Welcome to the Liturgy
The Mercersburg Liturgy is a living tradition of Christian worship in Word and Sacrament.
In 1857 the German Reformed Church in the United States of America created a Provisional Liturgy inspired by ancient and modern sources. Through a series of denominational mergers, this tradition now continues in the United Church of Christ as well as various independent congregations.
The Liturgy is conceived as:
"a whole order or scheme...of public worship, in which all the parts are inwardly bound together by their having a common relation to the idea of a Christian altar, and by their referring themselves through this always to what must be considered the last ground of all true Christian worship,
the mystical presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist."
Four principles help guide the spirit of the Liturgy:
1. SACRAMENTAL
All acts of worship are inwardly related to The Lord's Supper, the "cardinal office".
2. PRIESTLY
"The altar, and not the pulpit, is to be regarded as the central object of the sanctuary - the place of the Christian shekinah, forth from which must radiate continually the entire glory of God's house."
3. CHURCH YEAR
"The great truths of Christianity are apprehended..., as having the character not just of theological doctrines, but of facts, of perennial power and force in the world. What lives for us in this way has a tendency always to enshrine itself for our thoughts, in outward forms both of space and time."
4. CO-OPERATION OF THE PEOPLE
"There must be gestures and postures significant of faith in what the service thus means, acts of bodily worship fitly suited to corresponding acts of the spirit, responses of the tongue to seal and confirm the silent responses of the heart."
Welcome to the Liturgy!
Excerpts above from John Williamson Nevin, The Liturgical Question
(Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1862) pp. 23-33.