Perhaps there is a third truth that combines transcedence and immanence -- trans-immanence? My worship experience is not dependent solely on the style or choice of musical instruments; guitars and drums alone don't define my worship -- I experience reverence and the awesome vastness of God and His son Jesus in hymns, in a symphony, in Handel's Messiah, in a choir of many and in a choir of one, in the voices of youth praising our Lord and in their faces of innocence and reverent praise, in a stadium of women singing at Women of Faith events and in the silence of reading the psalms of praise in the bible. Experiencing the awesome transedence of God likely has many fabrics, colors, and music... Lynn

Fr. David,

Your thoughts resonate with much of my own experience, and I run into these questions of immanence and transcendence quite a bit in planning and officiating at chapel services with young people 7 times a week. There is a great deal of pressure to have worship that is accessible - and one place I interviewed while leaving seminary was reworking its whole music offerings to include a great deal of rock music...

...on the other hand, if we can't offer some transcendence in worship, I don't know where they will get it...

...you have me thinking!

Peter+

"Trans-immanence." I like that Lynn. In worship lingo, we kight call it "blended."

I was struck by the word, "reverent." I have an article that summarizes some very extensive survey research correlating various characteristics of churces with membership growth. According to that researcher, churches that descibed their worship as "reverent" had mostly declined between 2000 and 2005.

I suppose a lot depends here on how you define "reverent." The researcher suspected that the term connotes boring, stilted and uninspiring worship. So now what I wonder is how do you envision "reverent" worship that isn't any of those things? And more to the point, how do we make sure that worship at Epiphany is reverent for all ages, but not boring or stilted?

Thanks much Lynn, for your thoughtful comments.

Over at the other blog that started this thread of mine, Donald Schell summarized in more practical terms what transcedence and immanence might look like in our worship, both good and bad:

"I suspect that what we call immanent feels easily accessible and that its danger is banality (though at its best simple music and strong direct language are capable of poetry and mystical heights). I suspect that what we call transcendent is less immediately accessible. At its worst its forbidding, and at its best quietly compelling or demanding."

Some in the Episcopal Church are concerned that our liturgy is too "demanding" for the unchurched. I worry that attempts to make our worship more "accessible" short-change worshipers by not challenging them to deepen their understanding in faith. But make too many demands, and you risk making us Episcopalians so forbidding that people don't accept the challenge.