He's been a figure in popular music for five decades — and more than that, is "always one step ahead" of the curve.

So, the Rev. David Warner Peck said, he and others at downtown Lancaster's St. James Episcopal Church got to thinking, why not a service that features the music of Bob Dylan?

"We've created boxes and walls and separations in our music" between the mass-market popular and the sacred, divisions "that didn't exist 100 years ago, let alone 500 years ago," Peck said Friday.

So at 5 p.m. today, the church at 119 N. Duke St. will hold a Mass featuring the artist whose songs chronicled the turbulent 1960s and spoke for a generation.

The service will include the Dylan songs "Gotta Serve Somebody," "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "Death Is Not the End" and "Beyond the Horizon."

Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, has music that perfectly fits into the message of a Mass, said Peck, who's been St. James' rector since late 2008.

"If you keep looking at the music he's playing, it's more and more subtle, but also more and more profoundly spiritual," Peck said.

The songs in today's Mass, the rector said, are a mix of Dylan's "classic hits and also a couple of his lesser-known contemporary pieces, songs from his last couple of albums that are quite beautiful."

Dylan grew up in the Jewish faith, but made a much-chronicled conversion to evangelical Christianity some 30 years ago, but also has shown more recent signs of returning to his Jewish roots.

As a critic wrote in a review of a 2009 Dylan Christmas album, "He never fails to keep us guessing."

The idea for a "Dylan Mass" began "when 'Gotta Serve Somebody' popped into our minds" as one they might perform in a service, Peck recalled.

"Then, we started thinking about doing a whole Mass around Dylan's songs … his own spiritual journey has taken him in and out of Christianity and Judaism for the last 40 years or so."

Dylan, the rector added, has always been able to "name the things that were wrong with the world, and that passionate critical perspective is a theological one."

Many people of a certain age will remember the criticism Dylan took in the mid-1960s for "going electric" — supposedly straying from his folk-music roots to play electric guitar.

Peck remembered what someone in the crowd at a 1966 Dylan concert at Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England, yelled during a quiet moment in between songs: "Judas!"

Dylan songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin' " became anthems for the civil rights and Vietnam anti-war movements of the 1960s.

Dylan, in 2005, came to Lancaster to play a concert with Willie Nelson at Clipper Magazine Stadium, and has toured with a virtual who's-who of popular rock performers.

The 68-year-old Dylan is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for what it called his profound impact on popular music and American culture.

St. James is considering plans for other popular/church music crossovers, Peck said.

They include a Mass featuring Johnny Cash music, and a "U2-charist," featuring U2 music, in a musical collaboration with another downtown church, he said.

doconnor@lnpnews.com