Originally Posted by OBW
Actually, the things about the liturgical service that you didn't like are the main reasons that we gather together as the church in the larger sense. It is not to have lively conversation among ourselves. It is not to have anyone "really to talk to." That is for sometime else. You want to denigrate small groups? Then don't you ever go over to another Christian's house for anything that resembles Christian fellowship.
The larger meeting is not for the kind of fellowship that you so mournfully sought in that liturgical service. But that is the kind of fellowship that would get a stern eye from an elder (even in the LRC) for disturbing the meeting.
To suggest that fellowship is #1 is probably a mistake. If you look at Acts, you find that they "continued" in the temple for teaching of the apostles, then from house to house in breaking of bread, etc. Without the teaching of the apostles, there is nothing to fellowship in the houses. It becomes an opportunity for the uninformed to discuss what they know little or nothing about.
The larger meetings are prime. They are the gathering.
But if you don't think the larger meetings are so important, then you probably don't think that the formulaic church is really that important. You don't actually meet that way. At least not as the main thing (according to you). So if that is just a side thing, or the lesser thing, then why is it so important?
Besides, if you think that other groups (not the LRC) have home meetings because "things are so bad," then why do you say that the LRC is mainly centered around home groups? Based on your analysis, the reason must be that things are so bad in the larger group.
As for "ritualistic church services," are you blind to the fact that each of your "services" is just as ritualistic? There is even a printed order of service for many of them. And the primary one that does not have one (that would be the Lord's table meeting) is so well orchestrated that if someone suggests a song from the wrong grouping at the wrong time, someone immediately jumps up to change it to a proper one. You herald the joy in this meeting. I will admit that there is a kind of joy in it. But it is, at its best, a way to do it. And the presumption of joy being required is a preference of style. And to some, it may seem to be inconsistent with the kind of reverence and praise that "remembering" the death of Christ and what that means to us should entail. Some would suggest that while it is definitely a benefit to us, to be so outward in joy is to think of it more in terms of me than in terms of the sacrifice that it was. The God of the universe died in my place. That should be sobering. We should constantly have a realization of the weight of guilt that should still be ours but is not. Yes, there is joy in that fact. But if it is too great, it suggests that we have little appreciation for the death we are supposed to remember, and too much appreciation for our freedom from whatever that was.
Moving on.
For many of your meetings, there is no longer any choice of song. It has been preordained in writing from Anaheim. After that, the content of the meeting is similarly preordained — in writing.
You have a rather complex liturgy. May not seem like one when you compare it to the kind that is well thought out by real theologians, but it is liturgy. And it is just a regimented as all the others. The only thing it does not control is what comes out of the mouth of someone who "prophesies" in one of the meetings. But if that gets too far off, there are ways that it is dealt with. In the LRC I've seen everything from groaning and bowed heads, to stern looks by elders, to even one standing and shooing the person back into their seat.
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