Liturgical Mission Quotes

“A. Smith reminds us, “The capital L-Liturgy of Sunday morning should generate lowercase-l liturgies that govern our existence throughout the rest of the week.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Exploring liturgical practices without understanding the original context can idolize the method rather than embracing true God-centered worship.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Martin Smith states, “Faithfulness to tradition does not mean mere perpetuation or copying of ways from the past but a creative recovery of the past as a source of inspiration and guidance in our faithfulness to God’s future.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“One of the common habitas of the early church was hospitality. This does not mean inviting people over for a dinner party; rather, the word hospitality literally means “love of strangers” and is found several times in the New Testament (Romans 12:13; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:8; 1 Peter 4”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Christianity did not grow because of miracle working in the market place . . . the primary means of its growth was through the united and motivated efforts of the growing number of believers, who invited their friends, relatives, and neighbors to share the ‘good news.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Saint Vincent of Lérins, a fifth-century monk from Gaul who taught that “all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Christianity is unified by its center, not by its boundaries.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” The phrase one another comes from the Greek word allēlōn, which means “one another, each other; mutually, reciprocally.” It occurs one hundred times in the New Testament within ninety-four verses. About one-third of the one another commands are about Christian unity, and about one-third of these are instructing Christians to love one another.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Embrace and reconciliation. One of the most profound and challenging ways that the Eucharist is a part of the church’s mission is through embrace and reconciliation between friends as well as enemies. The Eucharist calls us to love, forgive, and to be reconciled to one another.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Like Jesus’ baptism, our baptism marks us as being set apart to God for his purposes in our life and for the life of the world. In a sense, our baptism is our ordination into the priesthood of all believers. Author Vickie Black says, “The call of baptism is not just an affirmation of faith; it is also a commissioning for ministry that might be called the ‘ordination of the laity.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Professor Michael Green stated, “The whole of the Christian life, in time and in eternity is, in a sense, encapsulated in baptism. The Christian life is a baptismal life, and it is all about dying and rising with Christ, in this world and hereafter.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Ordinary things of this world become sacramental in the hands of the living God.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“we cannot worship what we do not know. There is an old Latin phrase lex orandi, lex credendi, which is translated “the law of praying is the law of believing.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“As the body of Christ, we come together to worship God in order to be sent back out into the world through mission.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“While liturgy often represents more formalized services, every church has its own liturgy, no matter how unstructured its worship service may seem. The real question is not whether a church has a liturgy, but does it lead the church to mission in the world?”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“their book, Worship and Mission After Christendom, Alan and Eleanor Kreider say the church needs to both inhale in worship and exhale by going into the world and sharing the good news; making peace; and caring for creation, reconciliation, and the marginalized of society.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“death and new life are essential to Christian worship. If worship is killing me, this may be the continuation of what took place at my baptism where I died and was raised again with Christ. Knowing myself as I do, I know that I need constant killing and raising into new life! This is what worship, all forms of worship—so-called traditional and so-called contemporary, so-called high and so-called low, in loud decibels and in quiet meditation—does for me, for the church, and for the entire world over and over again, until at last in glory we shall know as we are known.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“lex orandi, lex credenda, which could be loosely translated as “the rule of worship is the rule of belief.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

“Theology without worship is meaningless; and worship without theology is baseless.”
― Winfield Bevins, Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World