Protestant Reacts to First Orthodox Divine Liturgy

well hey guys what is up welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is austin this is gospel simplicity and i am so glad that you are here today for this video i'll be honest originally this wasn't a video i was planning on making so just yesterday i went for the first time to an orthodox divine liturgy and it was a great experience and that's what we're going to be talking about today but i actually have a tour coming up in an interview at this very same church and so initially i thought well i'll just go to the divine liturgy and experience it believe it or not i sometimes go to church not just to make youtube videos but i did put out a poll and a lot of you guys said you'd love to just hear my thoughts on this so while i won't have as much footage of this church yet you'll see it in the tour coming up i did want to just share with you some of my first impressions as a protestant going to an orthodox divine liturgy so a little background i went to christ the savior orthodox church right up the street from me here in downtown chicago and it's an orthodox church of america church in the diocese of the midwest and the arch priest is father john baker who like i said i'll be interviewing soon and so my first impression as a protestant walking in well after i guess it was my second impression the first impression is you walk in and there's this beautiful little like vestibule area with icons and all these like just hand-painted icons all around you the art is stunning but then when you walk into where the church is you go well excuse me question question folks where are the pews where where do you sit and uh i realized that you actually stand for the whole service which was definitely an adjustment i have never done that before but it was just really interesting i mean you get into the space and you see the candles and just the art is stunning it was very different than the catholic churches i'm used to and i've got some videos out on a really stunning catholic church saint john cantus which has art everywhere but different types of art i mean you have like sculpture and all these things whereas the art at the orthodox church is more all of the same medium if you will it's all icons and there's a beautiful iconostasis in the front and icons all over and just the colors and everything i mean it's really truly stunning and so we got there early while people were just praying and i went with some friends from moody actually several people were interested in going so we all went and there's like different icons set up on podiums but then the icons on the wall we it was interesting just watching people come up and they you know kiss each of the icons and kind of make their rounds around the church and something that was really beautiful to me about this specific church was the amount of young children there were there i mean this was a really vibrant church and it was so interesting i mean i saw these this one family who had i think like three little girls and they'd come up to the podiums where the icons were and they weren't tall enough but they'd climb up just so they could kiss the icon and i just love seeing kids in church and i really love seeing kids enjoy church now i'll be honest i'm still working through my theology of icons honestly i think it's changed a good bit going into this i and by going into this i mean like going into these ecumenical conversations i would have kind of just thought icons were weird but having looked into like the i believe it's the seventh ecumenical council and john of damascus's argument for icons and the incarnation how that shapes icons i can see a lot of validity to it and i don't really mind them right now i don't personally have any but i can really see their benefit and so it was just beautiful to see the way they seem to impact the people of the parish and visually it is just a stunning thing to to be looking at all of these and it does give you that idea of the communion of the saints and that we worship with those who have gone before us which i imagine is part of what they're trying to communicate there and they seem to do that rather effectively after my initial shock of the fact that i'd be standing for the next few hours and wondering if i should have picked slightly comfier shoes than the chelsea boots i decided to wear i really enjoyed the the beginning of the service and something that really struck me is just how much music there is i mean not only the the actual singing of like the the tunes or the hymns or sorry forget forgive me for my lack of terminology i'm learning please inform me i'd love to know leave comments down below but the the hymns i suppose there was lots of those but also just almost the entire service was sung even the reading of the epistle was sung or chanted i suppose you could say and that was interesting it was just different for me i could see how that's just a different way of doing things i don't have necessarily a positive or negative feel towards that i think could probably help you remember things i mean generally if you sing them you remember them better and it does give just this sensory experience and that's something i've noticed with these liturgical churches that they just do a much better job than i think protestant churches do in engaging all of our senses now protestants do kind of have their own modern theology of art i think in a way i mean you go into these mega churches and we have these beautiful screens portraying these really well done videos and graphics but it's just different and i don't think we're necessarily going for a sense of the sacred in these mega churches whereas with this historical form of art and this very deliberate way of doing things with the incense and the icons and the hymns and the chanting you really get a sense of this otherworldly sense whereas in protestant churches it seems that we're generally trying to meet people where they are and show them great art on their terms and say hey look you like this kind of music let me show you what that looks like in a christian form or like you like video done in this way let me show you what that looks like in a christian form and i think there's been a lot of fruit of that but i think it's just a different metric that the orthodox church seems to be going for and that when you enter into this space you're really moving out of the world and into a completely different environment where the modes of communication are radically different than what you're used to and while on one hand that can be off-putting or at least just confusing because you're not used to it and it's something you're unaccustomed to it feels foreign it feels different might feel just strange to you at first which i experienced some of that there's also a beauty to it because in that strangeness and the weirdness of it you're being introduced to something different and i think sometimes where we struggle so much in protestant churches is that we've become so much like the world it's become so comfortable that when you can't be distinguished from the world you lose your ability to speak a word to the world and i think sometimes we go so far on we want to be cool and relevant which i get and like i like wearing jeans to church i i like getting a good cup of coffee at church i like being comfortable i like the music that's what i grew up in but i think sometimes where we struggle is we think how can we make church cooler and more relevant and all these things but i'm not sure how many people are coming to church seeking out something cool and i've talked to friends about this who don't go to church about just like this dynamic they're like you know if i wanted somewhere cool to meet friends and hang out like i don't need to go to church for that there's plenty of places to go for that then i've talked to some of those people who have ended up coming into the church and they say you know like it's nice and it's really easy to come in and be anonymous and just kind of check it out and it's kind of like a great first experience but at the end of the day when i'm coming to church i want i want something different i got out of bed on a sunday morning not just to do something i would do any other day of the week and so this isn't to make a definitive judgment one way or the other but i think it's worth noticing just what seems to be the implicit difference in purpose difference in approach to the styles of services and that's something i really picked up in this service something i will say that i really loved about the service that i think and this could change perish to perish um it could just be an outworking of the priest here father john who i'm really excited to interview but this so far having gone to catholic churches and um growing up in protestant churches this was probably the best blend of informational content with liturgical beauty st john cances has beauty down and the liturgy down i mean it is stunning and it really does work on all your senses but i haven't always seen as much informational content in their services definitely seems focused more on the liturgy which is great and i enjoy it but at this orthodox church not only did they have the really pretty liturgy but the message was great and it was really interesting there was what i would call maybe an elegant simplicity to it this was the only portion of the service where we sat but you just sat on the ground and the priest came out and he spoke from the same level as the people standing there but with just like this really um i don't know mobile podium it kind of folded out really pretty and he just spoke to us and it felt so organic and it was this really interesting again i'll call it elegant simplicity because we're in this beautiful space with all these icons and the incense and the candles burning but yet the priest came down to our level we sat on the floor we just heard him explain the reading that we heard from the gospel and he gave this beautiful message on a hard topic i mean the reading from the gospel i believe it was a luke 16 19 to 31 and it's the story of lazarus and the the man who is in hell and the story of the the rich man and lazarus at the gate and i mean that's not an easy text to preach on but he gave this this beautiful sermon he talked about you know being a saint is within the grasp of all of us it takes a willingness it takes paying attention and it takes a persistence and he just he explained that and he just gave this this beautiful homily and again i just really appreciated that in this church we found both liturgical beauty beauty but also the informational content and i talked about this in my first perspectives on going to a catholic church is that sometimes i worry that we go to one poll or the other that we get a lot of speaking to the head but we don't speak to the heart and sometimes in protestant churches we can go on either side we can have just this beautiful worship experience that's really moving but lacking really informational depth and on the other side sometimes we can just speak to people as though their brains on a stick just these thinking thingisms and not really think about the embodied sense of worship and really only speaking to our brains not engaging all of our senses but i think the orthodox church did a really good job of this i think they managed to incorporate all of these different senses while not lacking informational depth which is something i really worry about and i talked about i think we need word and sacrament that the church really needs both that when we have sacrament without word when we have like liturgy without informational content we can just get into and calvin talks about this in the institutes but we can just get into what seems like superstition because there's no intellectual depth to it but on the other side when we only have the informational content but none of that the religious value of liturgy and engaging the other senses we can just turn into hypocrisy we can just become pharisaical with it and only have head knowledge but not have it transform our lives because really it's these liturgies it's the things that we do repeatedly that shape us and i talked about this in my first perspectives on going to a catholic church and i'll bring it up again but james k.a smith a protestant has written beautifully on this and he draws on augustine's concept of us not just as you know reasoning people not in kind of critiquing aristotle in this and then later i mean this would be anachronistic but we're not you know cartesian i think therefore i am but but augustine says you know we're really fundamentally we're lovers we are we are people who love and desire and that we need to then shape our communication and shape our services around that that we need to be paying attention to the habits that form our desires that that inform our loves because that is what is ultimately going to change us and i think you know this is maybe getting far afield but as we talk about sanctification which all churches should be looking for like how can we help people grow in just maturity and love and holiness and all these things well we have to not just change people's minds on ideas but we have to change people's hearts on their desires we have to make people desire the things of god because that is really the end of sanctification not that we just agree with god but that we desire the things he desires and i think liturgical services can do that well because they teach us these rhythms and seeing people you know do the sign of the cross so many times or or admire the icons or all these things are you know taste the eucharist all in in all of these rituals were being formed into a certain kind of people that deserve desire certain kinds of things but we also need that informational content and so just really shout out to the orthodox church for doing that i thought that was really cool something i also appreciated is after the service there was a time of fellowship which seemed like just when he used that word it sounded like kind of an old-school protestant thing not that we have the uh the corner on the market on that but i just thought it was interesting and a very churchy word but but it was good and i i really did appreciate this though again a vibrant parish that didn't suffer from what many orthodox churches seem to suffer and that being ethnocentrism i i mean it was diverse again a lot of young families a very vibrant place i got the impression was probably a lot of converts um but i really enjoyed it and so we went over to the house which was right next to it and there was a time for coffee and tea and they had snacks and it was really great just to sit down and chat with some people and father john came by and we talked for a little bit and it was just this beautiful communal life and i think all churches should be desiring that i think people aren't just looking for a sunday morning experience but they're looking for a community to be a part of and i think church leaders across various denominations and various christian traditions are realizing that that people don't want to just come in and leave and not be known and be heard and be seen as more than just a face in the crowd but people really want to be part of a community and i think i think jesus's heart was for this and i think we see that in the early church that it was much more than just a service you attend but but really a family you're a part of that that ecclesia that which jesus uses in matthew 16 when he like i will build my church and it's like this called out assembly and i think there's an implicit understanding of that that people would be known and that it would be almost familial in a way and so i really appreciated that as well i'll say there was a couple interesting things about the orthodox church that i don't know if off-putting is the right word but we're interesting to wrestle through as a protestant i get closed communion it's always tough being being closed out of communion but i do get it and i don't fault them for that there definitely does seem to be well this church didn't have any of the ethnocentrism that i think some orthodox churches suffer from and needn't suffer from because i don't think it's intrinsic to orthodoxy i there definitely was some of that um i i don't know the best way of putting it but just the the orthodox church is the end-all be-all and in the language that's used in the liturgy about you know the orthodox christians i think it's perhaps less ecumenical than catholicism post vatican ii or then some evangelicals i think evangelicals can really go either way because they might not necessarily have strong denominational ties they could say well you either have to be in us or you're out or they could take a really ecumenical approach because they're like well we don't have denominational ties so we don't see them as important that's a conversation for another day but something that impacted me here's the little service bulletin the the line at the bottom it says the orthodox church humbly claims to be the one church of christ founded on the apostolic witness to our lord born on the day of pentecost and for two thousand years making known to men women and children the path to salvation through repentance and faith in christ i like that it says humbly claims to be the one church of christ that's a rather bold claim in fact and some might feel it's arrogant but you can make both claims humbly so i don't fault them for that but it was just interesting to read that but then the next line says the orthodox church is not a denomination for it predates protestantism by 1500 years fair enough nor is it quote the eastern branch of the roman catholic church close quote it is simply the church of christ in that i see the orthodox taking a much different approach to catholics than catholics seem to take to orthodox i've noticed this in the comments in my videos that catholics seem to think orthodoxy is pretty cool for the most part i mean there's definitely some vitriol but there also seems to be a lot of people that are like yeah the orthodox seem really neat we'd just love for them to come join us and even saying like you know i forget which pope it was but the the two lungs of the church and that like i think the catholics could almost see them as like they're the eastern side of us though in schism and we have things to work out but like we really love them whereas orthodox definitely seem to be like don't try to say we're like we're not the same don't don't blur that line like it's the orthodox church and you guys have left the church in 1054 like and like this guess i'm like you guys were the one that left you're like the one patriarch in the west we are all these people over here you added the filio quite like and look i am not not trying to get into that debate i currently don't really have a dog in that which is a terrible metaphor i need to stop saying dog in that fight but whatever it perhaps uh you know what i'm trying to say so it's just interesting to note that difference in approach to each other and i've heard people compare it to like americans love canada but some canadians are like off put by america and this this idea of like the the older brother and the younger brother or australian new zealand like aussies think new zealanders are great like go there on vacation it's really cool whereas there can be some like hey we're not part of them i don't know if it's a perfect analogy but i think it is interesting to think through but anyway those are pretty much my thoughts on the service i really enjoyed it i'm so excited to go back for the tour and learn more about just the symbolism orthodoxy in general and just to share this space with you i think you guys are really going to enjoy it i hope you've enjoyed this video i hope it's helped you just see how a protestant process is an orthodox service i'm sure there's so much more to be said but these are some of my first impressions on just a cold take of all of this going into a service having never done it before anyway thank you so much for watching this video truly that means so much to me and i just want to say a big thank you to my patreon subscribers and merch buyers who make this channel possible your generous support in any one of those ways not only allows this channel to keep going but allows us to expand into exciting and new things like these tour videos and the interviews i've been doing and all of that so thank you guys so much also just a quick plug if you are interested in orthodoxy i will be having an interview coming out soon with father josiah trenham author of rock and sand i think you're gonna really enjoy that also be on the lookout for the tour video of this same church if you're new and you've enjoyed this channel i have to say i i can't leave you without saying it you might want to subscribe i would really appreciate that and i would love to have you as a part of this community where we're passionate by the beautiful simplicity and transformative power of the gospel in the meantime guys be sure to be on the lookout for some of those videos i mentioned and other ones and most importantly go out and love god and love others because truly above all else that will change the world peace i love you guys so much and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Gospel Simplicity

Views: 98,517

Keywords: orthodox converts, orthodox church of america, first divine liturgy, divine liturgy, understanding divine liturgy, divine liturgy protestant, protestants and orthodox, eastern orthodox, eastern orthodox service, orthodox service, OCA service, Austin Suggs, Love Across the Lines, Ecumenical Conversations, Orthodox evangelicals, evangelicals and orthodox, gospel simplisity, gospel simplicity, fr. john baker, christ the savior orthodox church, orthodox church chicago

Id: _e3BMMy41uo

Length: 19min 31sec (1171 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Ode_2]

"When you become like the world you lose the ability to speak a word to the world"

Wonderful quote that makes a point to why the Orthodox preservation of the 'otherness' of the liturgy is necessary for our outreach to the world.

[u/RodionUA]

I love this guy. I discovered his channel when it was less than 1k subscribers. Now he does his best and makes incredible content for us. There’s an interview that should be posted shortly with father Josiah Trenham. Watch it here.

[u/Thrylomitsos]

His humility will guide him to the Truth. He's well on his way. God bless him!

[u/feeble_stirrings]

Nice! I've seen some of his videos. Seems to have been primarily looking into Catholicism. Glad he's looking into Orthodoxy as well. Not if he's in this sub, might be nice to pop over to the actual YouTube video and drop a line of encouragement.

[u/SSPXarecatholic]

But don't forget the 27 sui juris Eastern Catholic Churches, they also do this. Go check them outttt.

/s