Saturday, April 11, 1998

Baptist churches are finding riches in rituals that were once dismissed as too Catholic

By Christine Wicker / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS -- A bell sounds, 33 times, once for each year of Jesus' life. When the last chime fades, the room is black save one flickering candle. A sharp puff of breath, and that tiny point of light is gone.

Into the fresh spring night, the worshipers at Royal Lane Baptist Church move toward a cross standing gaunt against the sky. They cover it with black swaths of cloth. On Easter morning, they gather again. This time they deck the cross with flowers.

Baptists, once so anti-ritual that they "thought Lent was the past tense of loaned," are beginning to make Holy Week liturgy a prelude to their Easter observances, said the Rev. Gary Parker, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's coordinator for Baptist principles.

For centuries, many evangelical churches resisted such ritual, believing it was "popish." They saw traditional high-church ceremonies as "over-ritualized" and dead, said the Rev. Brad Creed, dean of Truett Seminary at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

But some evangelical churches are now celebrating Easter with symbols long familiar to Catholic, Orthodox and some Protestant Christians.

"A lot of Baptists are saying, ÔWe need to address more of the senses ... to bring more of the senses into worship so that worship is not as arid and dry and is more full-orbed.' Holy Week is part of that," said Parker.

Pre-Easter ceremonies among Baptists are more common in the Carolinas and Virginia but are becoming somewhat more accepted in Texas, said the Rev. Terry York, associate pastor at Park Cities Baptist Church.

The reasons for such changes include a yearning for direct experience and evocative symbols, said Creed.

"For someone to say you came from dust and you're going back to dust and rub those ashes on your face takes it to a different dimension," said Creed.

"We're a very visual culture. I think the churches are trying to reach people with a media with which they are comfortable," said music minister Thom Wilder, whose church, Lakeland Baptist in Lewisville, Texas, usually puts on a pageant called "Eight Days that Changed the World."

"If Christians don't use the symbols of their faith," said Creed, "people will look for symbols in the secular culture."

In addition, people move between denominations more than they once did, and that has crumbled some barriers, say church scholars.

"Denominationalism is not as important as it used to be. Churches are not as much caught up in the trappings of denominational identity," said Wilder.

For many churches, Advent opened the way, said York. A number of years ago, Park Cities began placing an Advent wreath in the sanctuary and lighting one candle each Sunday before Christmas, he said.

Now the church sponsors Lenten luncheons at which speakers talk about the death of Christ.

"We focus on the cross. We don't go past the cross until Easter Day," said York. "It's a reminder of the sacrifice that was made for us."

Park Cities members aren't encouraged to fast or give up specific pleasures for Lent. Such classical observances might be too much for Baptists, said lifelong Park Cities member Fred Pendleton. But a chance to think more about the meaning of Easter has been well-accepted, he said.

"It's like an overture that is oftentimes essential to prepare you for the symphonic centerpiece of the Christian faith, which is the resurrection," said Pendleton.

This year, Park Cities will join Wilshire Baptist in celebrating Maundy Thursday. The churches will observe the Lord's Supper, recalling the meal that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. The biblical passion story of Jesus' betrayal and death will be read, said Wilshire pastor George Mason.

"We focus on entering into the rejection, betrayal, desertion and death that Jesus experienced," said Mason.

"If we bought into the cultural denial of the cross by only moving from (the Palm Sunday) celebration to (the Easter Sunday) celebration, we would deny the very nature of our faith, which does not deny or avoid suffering or death but sees it as the only gateway to life."

At Royal Lane, a prayer vigil beginning on Good Friday and ending at 8 o'clock Easter morning will be "somewhat of a lament," said Bruce Ruggles, who is organizing it. People who participate will open a three-page guided meditation as they begin their 30-minute sessions.

"What we want is for them to go through the grief and betrayal as though they were there," said Ruggles. "Those who were there didn't know the end because they are in the middle of it."

Ruggles hopes those who pray will apply the lesson to themselves.

"In a way, we live in the middle, too," he said. "As Christians, we believe in the end when all things will be restored, but our day-to-day lives are colored in the gray."

The dark cloth on the cross is also a message for believers, said deacon Ruth May.

"As humanity we have a part in the conditions that nailed him to the cross," said May, a professor at Texas Woman's University and head of a group of laypeople who help plan worship at Royal Lane.

"We have to accept our participation in that as well as our participation in the grace that he extends. ... So we want to show that we have a hand in the darkness of that cross."

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Some Baptist churches take whole ceremonies from older traditions. Many modify them to better fit their congregations.

Others, like Royal Lane, are making up their own forms. There, committees work hard deciding what ceremonies and symbols to use for Holy Week.

"We work with the staff, partnering with them, rather than paying them a salary to do it for us," May said, adding that she thinks the depth of worship increases when the congregation does more than watch the staff. "In my opinion, that's a paid performance, not real worship."

Lakeland Baptist in Lewisville also puts a premium on making the congregation part of the events around Jesus' death. Their "Eight Days that Changed the World" is a dramatic interpretation of the last week of Christ's life.

The congregation and cast move from one site to another in the church, and cast members often come from the pews to do their parts. Church members wrote some scenes for the play, which the church has performed eight years. Even characters not in the Bible have been added.

"The only thing we try to do is -- with Christ's words, we don't use King James English -- but we keep his words from the Bible," said Wilder.

This year Lakeland is not performing "Eight Days that Changed the World" because the gymnasium, where the crucifixion and burial take place, is part of a renovation. But the play will resume next year, Wilder said.

Prestonwood Baptist, which once put on an Easter pageant, will celebrate the Lord's Supper on Good Friday by setting up 25 tables in the sanctuary. One of the church's 25 ministers will stand at each table as one family at a time comes forward, said Mike Buster, executive pastor.

"They might ask how your family is doing or if there are any burdens you would like to pray about," he said. "The minister would then remind the family of the purpose of the Lord's Supper and the death of Christ."

Not everyone is completely happy with the addition of pre-Easter observances, said York, but most people seem to like them.

And May defends her church's creativity as right in line with Baptist principles.

"The Baptist denomination was founded on the idea that every person has his or her own interpretations," she said. "We may be one of the most Baptist Baptist churches in the region."

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