Protestant Sacramentalism and ‘An Ancient Worship Movement’

Christian worship is understood as a union of physical practices and unseen spiritual realities, in which actions such as prayer, baptism, and communal confession actively shape sanctification and participate in a larger spiritual battle. Historical patterns of worship rooted in early Christianity are emphasized as formative and enduring, calling for a recovery of practices that are both deeply Christ-centered and communally embodied. This approach seeks to hold together doctrinal conviction, experiential depth, and missional purpose, encouraging unity across traditions while resisting both reductionism and empty ritual, and framing the Christian life as a continuous, lived participation in worship, formation, and spiritual warfare. 

Anthony Delgado: All right, I'm Anthony Delgado, pastor of Palmdale Church in Southern California, host of the Biblical Reenchantment podcast, and author of The Gospel is Bigger Than You Think.

Brandon Spain: And I am Brandon Spain, disciple maker and Anglican priest, host of the Unrefined podcast about all things strange and supernatural.

Anthony Delgado: We're here with Greg Gordon, author of An Ancient Worship Movement. We want to talk to Greg about the book that he wrote, but there's a lot more to Greg and his ministry. Greg, thank you for joining us on the Unrefined podcast and the Biblical Reenchantment podcast. We're going to broadcast this to multiple platforms. Please, if you would, just tell us who you are, about St. Thomas Church, and briefly about your book, An Ancient Worship Movement, and why you wrote it.

Greg Gordon: Thank you, guys. It's great to be here—nice to meet you both. I've been a believer for over 25 years now and in ministry for 22 years. I run sermonindex.net; it's one of the largest audio sermon repositories online. I've also been involved in many different church ministries and wrote a book on house church movements, a sort of DMM—we’ll get into that later—approach that was used to start dozens of house churches in North America. I worked with house churches for about seven years.

Now the Lord has brought me into more of a liturgical type of church thinking. I have a book on this, and St. Thomas Church has become where I’m at personally. It’s also become the beginning of a house liturgical movement in North America—that’s the core of it. I look forward to learning from you guys and going back and forth here. My life has definitely changed theologically over 25 years. We talk about the humility to grow or the humility to change, and I read the verse last night—those who seek to be the greatest would be like a little child. There are multiple applications to that, but little children are, in a good way, easily able to change their minds. They can admit they’re wrong if they have a strange thought or belief and an authority says, “That’s not really what it is.” They’re quick to navigate that and understand, “I’m just a child; you’re the adult. I’ll change my mind.” That’s a little less easily done with adults like us.

God’s God, and we’re just humans. We’re able to change and adjust with what he’s doing. I love the comment about truth-seeking too—that’s really the core of my heart: to be like Nathanael, to have no guile, to be a truth seeker, to be honest and say, “That’s the Messiah—I’ll agree with that,” and be willing to change my point of view. If we don’t, we can miss what God’s doing. But God’s bigger than us; he’s able to use us where we are. That’s a packed introduction, but I wanted to put those elements out there because I think they’ll flush out in our conversation.

Anthony Delgado: I appreciate that. It sounds like all three of us have started from a low church background and moved toward a high church model. I’m still Southern Baptist, but we’ve moved in that direction. Palmdale Church is a bit unusual—we meet outdoors at a park as a church plant, and yet we have a formal liturgy. So we’re a mix of the informal and the formal. House church carries a certain informality as well, so liturgy doesn’t have to come with all the expectations typically associated with high church.

Brandon Spain: Right.

Anthony Delgado: Although I wouldn’t mind a little stained glass window.

Brandon Spain: Oh yeah.

Anthony Delgado: Let’s jump in. In my tradition, we often talk about things that are historically described as sacramental, but we speak of them as ordinances—in other words, things God has commanded us to do. That’s true, but I think it reduces the meaning of those things. I realize “sacrament” and “sacramental” are broader terms than just baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but in the Baptist tradition, we speak of those as ordinances. So I was wondering, Greg, if you would give us a definition—how you would describe sacrament and sacramentalism—and then answer what makes a church sacramental.

Greg Gordon: Sure. I’d love to hear Brandon on this also. Just to touch on what we were talking about, I think high church can be defined by things like clergy vestments, church structure, large cathedral churches with stained glass windows—all the trappings. That may be part of what high church is technically defined by. But high church can also be the heart of worship—where our heart goes in worshiping God. I think you can be somewhat low church but have the highest form of worship in that sense.

If we cultivate in our hearts the belief that when we enter the sanctuary of God—whether a living room or a cathedral—we come with full faith and expectation that we are entering into divine worship, actually worshiping with divine beings, angels, and ascending into unseen realities, that may sound esoteric to some people, but it is the reality of what happens when we worship. We come into that Revelation 5 experience or Isaiah 6, where we worship with words and songs alongside heavenly angels surrounding the throne of God. Our faith rises—we see in Revelation that prayers are not just stored in heaven but are actually ascending like incense before the throne of God, with continual worship that never ends.

That’s the broader subject, but sacramental—the basic definition I would give—is a physical reality, object, or action that corresponds with an unseen spiritual reality. “Unseen” points to faith; we are operating in faith. It allows tangible, physical elements to become something faith-giving or faith-directing. In church experience, most traditions—low church, high church—affirm this in some way. Only a few groups in history, like the Quakers or the Salvation Army, have minimized the sacraments to the point of not practicing Communion or the Lord’s Supper. The Salvation Army might allow water baptism if someone strongly requested it, but they tended to spiritualize the event.

Most churches, however, practice water baptism and the sacramental action of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. These involve elements like water, bread, and wine, which become not merely symbolic but means or instruments through which we connect spiritually with God. This also pushes against early Gnostic thinking that all material matter is evil. I know that’s basic, but it helps frame what we mean.

Brandon Spain: Right, yeah.

Anthony Delgado: I appreciate all that you’ve said on that.

Brandon Spain: Yeah, I really like that. I know the seminary definition is “an outward expression of an inward grace.” That’s what I was taught. But what you said adds more to it, because that definition limits it to just the Eucharist and baptism. I personally believe there are two sacraments, but also many sacramentals—things like Scripture and prayer—areas where there are those thin spaces between the seen and unseen.

My Anglicanism has a Celtic flair, so it is very much about enchantment. That sacramental reality is fundamentally supernatural—it’s where we touch the tangible presence of God through tangible things. I agree with what you’re saying.

Anthony Delgado: I also think what’s interesting—and I wonder if you guys would agree—is that in Baptist and other denominational circles, even some Pentecostal ones, there’s a tendency to speak of ordinances instead of sacraments. But when I baptize someone, I think something truly spiritual is happening, whether people are willing to acknowledge it or not.

Brandon Spain: Yeah. I actually have a story. My wife and I do a lot of emotional and inner healing ministry. We were trained by a guy from Australia who emphasized communion and its importance. He told us about working with someone who had come out of the New Age and had the ability to see auras.

He would take him to different churches, and as people went forward for communion, the only places where this person said he saw a change were liturgical churches—Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox—that used real wine and bread. He said the auras changed as people physically partook. I thought that was a compelling illustration of the sacramental idea. Whether or not we know how to interpret everything about that, it reflects the sense that something real is happening—we are receiving God’s grace.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, absolutely.

Brandon Spain: So my question is this: with so many believers rediscovering Hebraic roots and ancient liturgies, how do we balance the desire for authenticity with legalism on one side and elitism on the other in worship practices? And how do you decide which traditions to draw from in the church? There are still things, even as an Anglican, where I’m not sure what to do with them. And so in St. Thomas Church, what does your form of discernment look like? How do you decide what you bring in as little “t” or big “T” tradition—what’s okay and what’s not?

Greg Gordon: Yeah, that’s a great question. Some people may not realize that we have a Hebraic faith translated into a Gentile context of worship. It wasn’t just that Jewish people were worshipers of God and now we are too—the early church was essentially a synthesis of the synagogue model, including traditions and prescriptive worship from the Old Testament. Some of those elements carried over directly into church settings.

The synagogue itself became the model for the church. Early gatherings often met in synagogues until persecution forced a kind of separation, but they didn’t abandon the model—they adapted it. The synagogue was essentially a form of “mini-temple” worship, taking Old Testament patterns and expressing them in homes or meeting places throughout the diaspora. As the church spread—from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth—it retained this structure.

The synagogue model was then expanded with gospel readings and Eucharistic worship. So you have the reading of the Law, the Prophets, and later the Gospels, followed by a homily, and then Communion. Even the physical layout—like the bema seat, seating arrangements, and the storage and reading of scrolls—carries through. In the Gospels, you see scrolls being brought out and read, and the one who reads often explains the text, much like a homily. There were multiple participants in synagogue worship, and that carried forward as well.

For me, understanding this was an “aha” moment. As an evangelical, I was surprised to see how clearly the early church followed a liturgical pattern. Archaeological findings of early synagogues and Christian meeting places reinforce this—they show continuity in structure and practice. Years ago, near the end of my time in house church ministry, I even wrote an article titled “I Was Wrong,” acknowledging that early Christian worship was far more liturgical than I had assumed.

That realization led me to explore the early church fathers and documents outside the New Testament. When you read sources like the catechetical lectures or apostolic traditions—texts from around the third or fourth century—you find worship patterns that closely resemble Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, or other liturgical traditions today. It’s striking how consistent these forms have remained for over 1,600 or 1,700 years. And if they were written down then, they were already established practices before that—likely going back even further.It’s the humbling of anyone, especially evangelicals like myself. You come to a point where you say, “Wow, I’m wrong.” I’m sitting here with my Bible open—I’m grateful for the Scriptures. We have them in so many translations. We are diligent to read them—non-negotiable quiet times, daily time with the Lord. In that sense, we are people of the Book in a way many in church history couldn’t be.

But then you realize these same Scriptures speak about practices the church carried out two thousand years ago, and our prescriptive worship doesn’t always align with what historically happened. It takes humility to say, “I’ve read these verses a thousand times, but my interpretation may have been off.” You begin to see that the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not just symbolic—that Scripture points to something real there. Or that something truly happens in baptism—that it’s more than just water.

Even Baptists would agree you can’t have a Baptist church without baptism. It’s treated as a symbol, but it’s still non-negotiable. When I was first born again, I actually poured water on my head in a sink because I was so convicted that I needed to be baptized. The Presbyterian church wouldn’t baptize me, and I doubted the validity of my infant baptism. My parents weren’t really believers, so I had no sense of that moment being meaningful. I wanted a believer’s baptism because Scripture pressed that importance on me. At the very least, we would all agree baptism is the first act of obedience in the gospel.

Can you go to heaven without being water baptized? I wouldn’t recommend trying.

Brandon Spain: Yeah.

Anthony Delgado: That’s one of those questions where I always think—why does it matter whether you can? Why wouldn’t you want to be baptized? Why wouldn’t you want everything that’s built into the history and symbolism of baptism? And even more, if baptism is sacramental, why wouldn’t you want that spiritual communion with God, that grace poured out on you?

It seems like this flows out of that 19th- and 20th-century fundamentalist hermeneutic where we reduce Scripture to, “What do we have to do?” Modern evangelicalism has sifted so much meaning out of the Bible and reduced it to a bare minimum—what do you have to do to not go to hell? That misses the point entirely.

Brandon Spain: Yeah, I totally agree. Why wouldn’t you want that? When I was a youth intern, I challenged a kid who said he was saved but wouldn’t get baptized. I questioned whether he really was, and I got in trouble for that. But baptism was the original sinner’s prayer.

Greg Gordon: Yeah.

Brandon Spain: We’ve replaced that sacramental reality with our own rituals. That’s one of the critiques from high church traditions, and they’re right—we’re doing similar things, we just call them something else and minimize them.

Anthony Delgado: We make it as least spiritual as possible.

Brandon Spain: Exactly. There’s an anti-supernatural bent—rooted in rationalism and Enlightenment thinking.

Anthony Delgado: Yep, that’s exactly it.

Greg Gordon: And it’s allowing those unseen realities to affect us through physical actions. Our sanctification—our becoming, our theosis, becoming like Christ and partaking in the divine nature—actually happens not through osmosis or some instant moment, but through physical actions, things we do. Whether it’s prayer, the posturing of our hands, kneeling, whatever we’re doing—accompanied by faith—those spiritual realities take hold of us, and that actually changes us. That’s the unfortunate thing—we diminish these practices to the point where we’re not spiritually growing.

Brandon Spain: Yes.

Greg Gordon:

Brandon Spain: Well, excuse me—I’m sorry for interrupting—but there’s something humbling about prostrating yourself. When you’re ordained a deacon, lying flat on the floor—that’s the most humbling position you can take. I could stand there, but it wouldn’t mean as much. When I was ordained, I was completely prostrate, and I saw that in your book too. That kind of physical act matters—it connects back to what a sacrament is.

Anthony Delgado: Going back to Brandon’s question, Greg, it sounded like you were saying we go to Scripture and then see how those things have been worked out through the history of the church when we decide what goes into our liturgies and practices. Was I hearing you right?

Greg Gordon: Well, liturgy-wise, we’re actually in the process of forming that. St. Thomas Church is becoming a non-geographical missionary diocese under Christ Calvary Church, which is based in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. It has Anglican roots but operates independently, with some Oriental Orthodox influence. So we’re working through what forms of liturgy we should incorporate in a Western context.

From my side, I’ve been studying extensively—I ordered around 30 books on liturgy, including ancient Celtic liturgies, Roman rites, and early church writings. Thomas Cranmer, in the Anglican tradition, did remarkable work by drawing from early church prayers and sources to form the Book of Common Prayer, which is an extraordinary achievement.

The question for us isn’t whether we can reinvent liturgy or improve on something like Cranmer’s work. It’s more about discerning, from a Western perspective, which traditions are essential and which are negotiable. For example, practices like All Saints’ Day—are they necessary? What are their benefits?

It’s not about reinventing the church but asking what helps and what doesn’t. Things like vestments—do they direct attention to Christ, or draw attention to themselves? I’m not dismissing them; they have their place. My heart is to emphasize traditions, especially from the first 500 years of the church, that are clearly Christ-centered and cultivate true worship.

Like the hours of prayer—they started as a very Christ-focused practice. Over time, they morphed into different things: a discipleship pattern, even something like a monastic expectation for clergy. That’s not all bad, but the earliest writings show they were tied directly to Christ’s crucifixion—the third hour, the sixth hour, the ninth hour. So daily prayer became a way to sacramentally remember Christ—what he was doing at those moments. That’s powerful. Could we recover that and refocus it on Christ? That’s the goal—not doing it better, but refocusing it.

That’s our heart. Not to redevelop liturgy, but to ask what from the tradition is essential and what is cultural. Anglicanism, for example, carries a distinctly British and Celtic expression. That doesn’t mean it isn’t transferable, but in a modern Western evangelical context, some of those elements may not carry the same weight. So we ask: what actually functions sacramentally, and what is just inherited form? If we’re drawing from the first 500 years, what are the core practices we should keep?

Anthony Delgado: I resonate with that. Coming from a low church Baptist background and moving toward sacramentalism, I’ve felt the pull toward things like wearing a robe. But if I’m honest, sometimes that impulse comes from wanting people to recognize that what we’re doing is sacramental. And that’s actually made me hesitate, because I don’t want the form to become the focus.

What we’ve done at Palmdale Church is build a liturgy by drawing from multiple sources—the ordinary Catholic mass, the Eastern Orthodox divine liturgy, and the Book of Common Prayer—and then asking what principles are at work in each. There are still things we’re developing, but people notice something different. They may not have the language for it, but they sense that something spiritual is happening in the service.

And that raises the question: where do we draw the line? What belongs in and what doesn’t?

That brings me back to baptism. In your book, you mention that St. Thomas Church affirms infant baptism alongside other traditions. I appreciate that approach—it’s a divisive issue, but handled with grace. Brandon and I both have a lowercase “e” ecumenical bent. We want unity in the body of Christ, especially around primary doctrines. Baptism, while important, seems to function more as a secondary issue, yet because it’s a practice of the church, it still has a way of dividing congregations.

I’ve heard case studies of churches trying to practice both, and it creates tension. Even historically, Baptists in the U.S. tried to partner with Congregationalists for missions, but the divide over baptism caused problems. So how does that actually work in practice? How do you handle both infant and credo baptism in a real church context, and how is that received by the congregation?

Greg Gordon: That’s a very touchy issue for evangelicals. It’s often the dividing line—credo versus infant baptism. Historically, infant baptism was normative in the early church and among the early church fathers. I would encourage anyone to research that deeply—you’re going to encounter things that challenge your assumptions.

At the same time, God is bigger than the issue. A difference in view doesn’t nullify baptism. In the early church, adult baptism was typically for pagans—people coming out of idolatry into the faith. But infant baptism functioned differently. It was the church recognizing that children of believing families belong within the covenant community. It’s similar to saying we will disciple our children in the faith rather than treat them as outsiders until some later conversion moment.

In that sense, infant baptism is the church collectively acknowledging, “This child belongs to the Lord.” It’s an offering of the child to God, like Samuel. That doesn’t remove the need for personal faith—later in life, that child must confess Christ and be confirmed. If they reject that, they are turning away from something they have known from the beginning.

The tension often comes from a different underlying assumption. In many evangelical frameworks, children are treated as outsiders until they make an individual decision. But historically, the church has understood children of believers as being raised within the life of faith from the beginning. That shapes how baptism is practiced.

Beyond that, baptism is not just a one-time symbolic act that we leave behind. It is an entry into the life of the church and an ongoing reality that shapes sanctification. The early church understood believers as continually living out of their baptism—remaining in that identity, growing in it, returning to it. When baptism is reduced to a past moment, it loses that formative role in the Christian life.

So in practice, holding both views requires recognizing the theological weight on both sides while keeping the focus on Christ, the unity of the church, and the ongoing life of faith that baptism signifies and participates in.

Anthony Delgado: Be trained.

Greg Gordon: Yeah, it’s trained, but the flesh is still flesh.

Brandon Spain: Yeah.

Greg Gordon: The spirit is always growing, and these sacramental actions we’re doing—even water baptism—become a kind of re-happening reality in the historic church. Practices like sprinkling water or using a font to make the sign of the cross when you come into a church reinforce that ongoing participation.

Brandon Spain: And Easter—don’t forget Easter. We celebrate that renewal of baptism during Easter in more formal churches.

Greg Gordon: That’s right.

Anthony Delgado: I want to give some context for why I asked the question. In Baptist churches, when it comes to communion, they often fence the table—only members of that local congregation are allowed to come forward. In more contemporary Baptist churches, it’s usually open communion—anyone who professes Jesus as Lord and Savior is invited. That leans more toward the universal church, but it also leaves the decision up to the individual.

We have a lot of homeschool families for the same reasons you were talking about, and we’ve wrestled with this. If we move toward a more closed communion, what does that mean if we’re still operating as credo Baptists?

Brandon Spain: I want to jump in here, because I’m not a typical Anglican—I’ve told Anthony I’m kind of a rogue Anglican. In movement-oriented contexts, what I’ve done is baptize infants. When I was Baptist, it struck me that we intuitively knew we had to do something with babies, so we dedicated them. There’s already a recognition that something is needed.

In Anglicanism, there’s room for christening, and I’ll do that. I’ll christen children, and then later, if they drift away and come back, I’ll baptize them as adults. That creates a wider framework. That’s one of the strengths of Anglicanism—its wideness—but also one of its weaknesses. So I practice infant baptism, christening, and adult baptism depending on the situation.

Christening is fascinating because it gives room for grace. The reality is both of my boys were baptized, but neither is currently walking in faith. That’s not a failure of the sacrament itself—it’s that the formation around it didn’t happen. The godparents didn’t fulfill their role. It became a ritual without function.

That’s what stood out to me in your book, Greg. These liturgical forms have to be heart-driven, or they become dead rituals. My wife was raised Baptist, and when she came into the Anglican church, what she loved most were the prayers. She found words she couldn’t form herself—written by saints before her—and realized how saturated they were with Scripture. But people raised in that tradition don’t always recognize the richness because it becomes familiar.

So the challenge is guarding against that familiarity—where something deeply spiritual becomes just part of the culture.

Brandon Spain: I live near southern Louisiana, and with Catholics there, you see this. You could say the same thing about Baptists in Mississippi. If I’m making sense, we have to recover the heart of it, and that starts with us as leaders—as priests, presbyters, whatever we call ourselves—actually living it out. I tell people, in a sense, everyone has their own congregation, and I’m teaching you how to be a priest just as I’m functioning as one for you. That brings the heart back into the liturgy.

I also appreciate, Greg, the simplicity you’re talking about. When we get into movement contexts, simplicity matters, but it’s not enough—you also need depth and richness. I see you trying to hold both together in the St. Thomas movement.

Greg Gordon: One thing to add—when you look at early church practices, especially in texts like the apostolic traditions, baptism was taken extremely seriously. There was discipleship beforehand, even deliverance—exorcism—before baptism. There was fasting, preparation, memorization of Scripture or the Apostles’ Creed, and then after baptism, anointing with oil connected to the Holy Spirit. So in one baptismal moment, you had discipleship, confession, deliverance, and Spirit-filling all together.

That’s why I sometimes say the historic liturgical churches were the “real Baptists,” because of how seriously they treated baptism. I’m not saying Baptists shouldn’t be Baptists, but historically, baptism carried a much greater weight in the life of the church. It wasn’t just a past event—it was something continually remembered and lived in.

Brandon Spain: One thing that’s often missing in evangelical settings is the connection between baptism and resurrection. You put off the old man and put on the new. And we rarely ask people to renounce Satan and his works—that used to be a central part. It’s like a transfer of allegiance: renouncing the domain of darkness and embracing the kingdom of God.

Anthony Delgado: It’s interesting—when you start looking into these things, you often arrive at the same conclusions the early church did. In my own work, I’ve described baptism as a pledge of allegiance to Christ.

Brandon Spain: And that connects to practice. I’m an Anglican priest doing house church work—what I call being a “priest in a pocket.” I plant house churches and work within disciple-making movements, but with a liturgical framework. I’ve been influenced by Roland Allen in seeing that liturgical and organic expressions of church don’t have to be opposed—they can work together.

Brandon Spain: So what is your process of discipleship? You’ve talked about it a little—can you flesh that out? My big question is that in higher church settings, discipleship often feels very cognitive, classroom-oriented, and not very apprenticeship-based. I’m a big Dallas Willard guy, so I’m thinking in terms of apprenticing people to Jesus. A lot of churches will make disciples, but they don’t teach disciples to make disciples—like 2 Timothy 2:2. Coming from DMM and CPM contexts, how do you address that?

Greg Gordon: I love that. I was heavily influenced by DMM—Disciple Making Movements—and we’re actually using CPM language at St. Thomas Church. If you start a parish without a clear mission to multiply disciples, you’ll drift into focusing on everything else—buildings, aesthetics, preferences. But if the original purpose is to bear fruit and multiply, that shapes everything. Mission flows out of worship—Malachi 1:11 says, “From the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations… in every place incense will be offered to my name.”

So the heart of missions is forming worshiping communities—people remembering the Lord and offering their lives like incense before him. That’s why, for us, a core element of discipleship is prayer. Liturgical prayer itself is discipleship—it forms people. It’s a sacramental act. When people ask what to do if they don’t have a local church, I tell them: start with the hours of prayer. Set up a simple prayer space in your home—a cross, Scripture, a place to gather—and begin there. That’s the foundation.

The other method we use is rooted in the book of Acts. We encourage people to work through Acts and see it as the model for the church. The idea is that how the church began is how it should continue. The church may adapt to different cultures, but its essence doesn’t change. The same Spirit, the same mission, the same power should still be at work.

In places like India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, we see this more clearly—miracles, healings, and supernatural signs accompanying the gospel in ordinary church life. It’s not manufactured; it’s simply the continuation of what we see in Acts. But in the West, especially North America, unbelief often suppresses that expectation.

So for us, discipleship is not just teaching information—it’s forming people through worship, prayer, Scripture, and mission, all working together.

The word there is actually “synagogue,” which ties back to what we were saying earlier. But the point is, you’re putting the poor man on the ground while elevating the rich. The poor are rich in faith, and the affluent often lack that kind of dependence on God. So when it comes to discipleship, I love DMM models, I love tools like the Navigators, and we’ll use those things to a degree. But ultimately, the two main pillars we’re leaning on are the book of Acts and liturgical prayer.

We’re not going to forbid tools—there are many good ones. For example, the Anglican Church in North America has a strong catechism that walks through the Apostles’ Creed in a question-and-answer format, then through the Ten Commandments. That’s historically how the church prepared people for baptism. So catechesis is a valuable tool. But beyond all tools, what we really want is Acts-style Christianity—experiential discipleship, the presence of God, and even what we might call supernatural realities, though I mean that in a grounded, historical sense, like the kinds of miracles seen throughout church history.

We are the people of God—saints—and our prayers matter. Why wouldn’t we expect God to confirm what we’re doing with his presence? Sometimes I think we limit him. Even historically, you see strange confirmations—there are accounts of people stealing consecrated bread from churches for dark purposes, which at least suggests there’s something spiritually real happening. That’s why I say, “demons hate ancient faith.” As we lean into Spirit-filled, liturgical worship aligned with how the church has historically functioned, we should expect both spiritual resistance and God’s blessing.

Brandon Spain: Have you noticed there’s a movement happening? Even among low-church charismatics, people are rediscovering ancient practices without realizing it. They’re praying structured times of prayer, doing things like “soaking,” which parallels Eucharistic adoration. There’s this natural pull toward what we’re talking about. It seems like the Spirit is leading people back to these patterns, and maybe revival will look more like this than we expect.

Anthony Delgado: I think people are longing for something deeper. We’ve reduced the gospel to something minimal—stripped of its depth—and people are searching for something more substantial. The church hasn’t always helped them find that sense of holiness and depth of life. What’s missing is sacramental practice—the lived experience, the teaching, the exploration of it. And I think that’s why there’s growing interest in spiritual realities more broadly. Whether it’s spiritual warfare, unseen realities, or the supernatural, people are recognizing that the Christian life is not merely intellectual—it’s deeply spiritual. As Ephesians 6 reminds us, we are in a real spiritual battle.

I haven’t just noticed this personally—people are writing about it everywhere. There’s a clear trend of people leaving low church Protestant traditions and moving toward high church expressions. A lot of that movement is toward Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, but there’s also movement into Anglicanism. I recently read a chapter by Gerald Bray, “Why I Am an Evangelical and an Anglican,” and while I didn’t agree with everything, it captured this tension well. There’s a “big tent” in Anglicanism, but also a strong sacramental emphasis, and that’s what many people are drawn to.

So the question is, where does St. Thomas Church fit into that? And more broadly, what would you say to pastors, elders, or people in low church traditions who are feeling this pull? Instead of leaving, how do they pursue a more robust Protestant faith? Because it seems like jumping ship often creates more disruption than reforming from within—recovering what’s been neglected and growing into it.

Brandon Spain: It almost feels faddish at times. It went from “young, restless, and Reformed,” and when that wasn’t enough, now it’s “young, restless, and Orthodox.”

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Greg Gordon: There’s definitely disillusionment happening, especially in liturgical traditions. In Anglicanism, for example, there’s discouragement over leadership issues and perceived apostasy. You see similar concerns in Roman Catholic contexts, and even to some degree in Orthodox settings, though people don’t always follow that as closely. So St. Thomas Church, in a sense, becomes a kind of “catching net.” We’re saying to people, don’t just give up and swing to the other extreme. Don’t abandon what you’ve known and go back to something that feels like a loss. Instead, take a step forward—start something simple, even a house church expression, and continue moving toward a fuller expression of the faith.

At the same time, many evangelicals are hungry for something deeper—more substance, more rootedness. But often the only perceived path forward is to adopt an entirely different tradition wholesale—Orthodox, Catholic, or Anglican—which can feel like a massive leap. What may actually be needed is a kind of reformation within evangelicalism itself—a recovery of liturgical and sacramental life without losing what is already good.

Evangelicalism has real strengths—a deep love for Scripture, commitment to memorization, zeal for evangelism. Those are not things to discard. The early church had those same traits. So the goal isn’t replacement, but integration—bringing evangelical conviction together with ancient practice.

But how do we become liturgical while still maintaining a first love for Jesus, a personal relationship with him, a love for Scripture, and a passion for evangelism? It’s sad that churches can lose that. Those traditions need revival—a return to why liturgy exists in the first place: Christ at the center, Scripture shaping everything, love for him driving it all.

So it’s not about leaving one thing to do something new—it’s about synergy, bringing things together. That “small e” ecumenical vision you mentioned is not optional; it’s necessary. John 17 makes that clear—the world will know by our unity. The more the church moves toward that kind of unity, the more it will recover what is true.

You’re even seeing this across different streams. Charismatics are talking about reviving the Lord’s Supper as a unifying practice. There’s movement across traditions—whether charismatic or liturgical—toward something more ancient, more rooted. People are searching for it.

The St. Thomas Church idea reflects that. Our logo is like shattered stained glass—different pieces, but unified. The Moravians were a big influence on me. Count Zinzendorf saw each tradition as holding a precious jewel of doctrine. That posture of humility—recognizing we need one another—is essential.

As we grow in that, unity becomes more than an idea. We can’t wait for everyone to get there before doing anything, but we can begin living it out. Not just gathering for songs, but engaging in the full life of the church—Eucharistic worship, prayer, mission.

When the church gathers and confesses the faith together—“I believe in God, maker of heaven and earth”—there is something happening spiritually. That unified confession, that shared worship, rises to God like incense. It is light in the midst of darkness. And while Scripture reading, memorization, and evangelism remain vital, there is something about that unified expression of the faith that we have often neglected.

Anthony Delgado: I love that picture—the church gathered in unison, confessing the creed. To step back and imagine it, even through something like C. S. Lewis’s lens, it feels like a place where deception has no foothold. There’s a kind of spiritual clarity in that moment.

Brandon Spain: It reminds me of that Japanese art where broken pieces are put back together and become more beautiful—your logo captures that. The church, fractured as it is, can be restored into something even more striking when brought back together.

And I know a lady I mentioned earlier—this is just what I’d call “shade tree theology”—but she wondered if part of God’s sovereignty allowed the church to divide for a time so that, when brought back together, there would be a stronger unity. That’s speculation, but it does point to the beauty of what unity could become. Ultimately, in the beatific vision, we’ll all be together in community.

Anthony Delgado: Every tribe, every tongue, every people, every denomination and tradition throughout history—worshiping together in one voice.

Greg Gordon: Yeah.

Anthony Delgado: Really beautiful. Brandon, why don’t we finish with your last question?

Brandon Spain: In Israel, worship was tied to spiritual warfare. Even in stories like Naaman carrying soil back from Israel, there’s a kind of sacramental dimension to it. We often spiritualize everything, but there’s something more tangible going on. So how does St. Thomas Church approach the church militant, Christus Victor, that aspect of spiritual warfare within worship?

Greg Gordon: I think it ties into what we were already talking about. When the church gathers, confesses the faith, and worships together, there is a real spiritual reality taking place. The early church fathers spoke clearly about angels being present with the gathered church. Scripture alludes to this as well—for example, in 1 Corinthians 11, where practices like head covering are connected “because of the angels.” That was understood as a recognition of divine activity in worship.

So when we gather, there is more happening than what we see. There is a spiritual dimension—angelic presence, spiritual conflict, participation in heavenly realities. The church’s worship itself becomes an act within that larger spiritual battle.

And from personal experience, I can say the spiritual battle is real. Early in my faith, spending long hours in prayer and Scripture, there were moments where fear or disturbing thoughts would interrupt that focus—things that felt more than psychological. I had to resist those distractions and press back into prayer. Later, reading the early church fathers and desert monastics, I realized they described very similar experiences.

So whether in dramatic ways or more subtle ones, the spiritual battle is real. It’s present in prayer, in worship, and in the gathered church. Even if it looks different in the West than elsewhere, it’s still real, and the church has to engage it that way.

And honestly, the more we actually treat things as demonic realities, the more we might see fruit. In some traditions, like parts of Catholic practice, you’ll see priests prayerfully walking through areas, sprinkling water, praying—treating a place as spiritually affected and responding accordingly. You can dismiss that, but the question is, are we doing anything like that? Are we entering into that kind of spiritual engagement?

I remember doing open-air ministry and deciding one night not to preach but just to pray quietly in a dark area. No one could hear me, nothing visible marked what I was doing, but I experienced intense opposition—people reacting in ways that didn’t make sense unless something spiritual was happening. It reinforced that the battle isn’t just about visible confrontation—it’s happening in prayer as well.

That’s where the biblical picture matters. This isn’t just about individual cases; it’s a constant reality. The struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual powers. And while practices like putting on the “armor of God” are helpful, this has to become a lived mindset, not just a one-time action.

When the church begins to think that way, it becomes more active—militant in the right sense. Even passages like “the gates of hell shall not prevail” carry that sense of movement and confrontation. Worship itself becomes part of that battle. Throughout Scripture, you see worship leading the way—whether in Israel’s history or in the church’s life.

In that sense, sacramental actions—especially gathered worship—are not just symbolic. They participate in the spiritual reality. As the church worships, prays, and proclaims Christ, it is pushing back darkness. It’s light set on a hill. The more that happens across the world, the more that light spreads.

Anthony Delgado: I appreciate that connection—that liturgy isn’t just a Sunday structure but a way of life. It’s not just about a service; it’s about forming a daily rhythm where the sacramental life of the church carries into everything we do. That ties directly into passages like Ephesians 6—it’s something each believer lives out continually.

Brandon Spain: Yeah, the image that came to mind was Helms Deep—being under siege for so long, and then finally riding out. That’s what it feels like. And I’ve wondered—if we believed in the power of our practices the way others believe in theirs, we might see far more transformation. That may sound controversial, but it raises the question of how seriously we take what we’re doing.

Anthony Delgado: I don’t think that was controversial at all. I was waiting to hear what you were about to say. Gentlemen, I really appreciate your time today. Greg, keep up the great work—we really enjoyed the book. For listeners, I’ve got my copy here. This isn’t some big publishing venture—the book is free on Kindle, free in audio in several places, and very inexpensive on Amazon. We’ll put links in the description so you can find it easily.

Brandon Spain: Absolutely. Greg, is there anything else you’d like to share—where people can find you or connect with your work?

Greg Gordon: You can find us on YouTube—there’s audio content there as well.

Brandon Spain: Great, yeah. I have a feeling there are ministers out there looking for exactly what you’re doing.

Anthony Delgado: We’ll also post the link to St. Thomas Church so people can reach out. We’re praying for you and your ministry, and if you ever have something to share, reach out—we’d love to support what you’re doing. I’m very encouraged by it.

Brandon Spain: Me too.

Anthony Delgado: Brandon, thank you as always—you’re a good friend, and I appreciate your thoughts. God bless you guys, and may the Lord increase your ministry to the glory of Christ.

Brandon Spain: Thank you, brother.

Greg Gordon: Amen.