The past few days I've had some really strange e-mail communications with a guy I knew from high school. I'd mentioned that Joel and I are interested in liturgical worship, and he said he'd never heard of it. I guess this is pretty typical among Baptists.

When I explained what it is and what we like about it, his response was really bizarre. Mostly it was a long stream-of-consciousness rant about how hymns are too hard to sing (like all praise songs are easy? Ever sing the "verses" of "Our God is an Awesome God"?), that traditions make dead churches, that weekly communion is too boring. Another thing he said that really struck me as odd was this: "a 12-15 minute music format progressing from maybe one up-beat song to a final, slow song before the message involves too great a mood change in a short period of time. So we do not really achieve the Biblical goal we aim at. We provide emotional change in the music faster than people are capable of opening up their hearts to the Lord."

I don't get this at all. What "Biblical goal" could he be talking about? This sounds to me like emotional manipulation using music. I agree that there need to be seasons of joyfulness and quiet meditiation in a service, but using music as the only schtick to let this happen seems very shallow. I tried to explain that in liturgy, there is an emotional ebb and flow of the overall service that is part of our response to God calling us, forgiving and comforting us, speaking to us, feeding us and sending us.

Well, I sensed that we were kind of talking past each other, so I explained in great detail what a liturgical service is like. This time I think he got a better sense of what I was talking about. I found it kind of sad, however, that he thinks his congregation is too stupid to do anything other than settle for what they have now. Because many in the congregation come from non-church backgrounds or only have an 8th grade education, he seems to imply that the best thing for them is elementary-school-level worship. How disheartening! And also, how seemingly false. Liturgy is the primary style of worship in most of the third world, despite low literacy levels. My understanding is that liturgy has a framework and rhythm that is not difficult to grasp.

Well, I wasn't really trying to "convert" him to my point of view, just explain where I'm coming from and be understood. I just find his situation sad and don't really know how to respond at this point in the conversation. How do you talk to someone who's convinced that the pragmatic thing--dumbing down--is the only alternative?