I grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist church. I was there every time the doors were open—Sunday morning, night, Wednesday night, and any other special services, as my mom was the church pianist. The pastor encouraged us to not read theology books written by men, but only the Bible—and definitely not prayers that were written down. My journey from a conservative Baptist church to an Episcopal church was a lengthy one.
I went to college as a music major at Oklahoma Baptist University. In one of my first music classes, a required assignment was for us to visit a service of a church tradition that was different than our own. So, a couple of friends and I decided to visit the Catholic University just up the road for evening prayer. It felt completely foreign to me—the chanting, the read prayers, the people crossing themselves. But it was also interesting.
That same semester, I was working on an organ prelude of Bach’s, and struggling with the pedal line. My organ professor said to me, “Lance, you know this hymn,” proceeding to sing “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.” I was shocked. I had never realized that so many of Bach’s works were based on German chorales, many of which I knew, and that so many of his works were written with the church in mind. We sang Puccini’s Messe di Gloria a couple of semesters later, and I realized that a lot of the composers that I loved wrote a lot of music for the church. My music history professor taught us the parts of the mass so we could understand what we were singing, and I was at first a bit fearful. Were we too Catholic? Was it OK to sing these prayers that were written down? She noted in class one day that all churches have a liturgy, some are just written down.
That really opened my eyes. I could name the liturgy at my home church—two opening hymns, announcements, another hymn, a prayer, another hymn, the prayer for the offering (which usually included the unusual phrase “thankful for your watchcare over us”) and offering, an hour + sermon which included copious amounts of Scripture, and a final altar call with hymn (“Just As I Am” being a usual example here). Even though our prayers and our liturgy weren’t written down, they fell into very familiar patterns.
My wife and I left for graduate school, where as a composition major at the Westminster Choir College I took all the church music classes I could, especially with Robin Leaver, a well-known Bach scholar. I wrote my papers in all classes on music in the church, and delved into the writings of Paul Bradshaw, Maxwell Johnson, and other liturgical scholars. Dr. Leaver encouraged me to consider doing a PhD in liturgical studies at Drew University, which had a relationship with Westminster. Amy and I had ice cream one evening and discussed this possibility, deciding that it seemed like a good one. The classes sounded exciting—a whole semester on the Eucharist, another on baptism, one called liturgical theology—I was hooked.
I entered the liturgical studies program as one of two Baptists. Our classes were diverse denominationally—Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, and others were normal. By the time I graduated, I was serving as the organist of and then joined a Presbyterian church. I did love the order of the service, the more frequent Eucharist (monthly rather than quarterly, although the church I grew up in was yearly!), and the chance to recite the creed decently often.
After grad school, Amy took a post-doctoral fellowship at Indiana Wesleyan University. We moved to Marion, and, for the first time in a decade, I had no church music job. We tried many of the churches in the area, and were unsatisfied. Our office coordinator in the Honors College kept telling us to try her church, Gethsemane Episcopal, and our first Sunday there I almost cried I loved it so much. I had studied the liturgy in my doctoral studies; now we got to know it, rather than just think about it.
Our time in Marion was truthfully difficult for a variety of reasons. But I found the rhythms of the liturgy to be the highlights of my days and weeks. Singing the gloria on Sunday in the choir while my daughter sat with me was a joy. A true Easter vigil with fire, the exsultet, and a celebratory meal afterwards at midnight was amazing. I started praying the daily office, as, in face of many of the difficulties we faced there, I was often unsure how to pray.
The prayers of the Sunday liturgy and the daily office became part of my internal language of prayer. Just as the phrase “watchcare over us” was a part of the liturgy of the church of my childhood, now when I would wake at night, my first thought would be, “Oh God, make speed to save us. O Lord, make haste to help us. Glory be to the Father…”
And that’s what I love about the liturgy. It shapes you in its repetition. The driving book of the Honors College at IWU was Jaimie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, which takes an Augustinian understanding of the world, reminding us that we are what we love, and we love what we cultivate in our lives. The liturgy allows us to cultivate our lives in what it means to be Christians.
I think about it like playing the organ. Through practice my hands and feet all move together and do the right things, without me having to think about it. I’ve cultivated a skill at playing the organ that I don’t have to concentrate on (sometimes it’s when I concentrate too hard that I mess up in trying to micromanage my feet as they play). But I have to maintain that skill. When I don’t practice enough, I don’t play well. That’s how I feel about the liturgy. It cultivates my thinking so that, through the day, my thinking falls in patterns of prayer. I don’t have to mindfully think about it at all times—bits of prayers just come forth. And I love that. It’s part of what Paul says, I think, when he says to “pray without ceasing.” And when I don’t cultivate it is when I make mistakes of succumbing to anger or fear.
It’s not just the prayers, either. Since we’re embodied beings, the crossing, kneeling, bowing, etc. that happens in our services also serve to form us. We lived in Scotland while Amy was on sabbatical and attended a very high Anglo-Catholic parish. They allowed me to come in to practice the organ during the week, and one of my favorite things was that as soon as you walked in, the incense smell lingered from the Sunday service, no matter how many days had passed. It always reminded me that the prayers of the faithful had occurred and were occurring each day in that space in the daily offices.
It has been a joy to see how it forms our children in much the same way. When my son was two and a half, we were listening to a Christmas CD. He asked what the song was, and we told him, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” He loudly responded, “Begotten, not made!” He of course had no idea what that meant at two, but it’s part of his inner language, even more so now that he’s approaching ten. And the weekly celebration of the Eucharist is great for them. I grew up with a fear of the Lord’s Supper because we celebrated only once a year, and were asked to fast beforehand with a strong focus on 1 Cor 11:27-32. I’m glad my children have the experience of being welcome at the Lord’s table, every week.
The liturgy is forming them into people who know what it is to be a Christian, even as it is forming us into people who are growing further into our faith. It’s the beauty of the liturgy—when I don’t know what or want to pray, the prayers are there for me. When I do know what to pray, they’re also there, deepening my prayer life with the words of Christians from centuries ago, still relevant today.
This resource is part of the series Made Like Him: Reflections on Formation and Gathered Worship. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Dr. Lance Peeler is a graduate of Drew University and the Westminster Choir College and serves as the director of music and organist at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Geneva, IL. He has served in music ministry at other churches since the year 2000. He also serves as an adjunct in the Bible/Theology department at Wheaton College. Outside of church and school, Lance can be found doing CrossFit, gardening, biking, hiking, and playing games with his wife, Amy, and their three children.
