A church big enough for us all

My guess is that Catholicism (I'm ignorant of the day to day realities of Orthodoxy and Calvinism so I won't address them) does fine speaking to poor cradle Catholics. Even if we confine ourselves to the post-industrial revolution American scene its clear that the Catholic church was the church of scores of un-lettered, un-moneyed workers for a very long time. And still today if you go to the poor Mexican and Polish neighborhoods of Chicago you find vibrant Catholic faith.

But I can see how it seems incredibly implausible that a poor, under-educated person not brought up in Catholicism would ever find their way into the church. The doctrine is complicated, the liturgy even more so, and quite frankly, the traditional, high-church style of Catholicism (which I like quite a bit) comes across to outsiders as inherently snooty and wealthy.

I guess it depends on what one means by "viscerally engaging". I know this is different for everyone, and I'm sure this is due to the fact that I was raised Catholic, in a very religious family and in a very small-o orthodox parish, but I find silent Eucharistic Adoration much more "viscerally engaging" than a bunch of people jumping up and down clapping.

After all, the whole point of medieval stained glass windows, religious music, etc. was to "viscerally engage" the faithful.

But I agree that a church that calls itself the Universal Church has an obligation to try to meet all believers or potential believers where they live. I think it was James Joyce who said, "Catholicism means 'here comes everybody.'"

Location, location, location.

Too often the elephant in the room is something along the lines of:

Is my church located in a place where a poor or working-class family would be aware of its existence?

If someone without a reliable car somehow found out about my church and wanted to visit this Sunday, would they be able to walk or get a bus there?

For my parish, the answer to both these questions is "definitely not." In fact, we're in a college town and located in a place that makes it awful hard even for students to get to church on Sunday. Many Orthodox kids on campus don't even know that an Orthodox parish exists in town.

But in the ghetto side of town where I live, there are a dozen thriving Pentecostal (in the broad sense) churches within a ten-minute walk from my house. Two are less than a block away. On a bike, I could choose from thirty without even getting winded.

One church whose congregation is largely homeless has two yellow schoolbuses that they send out all over town to pick folks up before services.

Not one Catholic or Orthodox parish here on the east side of town. Certainly no big yellow bus.

When I lived without a car in Los Angeles, it was a 90-minute bus ride (one way) to get to the nearest Orthodox parish, about eight miles (and 2 transfers) away. I was dedicated enough to attend anyways, but inviting friends wasn't easy ("Want to visit my church... and spend your whole day getting there and back again?").

We middle-classers will gladly drive 30 ~ 40 minutes to our church of choice. But folks without such mobility are going to go to the neighborhood church. And if we have no parishes in the poor neighborhoods, then we're excluding poor parishioners.

On the other hand, I've thought for years as a Catholic, and still think as an Orthodox, how hard it would be for a working man who was broken and who needed Jesus to walk in off the street and find him at one of our churches. Oh, Jesus is there, make no mistake -- but he's a lot harder to find than at one of the charismatic churches.

Well, perhaps part of the problem is that, in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the liturgy has never really been the "entry-level" step. There was a time when only the baptised were allowed to attend the Eucharist; the Catechumens (those preparing for baptism) were dismissed at a certain point. The liturgy was never designed to appeal to curious outsiders.

After all, when babies start to learn how to eat, they aren't given Boeuf Bourgignon right away. When children are just learning how to read, we don't hand them "Ulysses". Some things need preparation and increased familiarity in order to be understood and appreciated properly.

So lots of people find evangelical worship more *immediately* appealing and engaging. A lot of Americans find junk food more immediately appealing than good food, too. It taste good the first time you eat it. That doesn't mean it's the best thing for you in the long run, and that doesn't mean that, with time, you can't learn to appreciate good food or good literature, or good liturgy.

What to do about this? Perhaps Catholic and Orthodox parishes need to work on outreach, on reaching people on levels other than just "Come to Mass/Liturgy this Sunday!"

A vibrant parish, of whatever denomination, has a lot more going on than just the liturgy. The members of such a parish do a lot more together than just meet for liturgy or Mass on Sunday mornings. There should be many ways to get interested outsiders involved and interested in the other things going on in such a parish. So even if they are mystified and put off by the liturgy at first, there are other reasons for them to keep coming back, until eventually they find that the liturgy has become familiar to them.

After all, the liturgy is in many ways a symbolic language, and becoming familiar with the liturgy is almost like learning a new language (and I'm not referring to Latin); familiarity and proper appreciation take time.

And, after all, Rod, if I remember correctly what you said about your conversion, what really attracted you and your family to your Orthodox parish was not just the Liturgy (though that played a big part), but also the sense of community that you found there. In other words, they did a lot more for you than just invite you to attend the Liturgy.

Rod,

This is a great topic, one that's I've discussed at length with Frederica and other folks in the Orthodox community. You're definitely correct in your demographic observations. The Orthodox Church has lagged mightily - even in proportion to its small size in America - in the area of charity and outreach and evangelism to the poor.

I don't have time to post much now, but I think it's very important to explore the corollary - the appeal of the traditional/liturgical churches to non-whites, who are obviously more likely to be found within the poorer communities. You'd be much more likely to find a poor person in an Orthodox parish than you would be to find a black person. (At least an "American black"; there are a small handful of Ethiopians.) This is something my wife, a black woman, has struggled with mightily. I expect this is true of the Catholic and Episcopalian churches as well.

Because of the connection between poverty and race, I'd strongly recommend getting in touch with Fr. Moses Berry, a black Orthodox priest and former convict who has often been one of the only folks doing Orthodox outreach in hardcore American communities. Part of an interview AGAIN did with him is available online:

http://conciliarpress.pinnaclecart.com/index.php?p=page&page_id=again_berry_interview_part_one

Here's a great quote:

Archbishop Nathaniel asked me to come and speak to a meeting of people from two gangs that he was organizing as an introduction to the Church. He and Fr. Roman Braga were bringing these people together to at least try to do something to stop this gang war that was going on. I got there, and there was a big auditorium filled with young people. And they were all African American. And the staff was African American. And they had some Afrocentric poet who was talking to them about their condition and how we had to rise up against the oppressor. I had to follow that act.

There were only three white people in the whole place—Archbishop Nathaniel and Fr. Roman, and a young man, Nick Zabrodsky, who was coordinating the event. And they were sitting in the front row, and they were looking up at me, and they were smiling. I began to tell the young gang members about St. Moses and all the Desert Fathers. I talked about all these people who looked just like them, and I showed them icons that looked like them. I believe that in order for a person to become deified, they have to know that deification is possible in their own flesh. When a person only sees representations that don’t remind them of their own humanity, it is more difficult for them to partake of the wonderful gift that is available. So I talked about those African saints, and some of these young men—these tough, tough fellows—were in tears. One of the young men who was there is now a subdeacon in his church. I’ve just come from Detroit and met many of the young people who were at that gathering. So, no matter how tough the setting, we can touch people’s hearts.

The second part of the interview isn't online yet. (I'll try to get it up soon.) It's in the Spring 2007 issue of AGAIN. But here's a great quote from that as well:

"Every Wednesday, we go to our family’s cemetery and sing an Akathist to the Mother of God at the chapel there. The cemetery is on the National Historic Places registry; it’s dedicated to slaves, Indians, and paupers and has Osage Indian burial mounds. Some of Harriet Tubman’s people are buried there; there are lots of graves of slaves, with markers. Once, my great aunt, my mother, and all these old black ladies came to an Akathist—because it’s their folks who are buried in that cemetery. And I remember these ladies saying, “This sounds just like the way the old folks used to sing it.” I wondered, “What does this mean? This is not their kind of music.” But, I realized, there is something very familiar to the African American in Orthodox music. You know what it is? It’s a sound that is born out of suffering.

"The first stage of musical development in the African American community, the spirituals, came from slavery in the antebellum South, up until the Civil War. From this we have, “Swing down sweet chariot, stop and let me ride. I got a home on the other side.” These songs had to do with hope in the world to come. They had nothing to do with hope in this world, because the slaves had no hope in this world. They were not citizens of this world. So they sang, “I am a pilgrim and a stranger, travelin’ through this wearisome land.”

"The next stage of African American religious musical development, after freedom, was based entirely on the teachings of Jesus, with the Lord’s ability to help mankind. We hear, “He’ll reward us when He comes to take His pride away.” Or, “One day the disciples asked Jesus, ‘Master, who did sin, this man or his parents?’ He said, ‘Neither this man, nor his parents, but that the works of God may be manifest in him.’” This was gospel music.

"The newest phase of African American worship music is entirely contemporary. It sounds like pop music. So, in order for Orthodox Christians to develop the kind of music that will actually resonate with the soul of black folks (to use the term of Dubois), we have to go back to earlier African American traditions. There, the expression of suffering and deliverance through hope in Christ finds a natural connection with Church tradition. Remember, many Orthodox Christian liturgical musical forms are based on folk melodies, so I believe it’s possible for more music to be created from yet another people’s spiritual journey. Let’s pray together that God raise up a melodist!

"National Geographic made a short film of our museum and our church. There’s a scene where the congregation sings, in English to a Slavonic melody, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal.” Black people call me about the film all the time. And they always ask, “What is that music?” There’s a deep connection."

Terry Mattingly makes the same point in his interview:

http://conciliarpress.pinnaclecart.com/index.php?p=page&page_id=again_mattingly_interview

"We have much we can learn from Anglicans in the Third World about what a liturgical evangelism might look like. Even though much of what they’re doing is charismatic, in a very real sense of that word, I still think we can pay attention to what they’re doing and learn from it. It might be Calvinistic, but it is still going to have more of a liturgical form than, say, the Southern Baptist Convention would have over there. There are going to be some very alive, highly Catholic elements. For example, the African church—African culture itself—has a heavy emphasis on authority and patriarchy. This means African bishops are going to be much more a kind of spiritual father model than you would experience in America, where bishops are thought of as super-theology professors who are appointed because of a combination of management skills and lecture skills. Instead of being primarily an intellectual or administrative leader, an African bishop is much more of a spiritual father or shepherd—even if that person has two degrees from Oxford.

"African Christians are also dealing with a situation in which some of their own children could be kidnapped by Moslems. Or if you’re the Anglican bishop in Singapore, you’re literally dealing with the occult in many, many cases. These are not people who doubt the reality of a pre-modern spiritual world. The lives of the saints speak to these people in ways that we just don’t have any understanding of."

I'd say that in the end, for the American lower classes you're talking about, they're justifiably skeptical. They need to know that in the Orthodox Church (or I expect any traditional Church) they will find not only Jesus Christ but salvation - the healing and transformation of their own individual lives. Will they find the Holy Spirit? Will they find true aid in the earthly and spiritual battles they are engaged in? Will a life in the Orthodox Church help them with drugs, or violence, or hunger, or neglect, or discrimination, or any of the other daily trials more likely to be visited upon you if you're poor? Does the Church understand suffering? Does it offer the Body and Blood of Christ as healing for that suffering? That's the question.

Christ Bless,
Doug

I'd add to Douglas Cramer's laundry list of spiritual needs is "redemption." Pentecostal churches recognize the important of redemption and hope in poor people's lives. By committing your life to God, you can be redeemed from all of your past sins and transgressions--even if you happen to fall over and over again--and that hope is something you can touch and taste.

When you go to a Pentecostal service--which is often led by a woman--you can feel the spirit in the room. Those people on their feet swaying and shouting and singing are feeling the spirit. Now, compare that to your average Catholic mass or Orthodox service where women are almost never heard and everyone is expected to remain still and quiet.

One of my pet theories ... as in it'll take more work and more time to see if there's anything of substance in it, and I may not get around to it... is this: One effect of the reformation in the West is that much of the diverse expressions of religious life that had begun to flourish were, de facto, sort of conceded to one traddition or the other. That is, the intimate experiences of small religious communities became "Mennonite," and Catholicism became all about the Mass, and... well maybe you get the picture.

My point here is that it seems to me entirely feasible to imagine a "church big enough for all of us" if we've give up our sense of a proprietary hold on this or that "spirituality" as "ours." So why not have "prayer meetings" within the Catholic and Orthodox traditions that would not substitute for but be in addition to the central act of the community's worship?

In Catholic circles, as we've seen discussed here on another thread, we've so often felt the pressure to inject everything into Sunday worship at mass. (And thus "charismatic masses," "folk masses," etc., much to the confusion of the community and dilution of the mass). But why would we imagine these as "either/or"?

I agree, then, that the Anglican communion has this right in a certain way, although my Catholic friends in Uganda see much of the same there. The key is listening to the community... and, before some of my brothers and sisters in the RCC pounce, listening to the community does not mean dissension from Rome.

the location post is a little chicken-or-the-egg, no? There used to be Catholic parishes, say, all over the south side of chicago, where I used to live. But then the Catholics left, and so the parishes emptied. Ånd pentecostals moved in. Right?

When I read about evangelizing the poor, I immediately thought about the Desert Fathers and St. Francis. And then the Little Sisters of Jesus.

The answer has to be in simplicity and renunciation.

We just haven't seen it yet.

I wonder what part the educational requirements of clergy plays into this, if at all. Did Ricky get a Masters of Divinity before opening up his storefront church? Can a highly educated clergy appeal to the working class & poor as well as a fellow traveller or will they, by virtue of their background, appeal to the middle class more?

No, but he may ask what you did to minister to the poor. And if your "denomination" isn't doing much, Rod's questions are good ones to ask.

OK. But that's not a denominational question, is it. Still less is it a question about which language you conduct your services in.

When my parents spent a year in Singapore they got to know the Little Sisters of the Poor, who at that time were still running this home for the indigent elderly there: http://www.sainttheresahome.org/history.html

When we lived near Bremerton, WA, our pastor would get to know the homeless people who would come into the church to sleep during the night (the church was open for perpetual Eucharistic Adoration). He often helped them with everything from government assistance to jobs, even locating farm work for someone who wanted to be away from the city.

The priest who said Mass yesterday at my parish was a visiting missionary from Guatemala. Though that country of approx. 13 million people is very poor, 77% are still Catholic, and there are currently 350 seminarians, from what Father said. This quiet, reverent, holy man literally begged our congregation for financial assistance for the poor in his country and for the education of these seminarians, most of whom come from families who deal with desperate poverty in a way many of us can't even imagine.

And the Missionaries of Charity--well, what do you say about an order that ripped out the carpet and the central heating in a home donated to them because these luxuries would make it harder for them to live in solidarity with the poor whose lives they choose to share?

Frankly, I think we do the poor a huge disservice if we take a default position that beautiful churches or elaborate liturgy won't appeal to them, or that they're only looking for a superficial, emotionally-driven encounter with God. Those Catholics, clergy and lay, whose daily work takes them among the poor assume no such thing.

Susan, I think the issue is important for Catholics because the only thing keeping American Catholicism afloat is the influx of immigrants from Latin America, and Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the Pentecostal movement. If the Vatican can't even keep Latinos in the U.S., the U.S. church will be devastated.

Yes, Daniel, this may well be true. That the US Catholic Church may be devastated. So what? (The US bishops have already done a pretty good job of "devastating" this organization; they don't need any help from the pentecostals, so far as I can tell.)

Life is Christ is so much more than "being good." It's a new fellowship under God's reign, and the judgment of God is present here, now, and we are in God's presence here, and now. So to make ethics normative and worship just a matter of personal style seems to me to reduce the transformative power of the Gospel, ultimately to the diminishment both of the moral life and worship's power to "make us one in Christ."

So please pardon us if we're trying to imagine how the booming, buzzing confusion that is our human community might be imagined to be "one." And if we try to see some consistency in fellowship between our forms of worship. And if we're trying to imagine ways that the beauty, ever ancient and ever new, can be present to everyone, and still be right worship (ortho-doxa, for all us grad degree types.)

Yes Kevin. Being a follower of Jesus is so much more than privately "being good" (whatever that means). But Kevin, does it come down to meaning being a member of some particular organization? So that my membership card in the RC Church or the Orthodox Church (hey, which one?) is the password?

I'd like our "booming, buzzing confusion" to be "one" as much as you would. But where I get off the train is where you say that "in order to do this, you have to be a [Roman Catholic] [Greek Orthodox] [Russian Orthodox] [Calvinist Protestant] [whatever!]."

Maybe we can only really be one if we love each other, as the Master said.

I don't see much love in these liturgical/denominational disputes. Still less when we start in on what LANGUAGE we're using, for cryingoutloud!!

Give it a rest.

Daniel:

"your average . . . Orthodox service where women are almost never heard and everyone is expected to remain still and quiet."

A still and quiet Orthodox service where you can't hear the women? Whatever odd little parish you visited (are you SURE it was Orthodox?), I promise it wasn't average.

It's not the only step, but the first step in serving the disadvantaged is always dwelling among them. Not going on outreach trips into the ghetto, but establishing roots-- a mission parish-- in the ghetto. Folks aren't going to visit our church if they can't find it. The biggest reason so many poor folk are attracted to Pentecostalism is because Pentecostals build churches among poor folk.

A still and quiet Orthodox service where you can't hear the women? Whatever odd little parish you visited (are you SURE it was Orthodox?), I promise it wasn't average.

Too true! In our parish, most of the liturgy is sung, and the women in the choir are such a beautiful and important part of the service.

FWIW, my Dearly Beloved has about twice the eddication i do (right to and through the Piled-Higher-n-Deeper, and our most frequent faith related conversation (married 22+ yrs. now) turns on her puzzlement over why anyone, even the older lived-there-forever types, want a liturgical service. Most mainline/oldline and Anglican/Catholic/Orthodox worship strikes her as repetitive to no good end, barely audible, and when it is takes little or no interest in the transformation of the lives of the hearers. "Why would you go to that for fifty years?" I'm ordained in a mildly liturgical denomination (Disciples of Christ) which does anchor each week's worship on the Communion Meal, and even that strikes her as "vain repetitions." She's not against it, but my desire to drive an extra twenty miles on a vacation Sunday to get to service where Communion is involved isn't sensible to her, but she goes because she loves me. She loves Him, too, and i know fewer people for a hundred miles around who have laid her life down for the poor, the broken, the lost, and those unreached by the Good News, in a way few in the congregations i've served over the years have had anyone want to try.

So it ain't education that makes it attractive, is all i'm saying. I'm part-time staff now at a Methodist church that has both traditional liturgical worship (robes, choirs, responsive readings) and CCM style with a leaven of folks who don't mind raising their hands in the air when the Spirit moves them during the chorus; guess which service provides 90% of the people who go on mission trips and visit the sick and stock the pantries, while they're less than 50% of the congregation. Yep. I would miss the Gloria Patri and Doxology and weekly Communion greatly, and like to preach off the lectionary cycle and have a few responsorial prayers, but if i had to pick one worship contingent to fill sandbags, muck out a house, or pray next to me in a crisis situation at a major accident scene with the VFD, it's the CCM/Charismatic crowd everytime.

Pax et gratia,
Jeff
http://knapsack.blogspot.com

Rod, I understand what you're getting at, but I think of the scriptural point that ministering to the soul while ignoring the physical needs doesn't end up evangelizing after all. We have to do both, and in the context of the poor we have to minister to the body first; there can be no strings attached, either. If the quiet and humble witness of those who work among the poor doesn't directly lead to conversions, it's an important first step.

I think an understanding of the religious situation in Latin America requires a firm grasp of the political reality (a grasp which, I must admit, I presently lack). People, rich, poor, or middle class, leave the Church for complicated reasons--I would doubt that those raised Catholic in Latin American suddenly don't understand the faith their even less-educated ancestors practiced their whole lives. But war has torn many of these countries in the last hundred years, the Church has been suppressed by political regimes in some areas, and in other places Church leaders have, rightly or wrongly, been identified with the rich ruling classes. All of these can create reasons for people to be drawn away to a new, more "exciting" church.

Of course, when it comes to zeal, personality counts for a lot. I have a relative in the South where Catholics are scarce: she has tried to convert a stranger met by chance in a shoe store (and the woman agreed to accept a book mailed to her and to read it), the first batch of roofing contractors who came to repair a leak in her roof not that long ago, and if there *were* a butcher, baker, and candle-stick maker she'd be handing out rosaries to all three. In all honesty, her style's not mine either, but I can't help but appreciate her enthusiasm!

the Novus Ordo Latin mass was, when Fr. Weinberger was in town saying it, in the barrio

And how many non-white people who actually lived in the barrio actually attended?

The premise of this thread is all wrong, at least with regard to the Catholic Church. One of the most appealing things about Catholicism to me has always been precisely that it's NOT an association of middle and upper class stuffed shirts. There are thousands of thriving Catholic parishes in poor neighborhoods, and many parishes where the congregation looks like the United Nations -- not just Spanish speaking immigrants, but Filipinos, Chinese, Africans, South Asians, etc.

And, contra the poster above who suggested that the scarcity of black Americans in Orthodoxy is "presumably" similar to the situation in Catholicism, it just isn't. There are multiple large, predominantly black, Catholic parishes in every city in this country -- and they are generally thriving much more than the upper middle class suburban parishes, where a spiritual ennui has so often set in. Among the many dramatic religious shifts in the United States since the mid-1960s, one of the least commented-upon has been the movement of large numbers of African Americans into the Roman Catholic Church. This has caused a bit of tension, incidentally, between the relatively small number "native" black Catholics (mostly from Louisiana and southern Mississippi), who are often very "high church" and the large number of 1st and 2nd generation black converts, who typically prefer a "gospel-style" of Catholic worship.

I would suggest that the reason a poor white person in the Bible Belt would have a tougher time entering Catholicism or Orthodoxy is that evangelicalism/pentecostalism is his or her cultural heritage. Whether he knows anything at all about Christianity, that tradition is the air he breathes. A poor Russian presumably doesn't have a tough time entering Orthodoxy. Certainly a poor Latin American doesn't have trouble entering into Catholicism.

But this is distinct from saying that we ought to be concerned about worshiping God rightly, and bringing the Gospel to "every nation," and somehow figuring out how to be one church and do that.

The key word here is "rightly."

Now then. Does "rightly" mean, "in [Latin] [Greek] [English] [according to form X]"?

OK if that's what you mean, Kevin. (Please to be more specific about the rite/language you think is "right", so we'll all know what standard we should conform to. According to you.)

Jesus talked a lot more about the heart. Than about the rest of this stuff. You'd disagree, Kevin? He and I are "begging the question"?

Kevin,

God should be worshipped "in spirit and in truth" says the Master. (He could have said "in Latin," but he didn't! Imagine!)

You say, "I believe that Orthodox and Catholic worship that is alive to the presence of the living God in their midst, and that sets us afire to spread the gospel, to care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, will have its own attraction in any season, precisely because it worships God rightly" and I'd agree, except I wouldn't exclude the Protestants as you do. (You got issues?)

So far so good. Get over the idea that you know everything, and we'll get along very well.

Susan. I think you have many presuppositions that are just plain wrong that keep you from understanding reality concerning Orthodoxy and Catholocism in particular. I'll speak for Orthodoxy. You get hung up on Language and liturgy. We sometimes get hung up on language because, well, people got comfortable with things and don't like change, but Orthodoxy has always been gung ho for putting scripture and liturgy in the language of the people. Most parishes in the US have most of the liturgy in English. We sometimes get hung up on Ethnicity because, well, we're people, but that doesn't mean that Greeks, Russians, Serbians, Americans, etc arent all part of the same church. Liturgy, for us, is just a given.
We also do not insist that you need to be orthodox to be saved. Why would we? We aren't the Judge. We do get hung up on Doctrin. Doctrin is the basis of unity. If we don't believe the same things how can we be unified? We also believe that the orthodox Church is the continuation of the church founded at pentacost and preserves the fullness of the gospels and is the best guide to salvation (Catholics, I should hope, believe the same). Thats us. at least, please, understand us before making your arguments. Many of them have been silly simply because you don't.

I think that many people are attracted to or become involved with Pentecostals because Pentecostals reach out to others. I'm not saying that other religious groups don't reach out to the poor or the down and out, but part of being a Pentecostal is sharing on an intimate & personal level what it means to be a Christian & inviting others into that world.

My church(Presbyterian USA)is very involved in missions on a local, national, and international level. But the congregation, generally speaking, would not think to stop someone on the street & invite them to church. I've had periods in my life when I've been down. I tend to withdraw from others, including the church, when I reach these lows. I leave the church & never hear from anyone, even people with whom I've become close, to see what's up. I don't think that happens in Pentecostal land as much. My congregation is always willing to help if you seek the help, but they don't look to help if you don't initiate.

I don't feel comfortable in a Pentecostal church, but I admire that Pentecostals are always looking to draw you into their church. Really, in my entire life, the only people who have ever approached me to attend their church in an attempt to bring me closer to God have been Pentecostals.

My church has a sister church in Guatemala. One day we had guests who shared with us the work that they were doing in Guatemala. Our minister shared with us some of his experiences. He spoke of a Guatemalan woman who was very thankful for the assistance that her church had received. He said that she would proudly state, "I am Presbyterian." He said(as a joke), "Trust me. She is more Pentecostal than Presbyterian(she's pretty charismatic & Presbyterians are good at laughing at themselves because charisma isn't their thing), but because of the assistance that the Presbyterians have given her, she thinks of herself as Presbyterian."

Sorry, that was my post, I meant to add my name.

Susan, I don't think anyone would argue that anyone sincerely wanting to get to God can't get there, but that's a different issue altogether from the one of "did Jesus found a church and which one is it?" We Catholics believe that *anyone* wanting to see God with all the sincerity of their heart can attain salvation! It's right there in black and white.
But that is no contradiction to saying the Church is the one founded by Christ. It is our sincere hope as well that everyone who wants God fully also finds Him in the Church, since, as others have more eloquently stated, it is His will that all be one.
I think I would argue that no, Jesus isn't going to look at my membership card. But holding the membership card gives me access to the sacraments and the grace and the fullness promised by He who cannot fail [and we Catholics believe the Orthodox have true sacraments too :-) ]
In short, one can get by with less, but why settle for less? go ahead - get the full course with the appetizer and dessert. Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

This is an interesting discussion. Let me weigh in as a Pentecostal. First, I think one point Roman Catholics and Orthodox believers fail to understand is that Pentecostalism is not just a juiced-up segment of Protestantism. It has a great deal in common with medieval Roman Catholicism, for example, so in that sense one could read it as a restoration or renewal movement. Dreams, visions, the "fire of love" and feelings of being "drunk in the Spirit" while in prayer are all medieval Catholic experiences that now are also fairly widespread experiences in "Protestant" Christianity due to Pentecostalism (in fact fundamentalist critics of will sometimes point to these similarities to Roman Catholicism as one proof that Pentecostalism is of the devil.) Similarly, when I recently read John of the Cross, I was struck by how much of what he had to say could be read as a primer on spiritual gifts; he talks about interpreting dreams and visions, for instance, and he describes something that sounds to me quite a bit like what Pentecostals would call "word of wisdom" and "word of knowledge." (He also talks about the narrow gulf between being spiritual and being carnal, and even explains how spiritual, earnest believers can fall into sin — more wisdom for Pentecostals to heed, if only we knew it was there.)

Second, consider the possibility that Pentecostals DO have liturgy -- they just don't call it that, and they're blissfully unaware of it. The dean of Pentecostal studies, Walter Hollenweger, suggests a typical Pentecostal service has all the parts of the traditional liturgy, but it's flexible and oral. Does the believer have to be aware of the liturgy for the liturgy to do its job?

Third, I think non-Pentecostals pay way too much attention to the style of worship, the emotion, etc., as though that is what draws people to Pentecostal churches. For myself, the reason I am Pentecostal is because this experience of the Holy Spirit is real and leads to real fellowship with God. My wife describes growing up in a Missouri Synod church where God was, to her mind, a "bad dad" — he never spoke to his kids. But in Pentecostalism, God speaks clearly to give comfort and direction. Personally, I think it is related to the practices of fasting and prayer in tongues. Respectively, they cut off the chatter of the body and the chatter of the intellect so that man's spirit can speak and hear mysteries from God. Example: My mother was having pains in her stomach and went to have tests done because she feared cancer. I happened to be staying at her house overnight on a trip when she told me this, so in the middle of the night I was praying about it, "in the spirit and with the understanding," as Pentecostals would say, and "heard" the Lord say: "This is a sickness not unto death." So next morning when I prayed with her I conveyed to her those words. It turned out to be a gluten allergy.

Finally, there is real fellowship in the Holy Spirit across denominations. The only time I have personally experienced healing (I will not discuss it because it is embarrassing for me) was when a Roman Catholic woman, not a nun, gave a "word of knowledge" during a prayer meeting at my pastor's house. As a charismatic Catholic, she had no problem attending a prayer group at a Four Square pastor's house, and the words she spoke set me free that evening.

God cares about making people whole, and I think it's as simple as that. Much as we could learn from John of the Cross, I would guess that a great many people reading this blog have not read it, so what about the high-school dropout who hardly cracks a book? How is he going to take advantage of the vast wealth of spiritual resources in the RC and Ortho traditions? But he can understand Pentecostal choruses that picture God's love simply for him. And he can understand that prayer in tongues and worship and Bible-reading and fasting are good things to do because they build his faith.

As an Anglican seminarian working in a rural Methodist church this summer, one of the things that I consistently noticed was how welcoming people were. I really think that the lack of welcome in Roman Catholic or Orthodox parishes has much less to do with the liturgy proper as it does with such ridiculously simple things as what happens when you walk in the door. Methodist "liturgy" (or lack thereof) could be potentially just as off-putting for any number of people; welcome is personal, and has to do with whether or not you have made some kind of connection with a human being.

As an Episcopalian I have a weird kind of appreciation for the ability to show up for a feast day Eucharist in an unknown church, speak to no one, acknowledge no one, simply slip into the prayer book and receive the Sacrament. Yet why would it be so difficult for the parishioners to acknowledge either before or afterwards that they have never seen me before?

To suggest another aspect to the issue, my suspicion is that insofar as the poor are concerned just as much social interaction comes in extra-liturgical circumstance. If someone is looking for help and drops by the church, what happens, and what kind of assumptions are made?

There was an article in Newsweek a couple of years ago about Roman Catholic parishes in Chicago losing a lot of Latinos to Pentecostal churches, with the Pentecostal groups fairly unabashedly evangelizing people they knew to be Catholic. One very relevant excerpt, from the end of the article:

"At nearby St. Mark's Catholic Church, the deacon, Antonio Navarro, has watched with dismay as his Latino congregation has shrunk steadily over the years, partly due to defections to other faiths. 'Sometimes they don't see the value of what they received here,' he laments. The church has staunched some of the bleeding with a charismatic group that offers a worship style akin to that of the Pentecostals. But Catholics will never match the aggressive evangelism of rival churches. 'We keep trying to imitate the Protestants, but it doesn't work,' says Richard Simon, Cardinal Francis George's liaison for charismatic renewal."

Full article found here.

"We keep trying to imitate the Protestants, but it doesn't work." That's a mouthful, isn't it?

James of the Orthodox parish serving a college town but that's a bit far away from campus to be effectively serving the university community: You don't happen to be living in Bloomington, Indiana, do you? That's exactly the situation here, too. The unfortunate thing for the Orthodox is that having any kind of an "urban" presence (meaning, for these purposes, just being where everybody is) can be extremely cost-prohibitive if you're not already there. We're extremely inaccessible if you don't have a car, but it's too expensive for what the community is presently able to do to be anywhere else. We hope to eventually be able to support a mission closer to the city center, but that's a few years off yet. Being the only parish for at least an hour in any direction (four if you're facing south), we have people coming from as much as two, two and a half hours away--another ten to fifteen minutes north and we'd lose probably a quarter of our congregation in addition to the group that would constitute the new mission.

It's a tough situation. We have to grow before we'll be able to build and really serve our community, but we're not going to be able to grow until we build and really serve our community.

Richard

Richard,

Nope-- Gainesville, Florida. I've heard amazing things about IU's OCF, though, and about how active the Bloomington parish is in student life. You're being modest, methinks.

Bloomington is probably light-years ahead of Gainesville... the idea of a mission close to campus/ downtown isn't even on my parish's radar. We're still not even sure we should try to find a full-time priest.

I think someone alluded to this-- to do effective ministry, you need a full-time minister in charge of things. Churches that expect their clergy to have advanced degrees are at a disadvantage to those that will send out someone with a year's Bible-school training and passion for Jesus.

And if you're sending someone to minister in the ghetto... solid seminary training is of course essential, but a master's degree?

James

I know many poor and working class Latin Americans live around a Catholic church, but because they've had children out of wedlock or their spouses have upped and left they do not participate in mass anymore and don't have money for annulments and such

Gee, you need to come to the northeast Ohio area where Catholic churches are busy helping the Latinos that work in our fields, whether they are married or not.

As for annulments -- that's an old canard. If one cannot pay one can still apply. Someone needs to get the word out.