T&D Features Editor

Worshipping "outside the box" best describes what Orangeburg's Church of the Redeemer will do weekly beginning Sunday.

The church will attempt to reach out to newcomers and parish members with a contemporary service that will incorporate prayer, scriptural readings and praise music to worship the Lord. The service, titled "Vesper Light: A Celebration of Praise, Prayer and Worship," will take place at 6 p.m. every Sunday in the church's Parish Hall.

"Church of the Redeemer has always been a pretty traditional Episcopal church," said the Rev. Dr. Frank Larisey, Church of the Redeemer's rector. He said the church's worship services resemble the strict liturgy of the Catholic Church while its theology is a combination of both Catholicism and Protestantism. "Our worship has always been traditional, old-fashioned, using Elizabethan, or Shakespearean, English."

Larisey, who has served at the church for three years, said the new alternative services will be based in traditions older than those influencing the church's Sunday morning services. He said the basis for the evening services can be traced to early Christians and found on page 400 in the Episcopal Church's "Book of Common Prayer," under the entry titled "An Order for Celebrating the Holy Eucharist."

"They didn't have anything that was written down," Larisey said of the early church. "They had the Old Testament, the Psalms, old letters of Paul, the Gospel according to Matthew ... and they probably didn't have all of them -- they had some of them. (But) they came together to praise God. They just praised him. They had songs, hymns and spiritual songs ... reading from letters ... preached, and then they prayed. ... Then they shared the Last Supper ... and before they left, they prayed for one another's spiritual needs.

"Basically, that's what we're going to do. We're going to gather in the name of the Lord and praise him."

Instead of a solemn worship experience, Larisey said the Sunday evening worship will be a joyful one. He compared the two types of service as two sides of the same coin -- both different ways to worship God.

"This will be the other side of the coin -- God among us," he said. "The (new) Church of the Redeemer service will be one of freedom, openness, spontaneity and joy, like we believe the early church experienced it. I believe that this is a more accessible way to worship the Lord for those folks that may not have been exposed to Christianity.

"I want to build expectations for what God can do. God will show up when you look for him to show up. I believe God will do mighty things with this worship service."

As part of the evening prayer service, a praise band comprised of guitars, tambourines, piano and vocals, under the direction of parishioner/guitarist Clay Strider, will lead those gathered in worshipping the Lord through song. No books will be needed for the service, as lyrics and other key elements will be displayed on the wall via an overhead projector.

Larisey said the evening praise service will in no way take away from, or replace, the morning worship time.

"I love the way we worship on Sunday mornings," he said, adding that this is a way to reach those who might find the church's liturgy "foreign." "Young people, teenagers, we think, will like it."

"Many Episcopal churches in our own diocese ... have already done this and found it very successful," Larisey added, noting that other denominations offer a similar service and find it instrumental in outreach as well. "The most important reason (we're offering this service) is to bring those who do not know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to come to know him. We are doing this for the unchurched, those without a church home. ... We are doing th

is especially to reach out to the seekers or those who may have never been to church. ... This is for those folks who may be new to the Christian faith."

Larisey said he believes parish members and visitors from other Christian denominations would like and benefit from the new service. He said Church of the Redeemer members are excited about it.

"People have kind of come out of the woodwork to help do this," Larisey said.

Ideas for the contemporary service were sought out by a committee of church members. Larisey said they traveled to other Episcopal churches across the state to see how they do it.

Six months after the services begin, Larisey said the church will evaluate its work.

"I trust a year from now, our church will have grown spiritually, numerically, and the service will have been a blessing for our members and the Orangeburg community.

"It's spirit and truth. We expect God to show up."

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T&D Features Editor Wendy Jeffcoat Crider can be reached by e-mail at wjeffcoat@timesanddemocrat.com or by telephone at 803-533-5546. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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