From The Living Church-Growing up non-denominational, I entered adulthood with a healthy skepticism of rituals. After all, the Old Testament prophets call them “meaningless rites.” In the churches of my childhood, which tended to meet in elementary school auditoriums, we preferred “popcorn” prayer to liturgy and impromptu river dunkings to the sprinkling of holy water. Looking back, I realize that perhaps we had simply created our own set of rituals.
It wasn’t becoming an Episcopalian that changed my mind about the value of ritual; it was moving to Vietnam. As I studied the theory of cross-cultural disciple-making, especially in Symbol and Ceremony by A.H. Mathias Zahniser (MARC, 1997), I realized that the Holy Spirit has always used symbols and ceremonies to nurture the relationship between human beings and God, working through everyday materials such as wine, bread, wind, or fire. As Clark Pinnock said, believers remain malnourished when “we have no place for festivals, dramas, processions, banners, dance, color, movement, instruments, percussion, and incense. There are many notes on God’s keyboard which we often neglect to sound, with the result that God’s presence can be hard to access.”
More here-
http://www.livingchurch.org/our-blessed-place
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