Dear Redeemer Family,
Have you noticed that our Sunday worship and weekly parish life contain both traditionally high church and low church elements? Have you ever wondered why? Are we a mish-mash of competing philosophies of ministry? Are we trying to “split the difference” between different styles of church? Today I’d like to invite our whole church family in on a conversation that your Staff and Vestry have been having for a number of years now.
The Book of Common Prayer, which is the foundational document of the Anglican Communion, exemplifies what we might call a “Lo/Hi” approach to practicing the way of Jesus. During the era of the reformation, English reformer Thomas Cranmer labored for years to produce an English language translation of the Roman Catholic Latin prayer book. This was not only the hard work of translation, it was also the essential work of mission. The average person then living in what is now called the U.K. did not understand the Latin mass, nor could they pray with the church on their own throughout the week. But on Easter Sunday 1548, every parish across England began praying, confessing, and hearing the good news of the Gospel in their own vernacular, in their common language.
This missional move took the riches of traditional “high” church practices, filled with symbolism, metaphor, art, and mystery, and brought them “low” by making them accessible to the average, common person. It was a condescending move (in a positive sense!). In the incarnation of Christ, God condescends to humanity by becoming one of us. And so, if we would live and minister in the way of Jesus, then we must adopt his condescending posture.
Therefore, this incarnational, condescending, missional posture must be the posture of any church that confesses and proclaims the good news of the Gospel of Jesus. And it especially should be true of an Anglican parish!
Our shorthand phrase for this posture is LO/HI.
So, at Redeemer, we seek to embody the tension between low church / high church culture.
Low
We seek to create low bars of entry for the average secular, materialist, humanist Richmonder.
Our front porch is inviting and the front door is easy to open.
Our communication, preaching, music, and programming seeks to be accessible and understandable for the average person.
We are not a church that only caters to spiritual elites and picky church consumers.
High
There is no ceiling for how high you can grow.
The spiritual riches of the Great Tradition are the desired destination for all Christ-followers here.
We desire for people to move deeper into a liturgically and sacramentally ordered life.
We recognize that symbol, metaphor, art, and mystery are key in forming maturity in faith.
There are no short-cuts on the path to maturity.
Redeemer family, I hope this helps us all better understand the unique ethos we are seeking to cultivate within our parish (and how it is actually not so unique!).
I hope and pray that in the months and years ahead, we continue to stretch both lower and higher: running further up and further in to the riches of the Gospel embodied in the traditions and practices of the historic church; and stooping lower, doing the hard work of translation to make the beauty of the Gospel accessible to our average, common neighbors.
I believe this stretching in both directions is called - growth.
In the Father’s love,
