It's true. For a long time I was anti-church calendar, anti-liturgy, etc. I remember hating having to go to a Good Friday or Christmas Eve service (and this at a church that didn't recognize the church calendar at all). Then I did my stint of anti-church in college, which worked out "oh so well." So it's probably ironic to find me in a traditional liturgical worship, especially this week when there are services nearly every day. For a while, I struggled to explain it, but I found the book that puts it into words. This isn't a new book, but Dr. Bob Webber's Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail (available through my aStore here) emphasizes the beauty and mystery of God celebrated in liturgical worship. It is a relatively short, simple read (less than 150 pages I believe) and yet it is clear how relevant liturgical worship was to Dr. Webber. I know that things like Lent went from "geez, I have to give this up, I can't wait for Lent to be over" to a more Christ-like approach in the vein of the Book of Common Prayer description: "the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word."

In any church or faith, it is important to understand the rituals and methods of worship. In the anti-liturgical methods of Sunday worship, they are actually quite "liturgical" in the literal sense, and I believe that it is important to understand those as well. Diversity in worship in Christ's Church is important, to be sure, provided a certain focus is present. I'd like to see a better understanding amongst Christian traditions of "the other ones" out there, and by that I do not mean other faiths, but other practices in the Christian Church. I grew up not understanding, heck, not knowing about the church calendar because our churches did not teach us about them, and that to me is a huge loss. All this to say that I cannot write to nearly the quality and elegance of Dr. Webber's standards, so go read his book instead.