Connecting Life and Worship

Liturgy refers to the form of worship. I think of it as the order of service. Some churches have little to no formal order of service. Other churches have a predictable rhythm and pattern for their service.

With all the moves as a military kid and, now, as a military spouse, I’ve attended many different church denominations, which meant many different types of services. Some were structured. Some were not. I have found my favorite combination to be the one we have our current church — it uses the same liturgy weekly (form of worship), but changes the content regularly (the confessions of sin and confessions of faith, the prayers and songs).

Our church has consistency in the pattern of worship, but variety in the particulars.

At our house, we have been talking about what we like in a church. Our upcoming move is requiring us to sift through our wish lists in lots of areas, church selection being one of them. For church, there are some deal-breakers for us: most of those are covered in the Apostle’s Creed. But things like the order of service come down to preference. My hubby likes a more contemporary service and I love a more traditional one. Same with music.  But, in many ways our current church has been the perfect middle place for us.

So thinking about what I prefer in a church service has made me realize—I love liturgy!

My friend Cati and I have been chatting about this longing for tradition and we plan to explore how to incorporate elements of traditional worship at home. Of course, we pray and sing and read God’s Word. But what if we were more consistent in the pattern?

Recently, observing the church calendar has shown me that I find freedom in more structure. I know that this applies to my daily life and routine as well, but for lots of reasons, my daily schedule has lacked boundaries. I have had so much flexibility in my schedule, that sometimes it feels like the day never comes together, or that it falls apart.

Much of the flexibility comes from trying to be attentive to my hubby till he leaves for work and to my kiddos till they are done with breakfast. Once everyone else has started their days, I start mine. This was always the case, but now we start later than before and start times can vary.

I need more structure. But it is important to me that I remain flexible. Finding the middle place has always been hard for me. But what if, instead of trying to manage my schedule only, I also worked on doing a better job of connecting life and worship?

And I want to take a few pages from our church’s playbook—consistency in the pattern of worship, but variety in the particulars. So, my next (small) project will be looking at liturgy (the order of worship) as the inspiration for a Life of Worship. I’ll keep you posted!