Last week I posted an excerpt of an article by Jonny Baker from “Grace,” an alternative worship community in London, about the hunger among the young for both liturgy and tradition. There have been a number of other resources documenting this same trend. And now Samuel Freedman from the NY Times has written about the movement of Protestants toward the Orthodox Church. Here’s a bit of his article:

The visible shift began in 1987 with the conversion of nearly 2,000 evangelical Christians, led by Peter E. Gillquist and other alumni of the Dallas Theological Seminary and the Campus Crusade for Christ. More recently, a wave of converts has arrived from such mainline Protestant denominations as the Episcopalian and Lutheran.

Some 70 percent of Antiochian Orthodox priests in the United States are converts, according…

Earlier this year, we published an issue of Leadership on the theme of “Rediscovered Roots: Timeless practices that keep us grounded and bring new life.” Jonny Baker, a leader of Grace, an alternative worship community in London, wrote a fantastic article for us called “Something Old, Something New.” In the piece he discusses the transformation of worship among the young away from a purely contemporary style toward an appreciation of history, liturgy, symbol, and even tradition.

I recently came across this cartoon called “The Evolution of a Worshiper” which reminded me of Baker’s article. The ‘toon progresses from an outwardly enthusiastic (can we call it Charismatic?) style, through the reserved form of popular evangelicalism, to the cynical postmodern with iPod and goatee, to the fully liturgical high-church Anglican. Can…

Earlier this year, we interviewed Keith and Kristyn Getty for an article about worship in Leadership Journal. The Getty’s are Irish songwriters that seek to write modern day hymns. Some of their more popular songs are “In Christ Alone” and Keith wrote “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” with Stuart Townend.

As outsiders, Kristyn and Keith had some interesting comments about their perception of worship in contemporary American churches and the value of remaining connected to the past. Here’s an excerpt from the conversation. You can read the whole article here.

Kristyn: In America, “new” is a positive word. The positive energy and desire to do new things in America is certainly wonderful. But the truth is life isn’t always just a blank page. The Christian life is about remembering,…

The Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, has written a new book advocating the use of pop music in churches to help explain the Bible to a generation of irreligious people. The book, Finding Faith, has been supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams who called it “profound and challenging.” In it, Bishop Baines explains how music from artists like The Beatles and U2 helped him articulate and express his faith.

Transmitting popular music into the church isn’t new. It’s widely known that Martin Luther used the melodies of popular pub tunes for a number of his hymns, and the Wesleys used folk tunes during their revivals in England. But what are we to make of contemporary secular pop music? Does it have religious value?

Leadership journal columnist, Rich…