It turns out the unChurched faith believers that are coming out of their teens and up to 35-40 want the Christian Traditions like Lent and other Liturgical events in the historical Christian Calendar.

I remember being told that

did not apply to festivals and other celebrations that Lutherans, Anglicans etc celebrated. [/tic]


What are your thoughts on this?

As you know, we are celebrating Lent on the Spectrum blog with a series of reflections by Jeff Boyd on the practical applications to social life as drawn from scripture.

I totally understand that for Adventists, historically, the larger Christian traditions of Lent seemed unBiblical and/or merely rooted in Catholic tradition. But the fact is that many of our beliefs (Trinity) and our practices (ordination) come from the same tradition. Thus, if we do it with beliefs and behaviors, why not with belonging? As you note, many folks of all ages hungry of ritual in their faith, particularly as we find ourselves buffeted intellectually in these postmodern times. With our minds sometimes so far apart, the least the church can do is provide us a place to experience our faith in community.

Lent also allows us to practice Christianity more. And frankly, why would anyone oppose young people getting excited about doing more Christianity? My observation is that we need more festivals, celebrations, even parties in Adventism. After all, communities of faith tend to function and grow when everyone prays, practices and parties together. Look, Adventism is an amazing fusion of Jewish and Christian traditions - but then in the process we dropped most of both of their traditions of festivals. What a loss! Samir Selmanovic is on to something with his argument that we can mix belief structures - why not mix in more ways for folks to connect ritually as well?