After two thousand years of development, the church has naturally developed a set of worship habits. And these habits of worship are liturgy. Although everyone is an independent individual with different personalities, emotions, cultures, thoughts, and expressions, when worshiping, everyone can have a unified body language and expressions. Through consensus, careful consideration, and continuous improvement, under such circumstances, a set of common ways are developed to express various theological thoughts during worship. These liturgies are the essence of time-honored practice and are the precious heritage of the church.
However, these liturgies cannot be understood by unbelievers, new believers, or normal believers. It is not that these rituals are meaningless, but it’s more than they can understand. Therefore, liturgy is unattractive to them, even boring. These dull impressions deterred them from the liturgical church.
Take mathematics as an example. Imagine a school that starts teaching calculus in the first grade. What are the consequences of this? How can a school appreciate the value of calculus when its students have no idea what basic mathematics is? Is calculus worthless? Does calculus have to be abolished? neither. The real reason is that in the first grade of elementary school, they have not yet able to understand calculus.
Therefore, is it reasonable for the church to expect non-believers, new believers, or ordinary believers to appreciate the liturgy and devote themselves to liturgical worship?
The church should face up to the problem. In the past, we often debated whether liturgy is valuable and whether it needs to be maintained. These are false propositions and will only shift our focus. The reason is simple; would we argue to abolish calculus in schools? Would we debate whether calculus has value? we will not. Why not? Because arguing only shows our stupidity.
In education, we will proceed step by step, so we have primary schools, middle schools, and universities, and the courses used are all developed slowly and orderly. Can the church also progress step by step?
The church must have fresh expression so that non-believers can gradually enter the church, integrate into the church, receive cultivation, receive training and grow spiritually. In addition to liturgical worship, can the church have more fresh ways of expression to provide more appropriate channels for non-believers to enter the church?
To plant more churches in every generation, we must change. If we want to fish, we must go where there are fish. Not only do we have to go where the fish are, we also must do it the right way. Otherwise, how would you catch fish?