For those about to lead worship

Jesus Christ is our worship, the essence of it and the whole of it, and we may worship God in Spirit and in Truth only as we are made partakers of his worship.

Thus T.F. Torrance, in Theology in Reconstruction, 249.

Torrance's point has at least a two-fold application.  Firstly, we cannot make an acceptable offering to God by ourselves.  All our worship is soiled by our sinfulness, and inadequate as a response to God's greatness and his grace.  We cannot possibly come of ourselves to appear before God and honour him.  Remember Nadab and Abihu?  Outside of Christ, our very worship of God deserves and attracts his wrath.  So if you're about to lead worship, please remember that you cannot do it - that you depend on Christ to pour out the Spirit so that what you do might be real, genuine, acceptable.  Worship is not within your powers, and leading others in worship is something that should make you tremble.

But second, an acceptable offering to God has been made, in our human nature, by our Brother the Lord Jesus Christ.  Because he appears in heaven before God, as our great High Priest, there is human worship which is sinless and holy, and which genuinely honours the Father.  And because that worship exists, we can come to worship - not as if we were offering something alongside Christ's offering, but as we are joined to him by the Spirit in faith our own inadequate worship is clothed in his great act of worship, and made to participate in it.  There is nothing for us to add, because he has done it all; but we may participate, because he has gone ahead of us.  So if you're about to lead worship, remember that what that means is directing people to Christ, who is the real worship leader, and resting in him and his perfect worship yourself as you lead others in doing so.

On liturgy, for the non-liturgical

It seems to me that the renewal of our corporate worship ought to be a priority for evangelical churches in the UK.  I think so many of our problems can be traced back to weakness here - whether it's a lack of joy in the gospel (and therefore a lack of joyful witness), a leadership that doesn't stand in awe of the Lord (and therefore abuses authority in the church), or a weak discipleship (and therefore ethical compromise with the world).  We need liturgical renewal (amongst other things) because worship stands at the very centre of our church life, of the outworking of God's redemption in the community life of God's people.

But I know that whenever you start talking about liturgy, there is a group of Christians immediately turned off.  If you think that liturgy means ritualism, dressing up, reciting everything from a script, and inaccessible choir performances in place of congregational singing - well, in that case I can see why you might not be thrilled at the thought.  For many who grew up in traditions which had, perhaps, beautiful liturgy and shiny vestments and ancient sanctuaries, but little to nothing in the way of living faith, I completely understand the negative associations.

Suffice to say that when I'm agitating for liturgical renewal, I'm not aiming for any of those things (although some of them might do more good than harm, if done well).  What I'm talking about is simply making our Sunday gatherings appropriate, or fitting, to the immensity of what is happening in the gathering of God's people - in tone, structure and content.

Tone is perhaps the most difficult thing to pin down, but essentially I mean this: does this feel like we are coming into the presence of Almighty God?  The book of Hebrews tells us that, whereas Israel came to the burning mountain of Sinai, we come to the heavenly mountain of Zion, gathered into the presence of innumerable angels and the assembly of the saints who have gone before, into the very throne room of God through the Mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Does the tone of our worship reflect that?  The tone we're going for is reverence and awe with cheerfulness, a sort of serious joy.  This tone will be set by the nature of the greeting, by the voice and posture of the service leader, by the choice of hymns, and perhaps preeminently by the way we are led in prayer.  Does it feel like we are meeting with God?

Structure helps to underline what it is that we are doing.  If we are coming to God through Christ in the Spirit, it is helpful to have some narrative structure, a movement, to what we are doing.  The imagery of spatial movement is useful and thoroughly biblical here: we draw near, we enter, we come.  The sense of movement and direction fosters the sense of encounter, as we approach the Lord.  This is not a manipulative thing; we're not trying to manufacture something that isn't there.  Rather, we are trying to make the outward structure fit with the inner spiritual reality.  When God calls his people together to worship, he does meet with them, and we want to show that.  And of course the particular narrative structure for our worship is the gospel.  That is the story we retell and in a sense relive each Sunday.

Content is actually much more flexible from my perspective, but it has to serve tone and structure.  A jokey little sketch is inappropriate tonally (and can't be justified by the bad excuse of talking to kids!); a lack of Scripture reading and preaching is inappropriate in terms of narrative, missing the central place of God's speech in the gospel story.  A participatory liturgy - the congregation doing more than just singing the hymns! - helps with that sense of coming together to worship.  Responses, confessions, corporate prayers - all good.  As an aside, in the sorts of churches I'm most familiar with, this is often hindered by too much talking from the front; there is no need for an explanation of each Bible reading, or an extra sermon before Communion!  And speaking of Holy Communion, this should ideally be a weekly feature of our worship, the highpoint of our time together.  Giving it this place will help with tone and structure as well.

There are lots more specifics that we could get into, but I imagine the more specific we are the more likely it is that there will be disagreement.  I have strong opinions on all sorts of minor details!  But in the end I'm convinced that what really matters for our spiritual health as believers and as churches is that we be able to come week by week, with serious joy, to rehearse the gospel as we come into the presence of God to worship him.

The present presence of the risen Lord

The Lord Jesus is alive - risen, ascended, enthroned.  As the Living One, he is present in and to his church by the Holy Spirit.  He himself, as the One who is in heaven, is present with us on earth.  This is something which hopefully all Christians would acknowledge, but what do we do with it?  Is the presence of the Lord Jesus of functional importance to us?

One of the themes running through John Webster's collection of essays Word and Church is the constant danger of ignoring or minimising this presence.  As Webster points out, there are plenty of things - theological things! - that threaten to squeeze out the place of the risen Christ.  The church, for example, can easily expand to take his place, and the doctrine of the church can come to supplant the doctrine of the risen Lord Jesus.  When this happens - and we should probably not move too quickly to glance over at Rome here, since it surely happens closer to home than that - the church's sacramental and liturgical life continues, and it continues to talk about the risen Christ, but it becomes increasingly hard to see what difference it would make if Jesus were absent.  Perhaps he just set up the church and then left it to run - a kind of gospel deism.

I suspect that sometimes in evangelical circles the doctrine of Scripture can pose a threat in this way.  It is good that we have a high view of the Bible and its authority, but there is always a danger that the authority of the Bible is cut loose from the authority of the Lord.  In analogy to the danger with the church, might we come to act as if Christ had provided Holy Scripture as a deposit of sacred truth and then basically left us to it?  What difference would it make to our preaching and teaching if he were absent?

We are used to looking back, to see Jesus in his crucifixion and resurrection; we are used to looking forward, straining to see Jesus in his glorious return.  Are we used to looking up, to see Jesus in heaven - and not only to see him there, but to be lifted up in our hearts to be with him there now, because he is with us?

Because the only substitute for the presence of the Lord Jesus which is held out in the New Testament is the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Think about the discourse in the latter chapters of John.  Jesus is going away, but he will send another Counsellor.  And yet it turns out this is no substitution at all - for where the Spirit is, there is Christ himself!  It is his spiritual presence that we're talking about, or his presence by the Spirit.

It all raises questions particularly for our corporate worship (and I think the NT gives us reasons to talk specifically about Christ's presence in the gathered worship of his people).  When the Scriptures are opened and the word is preached, do we have a sense that Christ is presently speaking to us - is it first hand or second (or third) hand?  Is it the viva vox dei that we're hearing as we hear the voice of the reader and the voice of the preacher?  When we gather at the Table, is it the Lord's Supper that we're attending - is he the host?  Is he present, as the one who was crucified and is now risen, to feed us with his own body and blood?  Or is this just a memorial of a thing that happened long ago and far away?

The Lord is here!

Austere worship

Preaching on the Second and Third Commandments yesterday - no to idols, no to taking the Lord's name in vain - I'm struck by the austerity of Israelite worship.  It must have been striking to the pagans as well.  No images of gods, no gorgeous statues.  Beauty, of course, and craftsmanship on display at the temple.  But no gorgeous shrines scattered throughout the land.  No imaginative myths, no constant development of the cultus.  It is a narrow way, the way of Israelite worship: a way defined by what God has revealed of himself and his will, not open to human interpretation or tweaking or addition.

In our culture of 'I like to think of God as...' there is a need to stress this again.  God has shown us himself.  We have his image - the one and only authorised image - in the Lord Jesus Christ.  We are baptised into his name, the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and our whole lives are to be lived as conscious bearers of that name.  Worship is not an imaginative exercise in that sense, but an exercise in following in the path the Lord has laid out for us.

I don't think this austerity means no beauty.  I am in favour of beautiful church buildings, beautiful liturgies, beautiful hymns.  In fact, I think those things are required, since God has revealed himself to us as beautiful!  But there is always going to be a necessary strain of iconoclasm to Christian worship: as we receive God's word, we are involved in demolishing whatever idols, whatever false conceptions of God, have gained a foothold in our minds and purifying our thoughts of him.  The same should be true in our worship: constantly reforming, to guard us against accretions and idolatries and blasphemies which will always be a threat and to some extent a presence.

It is a narrow way, but it is the way that leads to (because it first leads from) the true God.  If we want a god of our imagining, we can afford to be creative in how we think of him and how we worship him; if we want God, the true self-existent God, we follow his way and ruthlessly reject any paths to left and right.

Books about corporate worship

These are the books I've found most helpful on the subject of corporate worship - with the caveat that this is not at all meant to be a list of the best books on the subject, just the ones I've meandered through in my idiosyncratic reading and found helpful.

Peter Leithart's Theopolitan Liturgy is the most recent addition to the list - the only book from my Christmas haul that I've finished reading so far.  It's helpfully slender, and makes a strong biblical case for the importance of corporate, liturgical worship.  Creation and culture exist for worship; in the liturgy, far from using created things and cultural forms in a strange way, we restore them to what they always existed to do.  Reality is liturgical all the way down (you could also consult James Smith on this one), and human life is inevitably shaped by sinful, idolatrous liturgies or by Christian worship.

Alexander Schmemann's book For the Life of the World comes from a very different theological and ecclesiastical context than my own - he was an Orthodox Priest - and consequently there are some things in this book which I find off putting.  But the flipside is that it opens up a very different perspective.  Schmemann more than anyone has taught me to value the sacraments.  I could have learnt that from Calvin, if I'd been paying attention, but perhaps it took someone speaking from slightly further away to get through to me.  The liturgy matters at least in part because sacraments matter.

On the practical side, Hughes Oliphant Old's Leading in Prayer has been invaluable for shaping prayer as a substantial part of corporate worship.  The idea of a service of prayer - of corporate worship as substantially a conversation between the congregation and the Lord - is largely absent in contemporary evangelicalism, as far as I can tell, which adds to the general impression on approaching this book that it belongs to an earlier era.  (The cover design and language trend in the same direction, to be honest).  This book springs from years of pastoral experience, and gives a large number of written prayers which the author has used in worship - not with the idea that they would necessarily be used as printed, but as worked examples.  The whole assumes a more formal structure to worship than I could get away with regularly in my context, but it's nevertheless helpful for thinking about the shape of worship and the nature of public, led prayer.

Karl Barth's Homiletics can stand here for more extensive engagement with Barth's theology of preaching - probably I'd have to include large chunks of Church Dogmatics I/1 and I/2 to get the full effect, as well as some of the essays from The Word of God and Theology.  If Oliphant Old helps with the human side of the dialogue that is corporate worship, Barth has really helped me to see preaching as the other side.  Of course, in preaching a human being stands up and speaks, but what Barth sees so clearly is that the church counts on the fact that the Lord himself is speaking as his word is preached.  Preaching is encounter.  I dare say I could have learnt this from many places, but I actually learnt it from Barth.

I'm sure there are others that I've missed here, but there's a few that I've found useful.

On the use of the Creed

 Steve Kneale has published a piece entitled Five reasons reciting creeds is unhelpful - a title which surely warrants a rebuttal!  For the record, my own church background is in 1689 Baptistry, but I now pastor a small church which takes the Nicene Creed as its basis of faith, and I am a strong advocate for the use of the Creed in public worship (and I like the Apostles' Creed as well, just not quite as much).  So, here's why I think each of Steve's reasons is wrong, and sometimes dangerously so.

1. Sola Scriptura.  For Steve, it seems, the use of creeds undermines the unique authority of Scripture in the church.  "We want people to have confidence in the Word of God" - yes, absolutely!  So, why not just always go to the source?  Why not just read the Bible instead of the Creed?  Well, firstly it's not an either/or.  Read both in your services!  Recite the Creed and recite the Psalms.  Yes, a thousand times yes, to more Bible.  But why then the Creed?  Because when Steve goes on to say that "when people state what they believe, I would prefer they pointed directly to the Bible and affirmed it, rather than a statement drawn up after it" this is exactly the argument an Arian would have made in the fourth century.  It is possible to mis-read the Bible - Jesus highlights the possibility - and in so doing miss or distort the life-giving message.  Biblicism will not help us here; the heretics themselves claim the Scriptures to be on their side.  The Creed functions as a distilled statement of the essential truth, and therefore as a guide to Scripture reading.  Putting it into our worship, reciting it together, helps to ensure that we are all on the same page on such essentials as the deity of Christ.  It is not vital that we recite it, but it is helpful.

2. The creeds require explanation.  No doubt.  I preached a series on the Nicene Creed not too long ago to provide some of that explanation for our crew.  But everything, including Holy Scripture, needs explaining.  Often the hymns we sing need explaining.  Explanation is no bad thing.  But also, the creeds do some explaining of their own.  The Nicene Creed explains what we mean when we talk about the deity of Christ.  It explains, in fact, what the Scriptures mean when they talk about Jesus as the Son of God.  In explaining the Creed, I've found myself simply preaching the gospel.  And that can't be so bad.

3. Use of the creeds in worship confuses the church about authority.  Steve asks 'is the creed authoritative?' - if it is, doesn't that undermine the authority of Scripture?  If it isn't, why are we using it in worship?  Again, there is a really unhelpful biblicism here.  The Bible is, and must be seen to be, the ultimate authority in all matters of doctrine; but it is not the only authority.  We don't come to the Bible as if nobody had ever read it before.  Yes, ultimately we believe and use the Creed because we are convinced it has behind it the authority of Scripture; but we also acknowledge that others have gone ahead of us, that we are part of the catholic church which spans the centuries, within which there are subordinate authorities like creeds.  They are not ultimate, but they are not lightly put aside if we want to be sure that we stand in some continuity of faith with our spiritual forebears.  In our teenage culture, which thinks it needs to reinvent everything all the time, it is good to recognise the (subordinate) authority of our fathers and mothers in faith.

4. Alien to outsiders.  Reciting creeds feels weird to visitors.  This is weak.  Almost everything we do in worship feels weird to outsiders.  So what?  As to encouraging people to chunter along to words they don't and can't mean - presumably Steve still has songs in church, and presumably they are full of lyrics a non-Christian can't really sing?

5. Creeds are alien to the Baptist tradition.  Steve finds the recitations of creeds to be Anglican, and he suspects that behind that lurks Catholicism.  In fact, the Nicene Creed is regularly recited in worship in Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Presbyterian churches.  It is catholic, in the good old sense of basically and universally Christian - both as a statement of doctrine and as a building block of liturgy.  There is something peculiar about British non-conformity here, by the way.  I was once chatting with an American Presbyterian minister who asked whether British evangelicals would find it weird that his congregation crossed themselves during the Gloria Patri.  I had to say yes - they would find the manual action weird, and they would find the Gloria Patri weird!  The fear of 'catholicism' - perhaps caused by the proximity to Anglo-Catholicism in particular - has distorted the view of what is just 'normal church' for many British evangelicals.  If the creeds are alien to the Baptist tradition, the Baptist tradition is (at that point) alien to the universal belief and practice of the church.

So, to summarise my argument: biblicism is bad, weird is okay, Baptists should get with the programme.

Our problem

Everything I'm about to write might be completely wrong, and nobody would be more happy about that than me.  But I think I've observed this one big problem with my lot, that is to say evangelical Christians of a relatively conservative persuasion.  The problem is that we misidentify our problem.

Specifically, I think we often assume that our problem is with our borders, and that our centre is sorted.

For example, we assume that we're basically sorted when it comes to Sundays - preaching, worship, that sort of thing - and that the real issue, the thing that is holding us back, is our difficulty with evangelism or apologetics or general engagement with the world.  Or perhaps in the realm of ideas we assume we've basically got a handle on theology, but that we need to work hard at understanding the culture.

Two qualifications.  Firstly, I don't mean that anyone out there is saying, 'hey, I've nailed preaching, no need to work on that anymore'.  But I suspect that most of our work on preaching is basically tinkering.  The same sort of thing, mutatis mutandis, could be said about worship or theology.  Fundamentally we know what we're doing, or at least what we're trying to do.  Second, I don't mean that evangelism and apologetics and cultural engagement aren't important, or that we're doing okay at those things.  They are, and we're not.

But here's the thing.  The church lives from its centre, which is Christ.  In particular, the church lives from the proclaimed word, in which Christ comes to it again and again in the gospel, and draws his people again and again to himself.  That is where the life of the church begins, and begins again and again each Sunday.  Then again, that life of the church flows directly into liturgy, into prayer and praise and adoration.  That is both the immediate outworking of life in Christ and its ultimate goal.  That is the expression of the life of the church.  Then again, theology is the crucial rule of the church, the direction of its life, the mirror in which the church sees itself as a people shaped by union with Christ.

So if there's a problem in the life of the church - specifically, let's say there seems to be a problem with our ability to evangelise the world around us, for that certainly is the great challenge we face and it is a challenge in which we are making remarkably little headway - I would suggest that we ought not to immediately look to the presenting problem, but to the centre.  Is the life of Christ evident in the church?

Practically, do we really know what we intend to do when we stand up to preach a sermon, or sit down to listen to one?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why is so much of our preaching tediously didactic, or dully sentimental?  Where is the power?  Why do we find the sermon over-long when we sit to listen?  Why are we glancing at our watches all the time?

Practically, is our worship an expression of Spirit-fuelled joy, as the Spirit-filled community with Spirit-unveiled faces perceive the glory of Christ?  Do we know what we are doing when we stand up to sing, or sit to pray?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why have we ended up with so much thin liturgy, so little seriousness?  Why does the joy look more like froth, that evaporates quickly into the air, than deep seated contemplation of the beauty of the Lord?  Where are the holy hands uplifted?

Practically, are we sure we've grasped what theology is all about?  Do we know what we're going about when we seek to read and study or to teach?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why does so much of our theology seem either totally untethered from what the church of all ages has believed, or alternatively to be a mere repristination of thoughts someone had in the seventeenth century?  Where is the creative engagement with Holy Scripture?  Why is there such impatience with theological questions, the rush to pragmatic solutions, the inability to see the links between different theological loci and practical church life?

Maybe I'm wrong.  But I do wonder whether instead of looking to our borders we ought to be crying out for renewal from the centre.

Reflections on Desiring the Kingdom

Given that James K.A. Smith's book Desiring the Kingdom was released in 2009 - and given that it has since received two sequels, which I've not read - it hardly seems needed or appropriate for me to offer any sort of Jonny-come-lately review.  So this isn't that.  It's just some reflections on the book and the way it's disappointed me.  Because I really thought I'd like it, and I really didn't.

The book is subtitled Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.  I think it has two main points, with one larger analysis sitting behind them.  The first main point is that many of the cultural activities in which we are encouraged to engage day by day are in fact deeply liturgical.  Smith gives an amusing look at a shopping centre (a 'mall', if you will) through the eyes of a Martian anthropologist (19f).  The conclusion is that the shopping centre is set up as a place of worship, designed to appeal to the deep desires of our hearts.  Smith considers the advertisers, who rather than trying to sell a particular product are trying to sell a whole life style (102ff.), indeed a life.  And the point is that these 'liturgies' of commerce are formative.  They subtly cause us to adopt particular patterns of thought and behaviour when it comes to satisfying those desires - and these go unnoticed, because they don't appeal to our conscious, critical minds.  We are gradually programmed to imagine that consumption is the way to satisfy our deepest desires.

The second main point is that Christian liturgy is also in the business of cultural formation.  The Martian anthropologist goes to church (155ff.) and sees people being inculturated into a different way of seeing the world - a different social imaginary.  More on this in a moment, but just note that the really useful thing about this analysis is that by telling us that things we typically think of as cultural are actually liturgical, Smith causes us to look differently and more critically at those activities; and the same is true in reverse - we look more carefully at the Christian liturgy when we are thinking of the church as a place of cultural formation.

The larger analysis sitting behind the two main points is a whole way of looking at humanity, an alternative anthropology.  Smith contends that by adopting whole-sale the 'worldview' way of interacting with the world, we in the church have also swallowed an unbiblical anthropology, thinking of people primarily in terms of their ideas or beliefs.  Smith contends that it would be better to think of "the human person as lover" (39), as "homo liturgicus".  Desire is primary.  It is not that there is no place for worldview talk, or discussion of ideas and beliefs; it is just that so much of what we think and do, and who we are, is shaped by non-cognitive forces.  Habits, enshrined in and enforced by liturgies and rituals, are key.  Physicality matters; in fact, repeated physical actions and reactions have a profound effect on how we approach or imagine (Smith uses 'intend', borrowing helpfully from 20th century continental philosophy) the world.

So, what's not to like?  Emphasis on the embodied nature of human existence?  Good!  Critique of the formative aspects of cultural engagement which often slip under our radars?  Good!  Encouragement to think of the ways in which the church's liturgy helps to counter-form us in a different culture?  Great!

But two particular points in the analysis jarred with me.  Here is the first: Smith suggests that sacraments (which, of course, sit well with his thesis) "are particular intensifications of a general sacramental presence of God in and with his creation" (141).  This cannot be right (and I am inclined to think that his reference to "the doctrine police" worrying about it [147] is a snide way of trying to head off the criticism).  Think about what it would mean for the Incarnation - was it just a particular intensification of a general presence of God in humanity?  Absolutely not!  The Incarnation represents the contradiction of all the possibilities inherent in human nature.  The entry of Christ is a new thing.  The gospel is News with a capital N.

And here's the second: Smith asserts the "priority of liturgy to doctrine" (138).  Doctrines, he thinks, emerge from reflection on the practice of liturgy, not vice versa.  "Christians worship[ped] before they got around to abstract theologizing or formulating a Christian worldview" (139).  Note the poisonous use of 'abstract' here!  What about concrete theologizing?  Did Christians start to worship Christ, for example, and then on reflecting on the practice decide that he must be in some way divine?  Absolutely not!  Again, what is lacking here is the news, the gospel.  It is not just that Christians found themselves adopting certain liturgical practices and worked backwards to what God must be like.  They received news of what God was like and what he has done, and that news evoked their liturgical response.

So here's the thing: I think for Smith the God-stuff, the Christian-stuff, is just there, and all we need to do is inhabit it.  We just need to be formed by the liturgy into this always-present awareness of God and his works and ways.  What I want to know is: where is revelation here?  Where is the good news as news?  Christian worship will always revolve around the cognitive and not merely the affective, because it is through our brains that we receive and process news.  And isn't that a more biblical way of thinking about (trans)formation?  Don't the apostles encourage us to think that the shaping of our moral character will come through the renewal of our minds?  Don't they proclaim our new identity in Christ as something that must first be thought and then enacted?

Authenticity

The equation spontaneity=authenticity goes mostly unquestioned in our culture.  When the politician switches off the teleprompter and speaks to us 'from the heart', we feel like we've seen them as they really are.  It's the same in church.  We have a sense that prepared words, or actual written liturgy, easily imply hypocrisy, or at least are not the best way of expressing authenticity.

The gospel ought to raise at least a question mark here.  If the real me is not the person I experience myself to be day by day, but the person I am in Christ, then what is most true about me is not what springs spontaneously from my own heart but what is said about me in the gospel.  I do not know myself, not even from my own lived experience of myself, unless I know myself by faith.

One implication for the gathered worship of the church is that it should be a time when, through liturgical structure and content, I am able to authentically express myself - which is to say, I should be able to say and sing, in the company of the community, words which could never spring from my own heart, but which express who I really am.

Might the way of authenticity involve turning off my own inner chatter and owning the voice I am given in Christ instead?

Worship, and life

This summer I’ve read a couple of books on the subject of worship – Worshipping with Calvin by Terry L. Johnson, and The God We Worship by Nicholas Wolterstorff.  They are very different books, with rather different agendas, although both are coming from a broadly Reformed theological point of view.  The subtitles give a clue!  Johnson’s book is subtitled Recovering the Historic Ministry and Worship of Reformed Protestantism, and it is exactly what the First Crusade would be if the First Crusade had been a book about worship rather than a military campaign in the Levant; Wolterstorff, on the other hand, offers An exploration of liturgical theology, and is much more tentative in tone and expansive in message.  Johnson wants us to change our worship, back to an earlier and in his view more biblical model; Wolterstorff just wants us to reflect a bit more on what it is we’re doing in worship and what it implicitly says about our view of God.

Both books were interesting in their different ways, and I will probably have more to say about each of them over the next few weeks.  One thing they have very much in common, which is interesting for me as someone who has inhabited a particular brand of evangelicalism for some years, is the rejection of the idea that all of life is worship.  Here is Wolterstorff:

It is sometimes said that the Christian life as a whole is, or should be, worship.  In this chapter I have assumed that this is not true.  The Christian life as a whole is, or should be, an acknowledgement of who God is and of what God has done, is doing, and will do – an acknowledgement of God’s surpassing excellence.  I have argued that worship has an orientation that sets it off from our work in the world, namely a Godward orientation.  Of course it is open to a writer to declare that he will use the word “worship” to cover everything [in the Christian life].  But that leaves us needing some other word to pick out what I have called worship…  And it has been my experience that those who declare that all of life is worship almost always downplay the importance of what I am calling worship…  (p39-40)

I agree with Wolterstorff – it is an unhelpful thing to label everything as worship.  It removes a level of meaning from the word, and leaves us with only clumsy formulations to explain what it is we do on a Sunday (‘corporate worship’, ‘sung worship’).  In my experience, he is right that those who talk a lot about all of life being worship implicitly denigrate this corporate worship – or at least, I don’t see much joyful expression of adoration in those churches, compared to those which talk about the purpose of a Sunday gathering in terms of offering worship to God.

I’d want to ask another question as well: does declaring that all of life is worship (and therefore at least implicitly that there is nothing very special about the gathering of God’s people to worship) actually lead to a more worship-ful approach to life?  Or might it be that the recognition of worship as a particular, distinctive activity leads to a life that is more full of worship Monday through Saturday?  This is analogous to discussions of the Sabbath, something which I note with some discomfort as a non-Sabbatarian.  But it is at least a question to be asked: has our declaration that we now have rest in Jesus every day and therefore don’t need to observe the Sabbath actually made our lives more restful, or less?  I have a feeling I know the answer, and I’m not sure I will like it.

One thing I take away from these very different books is the need for more God-oriented, adoration-filled gatherings of God’s people to offer worship – in all the forms which that takes, including praise, thanksgiving, confession, intercession, listening.  To come into God’s presence and worship.  How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!

Why do we gather? (1)

I think there are three live understandings (in my context, at least) of what it is that Christians are doing when they gather on Sundays.  In this and the following two posts, I will no doubt caricature them, but perhaps it might still be helpful as a way of thinking through how we engage with Sunday services.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, when Christians gather together as church on a Sunday, they are doing salvation.  "For it is in the liturgy, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, that 'the work of our redemption is accomplished..." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1068 [citing here Sacrosanctum Concilium]).  The explicit connection to the Mass will render this view unacceptable to most evangelicals, and rightly so.  "In Christian tradition (liturgy) means the participation of the People of God in the work of God" (Cat. Cath., 1069).  In so far as this definition of liturgy is accepted, the word itself had better be rejected.  There can be no sense of the church participating in the salvific work of God in the way here anticipated.

That being said, evangelicals would be unwise to completely shut the door on the idea that we gather together to 'do' salvation.  The biblical link between baptism and salvation, which clearly ties a human-liturgical action into the economy of salvation means that the door has to remain open.  Similarly, reflection on the fact that preaching is also an essentially liturgical action leans in this direction.  The word of God preached is the seed of the faith that saves.  So, just replacing the Mass with the sermon?  Not quite.  The sermon (like baptism, actually) represents the witness in the church to the accomplished work of Christ.  It is not a participation in his work.  That God, by the Spirit, lifts up this human work to make it the means of applying that completed work to the individuals gathered is a very different thing from the Roman Mass.  This is the difference: we are recipients, not actors.

Nevertheless, it would be helpful for us evangelicals to take seriously the fact that when we gather on a Sunday this is the place of salvation.  This is where the Word of God is, in Scripture read, the gospel preached, the sacraments administered.  If church has become a bit of a chore; if we find ourselves wondering if it was worth getting up for this Sunday; if we think that perhaps we'd get on with the Christian faith better by ourselves: perhaps we need to remember that Sundays are for salvation.

Overflowing glory

A slightly lengthy excerpt from Church Dogmatics II/2, p 169, which didn't make it into my Monday post:

"Because there is no darkness in God, there can be no darkness in what He chooses and wills.  Nor is there anything midway, anything neutral, between light and darkness.  In aim and purpose, God is only light, unbroken light.  What God does is well done.  Our starting point must always be that in all His willing and choosing what God ultimately wills is Himself.  All God's willing is primarily a determination of the love of the Father and the Son in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost.  How, then, can its content be otherwise than good?  How can it be anything else but glory - a glory which is new and distinctive and divine?  But in this primal decision God does not choose only Himself.  In this choice of self, He also chooses another, that other which is man.  Man is the outward cause and object of the overflowing of the divine glory.  God's goodness and favour are directed towards him.  In this movement God has not chosen and willed a second god side by side with Himself, but a being distinct from Himself.  And in all its otherness, as His creature and antithesis, this being has been ordained to participation in His own glory, the glory to which it owes its origin.  It has been ordained to exist in the brightness of this glory and as the bearer of its image.  In all its otherness it is predestined to receive the divine good which has been revealed and communicated.  This is what is ordained for man in the primal decision of the divine decree.  The portion which God willed and chose for him was an ordination to blessedness.  For to be able to attest the overflowing glory of the Creator is blessedness.   God willed man and elected man with the promise of eternal life.  Life as a witness to the overflowing glory of God is eternal life."  (Bold added).

That is to say:

Everything God wills is good and glorious because at base it comes from his own inward life of perfection as he is from eternity and through eternity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The creation of humanity is already the overflow of this goodness and glory; I take it this means that our very existence as people owes itself to God's choice to be himself in this particular overflowing way.

The predestined end of humanity is the experience and enjoyment of God's glory; that is to say, human beings move from their creation as the overflow of God's goodness and glory to their consummation as the witnesses of God's goodness and glory - meaning those who in themselves derive their greatest joy from God's goodness and glory and therefore those who attest it.

Real blessedness and true life is to stand in the position of those who know God's overflowing glory, both as recipients and - because this glory is overflowing - as communicators.  In the present age, one can imagine this communication as evangelism; in the age to come, won't it just be praise?

A catalogue of congregational prayer

Invocation

A prayer that God would come and do something here and now, in the gathered church.  For example, at the beginning of the service, we ask God to come and be with us as we draw near to him; at the preaching of the word, we ask him to speak; at the beginning of Holy Communion, we ask him to feed us on Christ.  The invocation is solemn and humble (God is not at our beck and call!), but bold (because it responds to and claims God's own promise).

Praise and Adoration

Technically distinguishable, in worship the one must flow into the other.  Praise is the acknowledgement before God of his glorious nature and character; adoration is the lifting of our hearts to bask in the same.  Here we take our eyes completely off our own needs and situations and focus on God in prayer.

Confession

As sinners in the presence of a holy God, and as beneficiaries of gospel forgiveness, we confess to God that we have sinned against him.  The Christian confession of sin is not a grovelling, but a humble acknowledgement in God's presence that we have failed and need both his forgiveness and his help to change.  The prayer of confession is traditionally sandwiched between biddings, which explain God's delight in forgiving confessed sin and invite us to come, and words of assurance, which remind us that confessed sin truly is taken away through the gospel.

Thanksgiving

Focusing on particular things that we have received from God, we give him thanks.  This could be for particular answers to prayer, or for gospel blessings received through Christ.  In a sense, this a prayer of praise and adoration that particularly views God's character and nature as it has affected us.

Intercession

This means both the church as a whole interceding with God for its own members who are in particular need - for example, the sick - and also the church interceding for those outside its particular membership.  The church prays together for the church worldwide, and for the world outside the church.  This is a key part of what it means to be a kingdom of priests.

Doxology

A short prayer of praise which might be appended at various parts of the service - for example, the Gloria Patri.

Benediction

Only implicitly a prayer.  The speaker pronounces a blessing over God's people, and in that way stands in the place of God; but of course, they can't really stand in the place of God (they cannot of themselves make the blessing anything more than a pious wish), and so the implicit prayer is that God would make the blessing effective.  If we are pronouncing gospel blessings, though, we do know that they are in accordance with God's will for his people, and so they can be pronounced with authority.

Two questions:
1.  Have I missed any?
2.  How do we ensure that the richness of Christian prayer is reflected in our worship services?

Seriously, though...

On Sunday after church I was discussing with a couple of guys what might be wrong with our churches.  (This wasn't a reflection on the service in which we'd just been participants; I hope not, as I was the preacher).  The thing that sprang to my mind was just this: we're not very serious.  We don't take things very seriously at all.

To a certain extent, as one of my friends pointed out, this is just because we live in an informal culture, and it is hard to be informal and serious.  I think there is a lot of truth in that.  After all, when we want to do really serious things in life - I have in mind the big occasions, like getting married, or burying someone - we still reach for formality.  It wouldn't seem right to mark those huge things with an informal tone.  Seriousness does demand a certain level of formality.  Isn't it a shame we don't consider meeting with God's people for worship to be serious in this way?

I wonder though - if we don't know how to be informal and serious, perhaps it is a bigger problem that we don't know how to be joyful and serious.  In fact, there is no 'perhaps' about it: this is a bigger problem.  Informality is a cultural preference; joy is a gospel command.  It is interesting that as I was thinking about this I had an encounter with Father Christmas - not in the flesh, which would be odd and also unseasonal, but in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which I'm currently reading with the boy.  Here's Lewis:

"Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly.  But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn't find it quite like that.  He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still.  They felt very glad, but also solemn."

And this bit:

"Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still."

Perhaps there is something we could learn from Santa...

Building Blocks (2)

To pick up where we left off...


4.  Prayer.  I struggle with corporate prayer, to be honest.  I find it hard to feel involved if someone is leading prayer from the front; I find it hard to feel like I'm really praying if I am leading prayer from the front; I find it hard not to slip into a fairly mindless ritualism with liturgical prayers.  Still, I think the gospel demands it, as our common response, our speaking to God in reply to his speaking to us.  I am not sure how it can be well done.  One thing I think we should steer clear of over-using is the 'time of private reflection'.  We can pray by ourselves at home; in the church, let's pray together.  I think I favour a mix of brief, front-led prayers, with occasional liturgical prayers.  Either way, I'd like them to be well written, and not extempore.  (I do not always keep this rule myself, and I always regret it when I don't).

5.  Confession of faith.  Our culture, both inside and outside of the church, is riddled with subjectivism and relativism.  In that context, perhaps more than ever before, we need to be responding to the gospel by declaring our faith together.  It doesn't matter so much how it is done, but I would favour having two 'creeds' - one would be the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, which would help to remind the church of its catholicity, and the other would be a local creed, which would express the truth as it particularly needs to be said in the context within which that church finds itself.  We could alternate between them.

6.  Some expression of community.  It matters that our Sunday worship be primarily on the vertical dimension; that we lift up our hearts, and that we expect God's blessing to come down.  It is right that we go to church to meet with God.  But we do it with other people, and they are the people into whose fellowship we have been called when we were called into fellowship with Christ.  There is a danger here that this becomes tokenism, and an excuse for not being community in the rest of the week - just offering a sign of the peace on a Sunday.  Still, some sign of fellowship, something which deliberately orients us for some part of our time together towards each other must be a useful primer for the rest of life.  It may just be that we incorporate the coffee time into the service, rather than just leaving it as the no-man's land between 'Amen' and first gear (not my phrase, but I like it).  Perhaps we eat together on a Sunday more regularly.  Perhaps we restart the tradition of the Agape feast, and incorporate the Lord's Supper into a fellowship meal.  Something like that.

7.  The Lord's Supper.  We take bread and wine together.  I'd have this every week; it should be at least a couple of times a month.  At the level of straightforward obedience, it's a Dominical command.  It is also the most profound way we can reflect on the gospel together, and the most profound way we can feed on the gospel, taking it into ourselves in a way that will shape us for the rest of life.  In the churches I'm most familiar with, the Supper often feels like something tacked on rather than central, like we're doing it because we know we're meant to, but we're not sure why.  I'd like to see it more central.  I'd also like to have less words around the Supper.  We talk a lot in evangelicalism, and it would be nice if there was this one things that we could do simply.  I don't see that much more beyond the words of institution (with a very light fencing of the table) needs to be said.

I'm out of things.  Anyone got any more?

Building Blocks

What things should take place when we gather to worship?  If I am a service leader sitting down to prepare, what are the ingredients which I have to combine into an order of 'service'?  Here are a few things:

1.  A sermon.  If the gospel isn't preached and applied, it isn't Christian worship.  Of course, the gospel can be preached from many starting points - as many and as varied as the multiple witness of Scripture - and applied into many situations - as many and as varied as the lives of all the congregants.  But it must be preached, both as a theological and a practical necessity; the former because the gospel alone is the foundation of our approach to God in worship, and the latter because we need the gospel for daily living.

2.  Scripture reading.  My own feeling is that the gospel demands of churches in my context that they ramp up the amount and quality of Scripture reading involved in their gatherings.  We live in a time when the basic storyline of Scripture, and the content of particular Scriptural texts, are generally not well known within the church, and completely unknown outside it.  That leaves God's people vulnerable to being misled from the pulpit, because they are not equipped to weigh up what is said.  It also leaves them ill-prepared for personal devotional study of the Bible.  My own preference would be for two or three decent length readings from Scripture, besides the passage which is being preached in the sermon.  We need to be saturated with Bible.  In particular, my own feeling is that it makes good theological and practical sense to open our worship with Scripture, a role for which the Psalms are very well suited.  Theologically, it reminds us that God initiates, and the first thing we do is hear; practically, it prepares our hearts and gets us into the right frame of mind for worship.

3.  Singing.  Scripture is full of singing as the right response to God's saving action, whether that is at the Red Sea or in the church.  I worry when Christians won't sing, or don't sing enthusiastically.  Partly this is just related to my experience - having been in church all my life, I stopped singing as a teenager, and only resumed when I was converted, so singing to me is associated with new birth.  But then, singing is associated with new birth in Scripture as well!  At the most basic level, joyful hearts open singing lips.  There are some people, I know, who are worried that music is emotionally manipulative, and are concerned about getting carried away emotionally.  That is possible, but I think it is far less of a danger than a cold, emotionless worship.  Music, I am convinced, is amongst other things given to stir up the emotions in us which are appropriate to the gospel.  In the sorts of churches I generally attend, I can't help feeling there is not enough singing, which concerns me because it doesn't reflect a gospel heart and a gospel aesthetic.  Let's sing more.

Some more tomorrow...

Joyful worship

In theory, I don't see why Christians can't gather to worship at any time on any day of the week.  In certain contexts, where Sunday is a normal working day, it may be necessary to meet regularly on a Saturday.  However, Sunday morning has the advantage that it is resurrection morning, and that sets the tone.  Every Sunday is a little Easter, and therefore every Sunday gathering to worship is a celebration.  A few observations:

1.  It seems appropriate that we have a Sunday Celebration rather than a Sunday Service.  The former reminds us that our primary purpose is to come together to rejoice in what God has done for us in Christ; the latter sounds like we are coming together to do something for God.  In fact, it is our celebrating on Sunday that will empower our service Monday through Saturday.

2.  The appropriate tone of Christian worship is always joy.  Even when the subject matter of the sermon, or the theme of the day, is something dark - perhaps mourning over sin, or the suffering of death - it occurs within the bracket of joy because it happens on Sunday morning.  We live this side of the resurrection, and we know a joy that puts all sadness in its place.  The structure and content of our meetings together should reflect this.

3.  Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of joy and its expression, least of all a misplaced concern for reverence.  Yes, our approach to God must be in awe and reverence, but too often this is a front under which under which worship is turned into a sombre exercise.  Does our worship encourage and display joy?

Worship Old and New

An important distinction that is drawn by most advocates of the Reformed Regulative Principle in one way or another is that between worship under the old covenant and worship under the new.  It is hugely important that this be kept in mind, but equally important that it not be over-emphasised.  For some Reformed theologians, the discontinuity and difference between the two forms of worship is such that musical instruments, which play a large role in the OT, are forbidden in NT worship.  This is, of course, an example of the Biblicism which I have suggested is an illegitimate use of Scripture.  Nevertheless, it reflects an important issue.

Here, as generally when thinking about the continuity and discontinuity between OT and NT, it is important to remember that we are dealing with one covenant under two dispensations, which finds its centre and unity in the person and work of Christ.  When it comes to worship, Hebrews 9 is useful on this.  The validity of the OT ritual was derived from its conformity to the action of Christ in the mode of foretelling.  The tabernacle/temple, all the festivals and fasts, and even the sacrificial system are all based on him, and serve to announce his coming in advance.  The need for foretelling being past, this mode of worship has also passed away.

So NT worship is to form the other half of the diptych, with Christ himself as the hinge.  Where on the left we have Christ foretold, on the right we have Christ remembered.  Both are forms of proclamation and of celebration; they are just in different tenses.  That will alter the form, but not the essential content of Christian worship.

Perhaps the most essential point to be made here is that we judge all these things from the centre; that is to say, we decide what NT worship looks like, and how it relates to the ritual of the OT, with reference to Christ himself, and his gospel.  We don't judge based on our preconceived ideas of what must be enduring (or what must not be enduring) in OT worship itself, or on our preconceived ideas of what the new spiritual, truthful worship ought to look like.  Rather, we seek in everything to look to the hinge which holds old and new together, and in which they both find their goal and meaning.

Gospel Worship

Following on from yesterday's post, my preference for the Reformed RP does not actually mean that I agree with it.  I think it expresses an important principle; namely, that God is worshipped as God chooses to be worshipped and not otherwise.  Exegetically, this could be supported from several very frightening instances in the OT.  In the NT, it is underlined by Jesus' discussion with the Samaritan woman at the well, which moves the focus away from the right place and ritual, on to the right heart and attitude.  Most fundamentally, the NT insists that true worship is offered through Jesus Christ the mediator.  We need to be careful not to misread this; the implication is not that because Jesus Christ is our mediator, we need not worry to much what we do in worship since he will make it good.  (This is a parallel error to assuming that because Jesus Christ is the saviour we ought not to be too bothered about sinning.  That is to say, it is an example of using the gospel truth that the sinner is justified to support the hideous untruth that the sin is justified).  In fact, we should take the general truth which controls Christian behaviour and apply it to worship: because we live (and worship) in and through Jesus Christ, our lives (and worship) must correspond to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Our worship must be shaped by the gospel.

The issue I would take with the Reformed RP is that it is unduly Biblicist.  That is to say, it assumes that the gospel, as witnessed in Holy Scripture, will always demand and evoke the same response, and that this response is itself set out in Scripture.  I think the internal evidence of the Bible is against this view, at both a surface and a deeper level.  On the surface, it is clear to me that the NT does not intend to give a manual for worship, and nowhere claims to prescribe the structure or content of our gathered meetings.  (As an aside, it is ironic that the chapters which come closest to doing this - the instructions for use of gifts in 1 Corinthians - are substantially laid aside by most advocates of the Reformed RP!)  At a deeper level, Scripture presents a gathering in of a diverse, multi-tongued people, each bringing the firstfruits of their own culture in worship.  It does not tie itself to first-century mediterranean forms, and nor should we.

The proper role of Scripture in relation to corporate worship, in my opinion, is that our worship is to be shaped and controlled by the gospel which is witnessed and proclaimed in Holy Scripture.  (In other words, the role of the Bible as a regulatory authority moves one step back in the process, from regulating the worship service directly to regulating the understanding of the gospel which in turn regulates the service).

This does not set the Church free, as in the Anglican model, to derive ceremonies and rites which are considered to be "indifferent, and alterable".  Rather, it sets the Church free to ask the question: what does the gospel demand of us in worship, here and now?  This will, of course, lead to alterable forms and actions.  But they are altered by the demands of the gospel, not the will of men.  In this way, our worship will be guided and ruled by the gospel of Christ, and therefore by Christ himself.

Regulated Worship

What should we actually do on a Sunday when we come together?  Historically, Reformed churches have upheld some form of the regulative principle (henceforth RP).  To quote the 1689 (Baptist) Confession - "But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God has been instituted by Himself, and therefore our method of worship is limited to His own revealed will.  He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men...  He may not be worshipped by way of visible representations, or by any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures" (my emphasis).  In other words, when we come together we may and must do only what God has commanded, in the way in which he has commanded it.


Historically, of course, the main target was initially Romanism, and then by 1689 Anglicanism.  The preface to the Book of Common Prayer declares that "the particular Forms of Divine worship, and the Rites and Ceremonies appointed to be used therein, [are] things in their own nature indifferent, and alterable" (my emphasis).  Here is a different understanding of the regulation of worship, as made explicit in Article 34: "IT is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's Word" (my emphasis).  Where the Reformed sets forth a positive RP (only what is commanded), Anglicanism holds a negative RP (anything that is not forbidden).


What the two versions of RP have in common is that they are seeking to have worship that is regulated; that is to say, worship that is ruled.  Our approach to God and the service which we offer him is not to be derived arbitrarily from our brains.  We are not free to do as we please; rather, we are free to do what pleases God - which service is true freedom.

As an aside, it interests me that there is a parallel here with the differences over church government which exists between Anglicans and Reformed.  The Reformed insist that there is one Biblically mandated way to organise and run a church - although they will disagree over whether this is a Presbyterian or Independent model.  The Anglicans, on the other hand, will tend to say that no such Biblical model is given, and that within certain bounds churches are free to organise and run themselves as they see fit (with the proviso that catholic tradition should play a major part in the decision making process).

My sympathies are with the Reformed vision for regulated worship.  What we may do is what we must do; we are free to do what we are commanded.  As with the question of church government, what is at stake is our understanding of how Jesus rules his Church.  To my mind, the Reformed RP makes it far more clear that Christ is active in the rule and direction of the churches here and now by his word and Spirit.  Not only in doctrine, but in the liturgical actions that we take together on a Sunday, we are to be moved and directed only by him.

Having said that, I have some questions to put to the Reformed RP, which will end up meaning that I disagree strongly with the letter of it.  But of that, more later.