, not issues, some of the interactions that we've had around it here at conduit. So,

[00:40:15] Luke: yeah. So if you have.

[00:40:17] Luke: questions about the liturgy and why we do it or liturgy in general or different types of liturgy. We'd love to hear from you so we could talk about it. So

[00:40:28] Cameron: it'll

[00:40:28] Luke: be great. Yeah. Was there anything else you wanted to hit on when it comes to that? So, um,

[00:40:32] Cameron: no, I don't, we appreciate y'all listening or watching or doing both, whatever it is that you're doing.

[00:40:40] Cameron: If you would like it, Share it, subscribe to it. We'd appreciate it. Um, as always, if you have any questions or topics that you would like to hear us talk about our text line is 7 1 6 2 0 1 0 5 0 7. We will catch you on the next

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