Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year

Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the Mennonite Churches

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Prior to 1980, Mennonite churches in twentieth-century America planned and conducted worship with little reference to the Christian year. Apart from the major Christian festivals of Christmas and Easter, neither the days and season of the liturgical calendar nor the lectionary exerted much influence on their patterns of worship. Good Friday was observed in some congregations and Pentecost was often noted, but among many groups, services proper to the seasons were unknown.

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Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod

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The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, in continuity with Martin Luther and subsequent confessional Lutheranism, observes the full, traditional Christian year as a vehicle of the gospel. In the 1980s, some Missouri Synod churches moved away from the church year as too restrictive, while others sought an even more thorough appropriation of the church’s ancient liturgical heritage.

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Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel

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For most of its seventy-year history, the calendar of the Foursquare Church has included the observance of certain religious holidays, such as Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. In the United States, Foursquare churches have also held rallies on July 4 and Thanksgiving expressing gratefulness to God for the Christian influence in the nation’s heritage, and have emphasized family values on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and in some cases, Children’s Day.

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Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in Independent Fundamentalist and Evangelical Churches

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Many independent churches and other evangelical churches with roots in revivalism have been most suspicious of any observance of liturgy in whatever form, especially observance of the church year. An anti-intellectual, anti-formal, and anti-liturgical mindset is part of the heritage of these churches. At the beginning of the twentieth century, many pastors had little seminary training and many had received their only education in a Bible school. Thus, they had little basis for appreciating liturgy. Hence clerical robes, use of candles, liturgical colors, and so forth were left for certain “formalist denominations” (Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and of course, the Roman Catholics). The independent church was not the choicest of soils for germination of worship renewal. Nevertheless, it has occurred and continues to grow.

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Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the Friends (Quaker) Churches

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Quakers have historically rejected symbolism, the observance of special days, and other ceremonies and forms as human inventions. They regard such ceremonies and forms as unnecessary when individual believers can experience the Spirit of God directly. In addition, they believe avoidance of such externals protects believers from the idolatry into which humankind so easily falls.

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Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

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Full observance of the church year is central to Lutheran spiritual life. Lutherans have been influenced by ecumenical developments, as seen in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s adoption of the Roman Catholic calendar and lectionary. They have also influenced the ecumenical development of the Christian year, particularly in the observance of Advent.

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Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the Evangelical Free Churches

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In its origins, the Evangelical Free Church sharply rejected the practice of the Christian year as part of the rigid structures of the state church. Congregations today usually recognize Advent, Christmas, and Holy Week in some fashion, but formal adherence to the liturgical calendar remains almost nonexistent. A recent renewal of emphasis on worship in general, however, may bring about new attention to the Christian year.

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Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the Evangelical Covenant Churches

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The Evangelical Covenant Church emerged from small groups of believers (conventicles) that met to cultivate warm personal piety. It has also—on a customary rather than mandatory basis—sustained observance of the church year, which keeps the Christian story alive and vivid in the community.

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Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in Eastern Orthodox Churches

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The Orthodox church sanctifies time with daily, weekly, and annual cycles of celebrations that commemorate instances of God’s redemptive action in human experience. At the center of the numerous events of the Orthodox church year stands the Easter celebration of the triumph of life over death and light over darkness.

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