A richer experience. . .

I have often said, though not often enough, that every Christian should spend a week on a seminary campus or monastery to experience in depth the worship life of the Church.  Higher Things includes this as one of its most distinctive offerings for youth.  There is simply something different about worship every day with at least Matins and Vespers plus a daily Eucharist.  Instead of these becoming boring, they finally have a chance to impact us without being diluted by the passage of a week's worth of days and a life filled with distractions.  The result is not that you get tired of it but that the in depth experience of the Church's life in worship, concentrated as it is with the daily offices and the Divine Service, you wish you had it all the time.

The problem is that most of us experience the liturgy on a weekly or even less frequent basis.  I am sure that participation in the Divine Service on a monthly basis means that it is always a bit unfamiliar and distant to daily life.  The use of Vespers or Evening Prayer only during Advent and Lent means that these liturgies also become sort of familiar strangers.  We know them well enough to recognize them but not well enough to be absorbed in them.  It is like meeting someone at WalMart and knowing that you know them but not having a clue to where or how or their name.  Our lives are filled with familiar strangers and most of the time it does not matter but in worship it does.

The in-depth experience of the prayer offices and the Divine Service builds not simply an appreciation for these rites but the desire to know them even more deeply.  Every Sunday it is like a friendship renewed but when it is experienced on a daily basis it is like a longing for that friendship and a yearning for it to be renewed and deepened over and over again.

Regular church attendance is not primarily a benefit to the Church but it is a profound blessing to the individual and especially to the family.  Children learn by repetition -- repetition that is repeated more frequently only strengthens this learning.  Watching their parents participate only builds in the child a greater expectation of and desire for what is happening within the Divine Service.  Their appreciation of the Divine Service increases as they see the devotion expressed in what mom and dad do in the Divine Service -- from the routine of holding the book and following along the page to the devotional piety of kneeling, bowing, sitting, and standing.  The intensiveness of the experience encourages our participation as the prayer offices of the Church become the forms used in the home as well.

I am convinced that if our people experienced the full range of prayer offices and a more frequent than once weekly Eucharist it would encourage their more frequent attendance and help to solve the problem of regular attendance becoming largely once monthly.  Twelve times a year or so plus a few holy day services is not frequent enough for the liturgies of the Church to become a part of the piety and faith of the people.  So the trend to attend regularly but mostly once monthly will create even more familiar strangers on Sunday morning -- not only to the rest of the people gathered for worship but to the worship forms of the faith.  It happens with many of our youth at Higher Things.  The worship life of this event becomes one of its most distinctive identities.  There is simply something different about singing together as a large group, particularly with strong male voices.  The kids get this.  Even though they are in their home congregation on Sunday morning, the experience of so many their own age together so often during the days of the event week is also profound and transformative.

So what am I saying?  If you want a richer experience of the Divine Service and prayer offices of the Church, don't shop around for another congregation but participate in your own congregation's many offerings.  Offer to pray with your pastor the prayer offices each day.  Ask for a non-Sunday Eucharist to add to the regular Sunday Divine Service.  Invite others to come with you to these services.  It will help and not hurt both your faith and your piety.  It will strengthen the life of the congregation as more and more of the people become friends of the liturgy and the prayer offices and this familiarity encourages them to know these rites even better.  If you are going home thinking what did I get out of it, things might improve more by a more frequent and intensive participation in the Church's rhythm of worship daily and weekly rather than by finding a different congregation.