I recently finished my first year of college and want to share some of my reflections from this time of newness and excitement. This past year has been full of new opportunities to become a part of various communities, all of which have given me new friendships and ways to grow and stretch. This post is the first in a series about reflections from joining these new communities.

Near the end of my senior year of high school, before I even made my college decision, I was researching churches around my top colleges. I knew that finding a solid church community would be essential to becoming rooted in the family and Word of God, so I took this process seriously, though admittedly I may have been a little bit too excited about finding a church that was just right for me.

Part of my motivation was that I was curiosity about the diversity of branches of Christianity. This had previously motivated me to visit various kinds of churches and note what I found insightful about them. Another part of this was my desire to be consistently fed spiritually and to be in a Christ-centered community that would keep me grounded in God’s Word and in his love.

When I finally arrived at Grove City College in August, I began exploring some of the churches in the area that I had read about and heard about from other students. I visited a couple Presbyterian churches and a couple Anglican churches, sometimes going to two churches in a day when one of them had an evening service. I thought I would keep going to two, a Presbyterian church within walking distance and an Anglican church that was a bit further away, every week. Eventually, I came to realize that I needed to commit to one church.

I started to feel that the Anglican church I was attending in the evenings was more profound, beautiful, and life-giving than the church I would attend in the mornings. The rector preached compellingly and with grace, the liturgy was filled with Scripture and encouraged sincerity and reverence, and this church celebrated the Eucharist weekly.

The Eucharist has become increasingly important to me. More than a remembrance celebration of Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice for our sins (though certainly not less), the Eucharist is a visible sign of our communion with God and with one another through the body and blood of the resurrected Christ.

I eventually decided to settle by only going to this church most Sundays. I also got involved in other ways in the church. I started serving in the youth group every week, which gave me new opportunities to grow and build relationships. I met fellow college students serving there as well as middle and high school students, many of whom are my professors’ kids. I’ve had the privilege of helping lead small groups, games, and worship for this youth group. Though sometimes tiring after a long day of schoolwork, it’s always a joy to be a part of this.

I learned a lot about the church and its liturgies across both semesters of this first year. The most important insight I’ve gleaned so far is that at a church service, we are not meant to only learn from the sermon but also be formed by the entire liturgy—the prayers, the singing, the offering, sharing the peace, taking Communion, the benediction, all of it. Thomas Cranmer, the great Archbishop of Canterbury who had a massive role in reforming the English Church during the Protestant Reformation, considered this a vital principle when he wrote the Book of Common Prayer.

The prayer book has become the foundation of Anglican liturgy, and it is full of Psalms and other Scriptures which give it great richness. Its liturgies are a foundation for many churches that wish to worship in spirit and in truth, seeking to make all the people—clergy and laypeople alike—to be conformed to the truth of God’s Word.

But what does it mean to worship in spirit and in truth? It would help to turn to Scripture for our answer here. “Worship in spirit and truth” originates from the Gospel of John, where Jesus is conversing with the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4. John uses this interaction to highlight what kind of worship God the Father is seeking from his people.

The woman sets up two contrasting views – the Samaritan and the Judaean – about where people are to worship God. Jesus responds by highlighting that it’s not the “where”that counts so much as the “how”. The “how” that he then gives: “in spirit and truth.”

Based on this interaction, we might say that worshipping God in spirit and truth involves growing knowledge of what is true. We must engage our intellects to begin to understand who God is in all his majesty and boundlessness. This kind of worship also involves our affections – what we might call the contents of our hearts or spirits. We must be continually molded into the image of Christ, growing to love the things he loves and hate the things he hates. In summary, to worship in spirit and truth is to engage the body and the mind in whole-soul worship. In this kind of worship, we give every part of ourselves to God as our Father, trusting in him to provide for us as his children.

From what I’ve seen thus far, the Anglican tradition embodies this whole-soul worship well. The liturgy engages both the mind through profound theological concepts and the body and affections through the bodily participation it invites us into (standing, sitting, kneeling, using our voices, physically consuming…) and through the beauty it points to in the music and symbols, and often the architecture as well.

These observations have reinforced my desire to learn more about Anglicanism and other Christian traditions, as well as to keep pursuing deeper fellowship with God and with his people in godly community.

What parts of this post stuck out to you most? Do you agree with my conception of what it means to worship in spirit and truth? How do you understand this, and in what ways do you pursue this in your own church tradition? Feel free to leave a comment on any of your thoughts about this below!