Not long ago, I attended a contemporary worship leader conference with some big names in modern worship. Matt Maher was one of the key participants. For those who don’t know, Matt Maher is best known as the author of the song Your Grace is Enough. This song is played in modern worship settings in countless churches every week. I just checked, and Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) lists it at #13 in their CCLI Top 100. If you tune to a Christian radio station, give it maybe 20 minutes, and I bet you’ll hear it. Especially if your Christian radio station is as repetitive as mine…

I only say this to establish this fact:  in terms of modern worship, Matt Maher is A Big Deal.

That being said, Matt Maher is also Catholic. I’ve always found this to be amazing. I’ve been leading groups with this song since its release and when I heard he was Catholic, I was somewhat amazed. Here’s a snippet of his lyrics:

Great is Your faithfulness O God of Jacob
You wrestle with the sinner’s restless heart
You lead me by still waters into mercy
Where nothing can keep us apart

So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise O God

For Your grace is enough
Yeah Your grace is enough
Yeah Your grace is enough
Yeah Your grace is enough for me

Now, his Catholic background amazes me for a couple of reasons. One, quite simply, is theology, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

The other is that he’s written a driving, pulsing, lively worship song that is embraced by churches across the denominational spectrum… and he’s done it all while being a part of a church steeped in age-old traditions and rituals… and organs. Such a dichotomy.

Maher is also interesting because he’s brilliant. Seriously, brilliant. A small group of conference attendees (perhaps a dozen of us were in the room) sat and listened to him talk for a couple of hours one day. I’m not sure I saw him breathe at all. The man has an amazing memory. Combine this with unique insight and wit and you’ve got someone that I can listen to for a while.

What was he talking about for 2 hours? Liturgy.

Completely off the cuff.

With no notes.

At all.

I thought the talk was going to be about meshing modern worship with traditional churches, at least that’s what I was hoping for. He never got to that topic (which he apologized for later). Instead, he walked us through the entire church calendar of the Catholic church, a calendar almost identical to that of the Lutheran church. And through this odd, lively Catholic, I found an appreciation for liturgy.

Maher addressed the fact that many “modern” churches are attempting to throw off “old” traditions in order to meet new generations where they are. His opinion seemed to be that while this approach may be successful in the short-term, these churches ultimately end up either bringing back some elements of these traditions later on or simply creating new ones that seem very similar to the old ones. He seemed to be saying that if you’re just going to come back to the same traditions you threw off, why throw them off to begin with?

He began to discuss the liturgical calendar of the church as an example of this, but I don’t think he ever got around to tying it back to his original point. Primarily because he was so clearly passionate about the liturgical calendar, that he distracted himself right out of the original topic of the discussion. And none of us seemed to mind…

Maher understood the liturgical calendar so well that he saw beauty in it. The liturgy follows the life of Christ from birth to ministry to death to resurrection and the descending of the Holy Spirit. It gives the church a way to ensure nothing gets missed, as the entire life of Christ is important to the walk of a Christian. Maher stepped through this calendar section by section, from memory, and with a passion that was contagious. Through him, I began to see the beauty in it as well.

While I can definitely see a beauty now in the liturgy, it still prompts some questions from me. The biggest question I have on this is:  how can the church ensure contextual relevance if it is locked into a set path through the scriptures? In non-liturgical churches, pastors discern the needs of the congregations in their care and select scriptures and teachings appropriate for those needs. But in a liturgical setting, the scriptures have already been selected. Wanna’ know what the sermon is for this week? It’s Mark 6:1-13. Wanna’ know next week’s? And the weeks after that? It’s all mapped out. We’ve got it all covered. Some Lutheran pastors, I’ve noticed, force themselves to “lock in” with the liturgical calendar and won’t stray from it. So while the church may have a need to hear a certain scripture or a certain topic addressed by the pastor, they may not be able to get it since the pre-selected scripture for that week has already been determined. Or worse still, a pastor may discern the need correctly and attempt to force the pre-selected scripture to fit an application that is out of place. These square-peg-round-hole sermons are immediately noticeable.

So while I see that a non-liturgical church can miss some important aspects in the scriptures as they strive to maintain contextual relevance, I also find that the occasional lack of contextual relevance in a liturgical church seems to be missing something. Is it possible to get the best of both worlds?