"Go Weird or Go Home"

Living Church's blog, "Covenant," offers these reflections on "Evangelism of the Weird":

The weirdness of the Christian faith is a potent weapon against indifference among the faithful and a strong tool for fanning the flames of curiosity among the unchurched. Strange practices abound in the tradition — Rogation processions, the burying of the Alleluia before the start of Lent, eucharistic adoration, the marking of the forehead with ashes on Ash Wednesday, the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday, the entire drama of the Great Vigil of Easter. And these are just the liturgical bits. Something as simple as making the sign of the cross in a public place, offering a blessing over a meal, or even carrying a Bible or a prayer book under your arm is enough to get you strange looks in many places today. These things are strange to people who do not understand them. They may even seem frightening.
As Christianity has become increasingly domesticated in its practice in the West, our tendency has been to let these strange practices go or to try to do them in secret so as not to draw attention to ourselves. This has been a mistake. What the current moment calls for is an even greater commitment to our distinctiveness from the world. While emphasizing these practices may turn some people off, many of them were never going to darken the door of a church anyway. Embracing the oddness of our faith reinforces the power of the Christian narrative for those of us already committed to it and sends a strong signal to others that there is something different about the Christian Church, that Christianity is not just one more club or party but a radically unique way of living and being in the world.
This is not to say that we should just seek out weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Not every strange practice is salutary. Whatever we are doing ought to be congruent with the faith proclaimed in Holy Scripture and taught by the great saints of the Church for 2,000 years. In that same vein, while newer practices can be very useful and meaningful, we ought to give a preference to those activities that have a long, rich history in the life of the Church. This is especially true when we are attempting to recover something that has been lost or obscured. The washing of feet at Maundy Thursday, for instance, has been discontinued or played down in many parishes, but it goes back to the New Testament and has been practiced liturgically since at least the post-apostolic age.