…after I declared I was socially stunted because of my intense dislike for calling people that I don’t know on the phone :

“Social stunting is God’s way of keeping engineers from ruthlessly running roughshod over society.”

Thanks, Geof.

Pastor Richard gave me this wonderful (if a bit long) quote from C. S. Lewis regarding consistency in the worship service:

I think our business as laymen is to take what we are given and make the best of it. And I think we should find this a great deal easier if what we were given was always and everywhere the same.

To judge from their practice, very few Anglican clergymen take this view. It looks as if they believed people can be lured to go to church be incessant brightenings, lightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications, and complications of the service. And it is probably true that a new, keen vicar will usually be able to form within his parish a minority who are in favour of his innovations. The majority, I believe, never are. Those who remain - many give up churchgoing altogether - merely endure.

Is this simply because the majority are hide-bound? I think not. They have a good reason for their conservatism. Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they don’t go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or, if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best - if you like, it “works” best - when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice… The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshiping. The important question about the Grail was “for what does it serve?” “Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the God.”

A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question “What on earth is he up to now?” will intrude. It lays one’s devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, “I wish they’d remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks.”

Thys my whole liturgiological position really boils down to an entreaty for permanence and uniformity. I can make do with almost any kind of service whatever, if only it will stay put. But if each form is snatched away just when I am beginning to feel at home in it, then I can never make any progress in the art of worship.

– from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

From Charles Spurgeon:

Fits of depression come over the most of us, usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, the joyous not always happy.

“I’ve noticed that when God wants me to follow Him in a particular direction, He usually doesn’t get me to do it by sending people to scream at me, argue with me, threaten me or poke me with sticks. He does it by heading off in that direction and relying on my new heart’s desire to be with Him. Maybe we should try to be more like God when it comes to getting people to follow us.” — Jim Nicholson

[HT: BHT]

Every generation has cooler music than the generation that came before it. Unless you’re two generations before and then it’s “hey, that’s kinda cool, let’s use that…”

– Josh Harris, talking about church music while preaching on Humble Orthodoxy