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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I've only been to two Quaker meetings and they were as structured as any other kind of service, as far as I could tell. There wasn't any 'spoken ministry's on either occasion.

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originally posted by Schroedinger's cat

the Quakers had a meeting every day, which is easy to organise (all you need is a venue), whereas the Sunday Communion took weeks to prepare

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
Pretty much every church, with a few exceptions, follow the same style and structure of service. There is singing, sermon, prayers, bible reading. Even churches that are independent, that split and reject the traditional churches seem to adopt the same basic structure. Of course it is different, because we sing the songs we want to, preach the message we want to and pray what we want to, so it is radically different.

But why? As I look, I don't see this pattern in the bible (which is so important to many independent churches, and yet they don't use it to change their worship style). I don't even know any justification for the structure as it is, other than that we have always done it that way.

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And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
(Is there something in the Didache or other Apostolic-Fathers writings that talks about the shape of the liturgy?)

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
It started on time and ended with the expected hand-shake an hour later with nothing said in between.

That looked pretty structured to me.

It's not as if it went on 10 seconds longer than the allotted time.

In more apparently 'imposed' or structured services, the sermon might go on longer than intended, there might be a mix up with one or t'other of the hymns, all sorts of variations might occur.

Other than someone saying something - which hasn't happened when I've attended a Quaker meeting (admittedly only twice) - then it was difficult to see what could possibly happen other than a small group of people sat silently for an hour - welcome though it might be.

Ok, so it was minimalist but that didn't mean there wasn't any structure to it.

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Originally posted by mousethief:


So the answer to "Why do churches worship as they do?" is two-fold: (1) Why did the first century or early second century create this basic ur-pattern of worship? and (2) why does a Christian body that doesn't worship this way not worship this way?

Change is usually caused by something, some mutual felt need or aversion or such. You take what your parents did, and change it in some way because you find it icky, or think it has too much of one thing or not enough of another, or shouldn't have this thing at all (e.g. Sally Ann and the eucharist), or needs this other new thing (e.g. charistmatics and ecstatic behaviors).

So it would be interesting (to me, but may be I'm weird) to read about either of those two things, separately or in conjunction. But I think that that's the only way to make the question of the thread title work.

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Originally posted by hatless:
It's structured in the sense that a quarter of an acre of rough grass with a fence round it is structured, but not in the sense that a quarter of an acre with a hedge, a drive, a kitchen garden, a croquet lawn, a pond and a house with four bedrooms, a study, a lounge, a kitchen, two receptions and a loft with a model railway is structured.

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But mostly I'm thinking that those basic things we can identify aren't really so easy to compare between Christian denominations anyway, and if we were to line up behaviours that are similar, the Orthodox would look, well, pretty unorthodox.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
@Lamb Chopped: And I know you know, while others here may not, that the division of the service into two parts, word and eucharist, goes waaaaay back. At least before the schism because we do it too.

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Originally posted by Nick Tamen:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
(Is there something in the Didache or other Apostolic-Fathers writings that talks about the shape of the liturgy?)

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The Didache was my first thought, but it only talks about the administration of baptism and of the Eucharist, not the liturgy as a whole. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure about other writings of the time. If I have time, I'll do some looking.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
mr cheesy -- Nick Tamen laid it out:

gathering, scripture reading, sermon/homily, prayers, offering, Eucharist and sending


This pattern is common between the Orfies and the Caffix, so it must predate the schism of 1054. And the writing quoted from Justin Martyr makes it a lot older than the schism. This basic pattern goes back to at the latest 150.

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Were there other variations (before 1054) that flourished then were killed off by the powers that be, and their very memories were suppressed? This gets into serious whackdoodle conspiracy territory. What we see in the real record is parts being tweaked or dropped or added or fiddled with in fairly small chunks.

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Whether or not we can lump a bunch of those together and say "societal pressures," as if that's the whole story, I do not know. As I said, I'd be interested to learn more. But not if it requires reading through entire thick tomes for every denomination who changed their worship from that they inherited from their immediate spiritual ancestors.

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You can think that; I won't stop you. But is it true? What's your evidence, or what's your argument? One can think anything, or assert anything. But a private belief doesn't move a discussion of history along.

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I understand the thing about George Fox et al. developing a new religion from scratch. That at least explains the huge left turn in how the worship is conducted. A total break with the past. What I dislike are attempts to take something new and read it back into the history where it isn't. Not saying anyone here is doing that.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
OK, I don't know the sources. But couldn't one also write a similar list of all the things that are different? I mean, does it say how often they met, at what time of the day, how long the homilies went on for etc?

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Well I admit to being rather dim about most Orthodox practices, but I understood that this involved many different services at different times of day and for different days of the week. Without going into the detail of it all, I'm thinking that's quite unusual for the rest of Christianity.

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Singing might sound superficially similar, except that (I apologise if I'm wrong) I understood that the Orthodox priests do most of the singing in your services. So again, what is it that we're saying is basically the same?

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
Non liturgical worship developed out of the Reformed movement. Calvin wanted to eliminate the Roman symbols as much as possible, and the liturgy was considered a Roman symbol. But if you look at most non liturgical worship forms you also see a definite pattern has developed.

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Originally posted by BroJames:
the shape of the church's worship, I would suggest both the influence of synagogue worship, and a strong element of inherent logic about it.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Am I right in thinking that the service of the Word tends to reflect synagogue worship, and the service of Holy Communion the temple?

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Well I admit to being rather dim about most Orthodox practices, but I understood that this involved many different services at different times of day and for different days of the week. Without going into the detail of it all, I'm thinking that's quite unusual for the rest of Christianity.

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Singing might sound superficially similar, except that (I apologise if I'm wrong) I understood that the Orthodox priests do most of the singing in your services.

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Of course George Fox was pretty keen on doing that and believed he had the true religion when everyone else who did it differently before was wrong and the antichrist.

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
Luther contributed to the liturgical movement by 1) writing the liturgy in the vernacular of the people,

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2) encouraging congregational singing

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by hatless:
It's structured in the sense that a quarter of an acre of rough grass with a fence round it is structured, but not in the sense that a quarter of an acre with a hedge, a drive, a kitchen garden, a croquet lawn, a pond and a house with four bedrooms, a study, a lounge, a kitchen, two receptions and a loft with a model railway is structured.

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Well that's true, although I'm not sure that's a difference that is really relevant to this discussion. Quaker meetings still own property, put on meetings on Sundays at 11, are mostly populated by people wearing sensible clothing and end with coffee. In many Quaker meetings in North America they have pastors and hymns.

Of course, they don't have to do any of those things. But, in a curious and unexpected way, their very "otherness" has ended up - several hundred years later - becoming a mirror of every other church expression that is available to the extent that the only obvious difference is about their practice inside the meeting - and even that isn't really so much different to other forms of Christianity.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The basic shape of the Orthodox service is similar to that of pre-Vatican 2 Roman Catholicism and, indeed, the underlying structure of traditional Anglican liturgy - although it's not High Church Anglicanism on steroids ... And with a better line in beards and funny hats.

Most of the singing us done by the choir, often led by a cantor. The priest does a fair bit of chanting but he doesn't do the whole thing.

The argument would be that the RCs, Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox - your Copts and so on - all derive their worship practices from very early models.

The Cathars broke away from the Catholic Church - they weren't some kind of parallel group. Sure, there were schismatic or non-standardised groups in various parts of Europe, such as the Cathars, Waldensians, Bogomils and so on but it's difficult to trace any form of 'succesion' from earlier Gnostic groups and so on - even if they appear to share some characteristics in common.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
British Quaker silence probably makes sense in a movement without official creeds. What 'Word' is there that a highly trained professional needs to expound, and why sing praise to God, if half of your members are happy to be atheists or agnostics?

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No doubt there are secular and spiritual songs and texts that Quakers sometimes use, but while non-literalists in more orthodox denominations feel obliged to conduct an endless exercise in re-theorising streams of ancient, sacred words, it's unsurprising if British Quakers (and very many non-churchgoing Christians), feel no obligation to do so, or to sit under others who feel thus obliged.

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But to give the Quakers a rest, it's interesting that the atheist assemblies seem to have adopted a version of the hymn sandwich. That's surely proof that many of them are ex-churchgoers. I wonder what symbolic moment they've incorporated to take the place of Communion?

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