Recently I read about an Episcopal Church here in Los Angeles that welcomes people of faith and people with no faith. That contrast has stayed in mind for days. Our parish attracts an amazing diversity of people. some of them are still very much living in a fundamentalist world, and others are in recovery from fundamentalism, from Catholic guilt, from heavy parental piety and moral control, and from total burnout.

This is not the first time I have wrestled with these issues. I am struggling again with how to talk to people who have no faith, but who are at least open to spiritual experience that will lead them to respond in faith. As I am planning for an alternative, evening worship service–which may possible take the form of a Taizé worship experience– I started to jot down what elements belong in it, or what “ingredients” I would use to cook one up.

If we were to offer a brand new service or gathering without using traditional liturgy (complex, busy, unintelligible, boring) as a model, but drawing seekers and believers into a new experience of Jesus, what would this event include?

For one, it cannot use a traditional creedal statement, even the Apostles Creed. The formulas of the [1] historic Christian Creeds were built on several generations of theological reflection about the significance of Jesus.

I no longer assume any such experience or penchant for reflection on the part of new seekers. Many people who wander back into a church had left as teenagers, not young adults. However long ago that was, they were operating on simple Sunday School thinking, and didn’t do much reflection on spirituality and life experiences before they walked.

Think of Paul Simon’s “[2] Kodachrome” only “high school” is “Sunday School”:

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

The ancients (priests and prophets, disciples and apostles of Jesus) were steeped in a tradition of seeking and knowing the power of God. And they had powerful experiences in their lives to confirm their faithful sense. People today seem not to have these experiences, possibly because we have cut too many ties to our own inner spiritual selves, as if spiritual stimuli are disconnected from the nerve pathways that could bring them into our consciousness. And we are numbed by the over-stimulation of stuff, of action films, instant gratification, and 24/7 virtual hook-ups.

Suddenly I found myself praying a prayer for faith without dogma. Is this un-Christian, non-Christian, pre-Christian? Or post-Christian? It is at least a prayer for “openness to faith”.

Great One,
I do not so much seek You as to open myself to be found.
I, who am finite, open myself to the infinite.
I, who am contemporary, open myself to the Ancient One and the Future One.
I, who am limited, open myself to the one who is unlimited.

Present One,
May I become transparent to your color, your strength, your Spirit.
May I have an ear ready to hear your Voice.
May I have legs to follow where You lead.
May I have a life ready to live in You.

Holy One,
Let Your Life infuse my life.
Let Your heart be the beat within my heart.
Let Your Light illuminate wherever I have darkness,
and Your Joy replenish my emptiness.
Let your compassion shape my compassion,
your power be my own power,
your grace become my graciousness,
your love awaken love within me,
and your forgiveness teach me to forgive others.

Let these things be so! Amen!

—Pastor Dan Hooper