Year: 2019 (Page 3 of 4)

The Order of Worship (1): Call to Worship

The Order of Worship (6): The Lord’s Supper

Order of Worship (6): Lord’s Supper

March 17, 2019 / Trent / 0 Comments

The dialogue of worship continues.

Ordinance or Sacrament?

As an ordinance, the Lord’s Supper is a memorial. We remember Christ’s death on the cross. As a sacrament, we commune with the risen Lord and receive from his hand the life he extends to us. All churches who celebrate Communion do so “in remembrance of what Christ did for us on the cross. The question is, is that all it is? Is it just a memorial?

This is where I started thinking about God’s involvement in worship. If it’s an ordinance, Communion is just a memorial, an act of human remembering. In this scenario, human beings do all that there is to be done in Communion–they remember. This seemed to me to be a contradiction because if you argue ordinance it seems silly to proclaim God’s active sovereignty from the pulpit. How can God be active in our lives, when he’s inactive in Communion.

The essential difference between an ordinance and a sacrament is whether or not God is doing anything in the event. You already know where I am going with this. I have been arguing that God is active in our Sunday gatherings, so of course he’d be involved in the supper we’ve named The Lord’s Supper.

God is active in Communion and his first act is to invite us to the table.

Invitation to the Table

It is fitting that the first action belongs to God. In the establishment of the First Communion, Jesus was very active. He found the room, gathered his disciples, washed their feet and moderated the sacramental meal. God does the same for us and his Invitation is an act of Grace.

Communion

God is active in The Holy Supper. What does he do? He speaks. He says, “Take” and then he extends something to us. What does he offer? Well, we are not exactly sure, but if we read the symbols, it might have something to do with nourishment and sustenance. Literal bread and wine are basic foods that nourish our physical bodies. Spiritually we need sustenance as well. His body and blood are nourishment for our spiritual life. Perhaps he is conveying unity; all Christians eat and drink of the body and blood of Christ, and in so doing, we are united in him. The bread and wine are symbolic, but this term is not understood by those steeped in Modern reasoning. The communion elements aren’t “just symbols.” (The allusions present in the sacrament itself ought to be enough to convince us of this.)

In some way we receive Christ and Grace by the Holy Spirit through faith. What actually happens at the table is a mystery. Modern secularism doesn’t like mysteries, and neither do modern Christians–we like to have clear explanations for spiritual things. But we don’t get to have clarity here, and I don’t think we should want it. A ritual engaging in a spiritual mystery will teach us that reality is comprised of mysteries that we can neither understand nor control. We simply receive and accept by faith. This might go a long way to counter the secularizing pressures of living in the Modern world.

In Communion, through the physical elements of bread and wine, Christ signifies our salvation through his sacrifice on the cross. The really interesting thing here is that we are presented with a convergence of the spiritual and the physical reality. Modernism wants to make distinct and separate categories, again, so do Modern Christians. But the two are not as distinct as we naturally conceive it. That Word became flesh, and yet never ceased to be God.

All of worship, all of life, all of reality is both physical and spiritual–sex is a spiritual communion, Kraft Dinner is morally reprehensible, coffee tastes terrible in Styrofoam, the first thing we do when we wake up in the morning is likely an act of worship, and we ought to fold our hands when we pray, and possible consider kneeling or lying prostrate.

Screwtape, senior tempter (demon if you will) in C. S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters tells us why.

At the very least, [humans] can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

Because we struggle with seeing the spiritual reality in our ordinary lives, we find it easy to dismiss it from Communion.

But this is the very reason why we should emphasize divine agency in the Lord’s Supper. We need to be be trained out of the foolish view that the physical and the spiritual are separate. We are trained by ritual. By regularly entering into the mystery of the Eucharist, we again and again experience an incarnational reality.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Because we struggle with seeing the spiritual reality in our ordinary lives, we find it easy to dismiss it from #Communion. But this is the very reason why we should emphasize divine agency in the #LordsSupper. #Incarnation ” quote=”Because we struggle with seeing the spiritual reality in our ordinary lives, we find it easy to dismiss it from Communion. But this is the very reason why we should emphasize divine agency in the Lord’s Supper. “]

A Sunday encounter with the mystery of the incarnation in Communion can perhaps be the vehicle by which we begin experience the nearness of the Holy Spirit on Monday.

The Order of Worship (1): The Call to Worship and Greeting

The Term — Worldview

March 14, 2019 / Trent / 0 Comments

I’d like to make two points about the term “worldview.”

First, many Christians refer to a “Christian Worldview” but they do so in error.

And second, most people don’t realize that the term is a bad one. It is a manifestation of a particular worldview that is in opposition to a “Christian worldview.”

Worldview: What it isn’t

Some Christian preachers, bloggers, and authors use the term “Christian worldview” to mean social conservatism. They seem to imply that having a Christian worldview means practicing abstinence until in a heterosexual marriage and, also, to not getting an abortion or smoking. Many others believe a Christian worldview means having a social consciousness that leads you to help the homeless, the refugee, or the at-risk teen. Others reduce the Christian worldview to purchasing decisions–-they have a hybrid car and eat free-range chickens.

Christian morality, social activism, and purchasing decisions may be manifestations of a Christian worldview, but they don’t constitute the worldview. Our worldview is much bigger and much deeper than that.

Janes Sire’s definition of worldview is a good one.

A set of presuppositions or assumptions held consciously or unconsciously, consistently or inconsistently, about the basic make up of reality. — James Sire

A Christian Worldview

The term “Christian” worldview can be problematic because, some argue, that there is not one “Christian worldview.” But I don’t think there are as many as some suppose. There aren’t as many Christian worldviews as there are denominations, for instance. Most of the things that differentiate one denomination from another are more superficial than worldviews, which are in deeper regions.

Riffing off of the four worldview questions offered by Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton in The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview,

- Who are we?
- Where are we?
- What is wrong?
- What is the solution?

N. T. Wright offers a summary of how the early church answered these questions:

Who are we? We are a new group, a new movement, and yet not new, because we claim to be the true people of the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the creator of the world. We are the people for whom the creator god was preparing the way through his dealings with Israel. To that extent, we are like Israel; we are emphatically monotheists, not pagan polytheists, marked out from the pagan world by our adherence to the traditions of Israel, and yet distinguished from the Jewish world in virtue of the crucified Jesus and the divine spirit, and by our fellowship in which the traditional Jewish and pagan boundary-markers are transcended.

Where are we? We are living in the world that was made by the god we worship, the world that does not yet acknowledge this true and only god. We are thus surrounded by neighbours who worship idols that are, at best, parodies of the truth, and who thus catch glimpses of reality but continually distort it. Humans in general remain in bondage to their own gods, who drag them into a variety of degrading and dehumanizing behavior-patterns. As a result, we are persecuted, because we remind the present power-structures of what they dimly know, that there is a different way to be human, and that in the message of the true god concerning his son, Jesus, notice has been served on them that their own claim to absolute power is called into question.

What is wrong? The powers of paganism still rule the world, and from time to time even find their way into the church. Persecutions arise from outside, heresies and schisms from within. These evils can sometimes be attributed to supernatural agency, whether ‘Satan’ or various demons. Even within the individual Christian there remain forces at work that need to be subdued, lusts which need to be put to death, party-spirit which needs to learn humility.

What is the solution? Israel’s hope has bee realized; the true god has acted decisively to defeat the pagan gods, and to create a new people, through whom he is to rescue the world from evil. This he has done through the true King, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, in particular through his death and resurrection. The process of implementing this victory, by means of the same god continuing to act through his own spirit in his people, is not yet complete. One day the King will return to judge the world, and to set up a kingdom which is on a different level to the kingdoms of the present world order. When this happens those who have died as Christians will be raised to a new physical life. The present powers will be forded to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, and justice and peace will triumph at last.

[From N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 369-70.]

These, according to N. T. Wright, are the basics of THE Christian worldview–it was the understanding of the original authors and audience of the New Testament gospels and letters. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Wright is right. Not every Christian holds to this worldview. This is largely because we are always influenced by other worldviews–pagan ones. The Medieval church was shaped by non-biblical ideas. The Reformers were influenced by Renaissance values. Today, the dominant worldviews are Modernism or the ideas lumped under the moniker, “post-modernism.” The influence of these is all over the church.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”The #Emergentchurch is influenced by the pagan ideas lumped under the moniker, #post-modernism. Mainstream #evangelicalism is very suspicious of the emergent movement because evangelicalism is heavily influenced by pagan #Modernism. ” quote=”The Emergent church is influenced by the pagan ideas lumped under the moniker, ‘post-modernism.’ Mainstream evangelicalism is very suspicious of the emergent movement because evangelicalism is heavily influenced by pagan Modernism. “]

How do we purge the idolatrous ideas of our worldview? For one thing, we need to read, or at least have pastors who read. In “On the Reading of Old Books, C. S. Lewis says

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least
read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

And of the modern books, some of them should be written by N. T. Wright.

The Problem with the Term Worldview

The term “worldview” is a Modern term. Although Modernism is waning, it is still very influential in our culture, especially in conservative Christian circles. Modernism puts a lot of stock in human Reason.

When Reason is the measure of all things, it is separated out from everything else and then elevated. From this height, detached Reason will analyze and judge all other things. It is the subject, and everything else is the object of its scrutiny.

The term “worldview” is decidedly Modern. Notice the implied subject “viewing” the named object–the world.

The term “worldview” suggests a radical separation between subject and object. Built into the term is the implication that one can view the world as an objective detached observer–an observer who is uninfluenced by the forces of worldview. This is impossible.

So the term is a bad one, but what do we use instead?

Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor uses the term “social imaginary.” This is much more descriptive, but it’s not nearly as catchy as “worldview.”

So, I suggest you do what I do. Use the term worldview, but always accompany its use with a wince.

The Liturgy of Worship (5): Pastoral Prayer and the Offering

March 10, 2019 / Trent / 0 Comments

Prayers of Intercession/Pastoral Prayer

In the dialogue of Sunday worship, the people continue to speak in this section. The Pastoral Prayer is a continuation of our response to God’s word.

This prayer is primarily intercessory. In it, we petition God for the needs within the church, the universal church, and the world.

This was the killer for me as a kid. It was “the long prayer,” and for some reason, I could not be fortified with a peppermint as I had been for the sermon. It was interminable because there was a lot of need in our particular church, but this prayer’s scope was global. It was long but learned a lot about reality from the Pastoral Prayer even when I was very young.

What I learned from the Pastoral Prayer

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Seven things I learned from the ‘Pastoral Prayer.’ Or ‘the long prayer’ as I called it. It was interminable, but its lessons have stuck with me. #worship #prayer #pastoralprayer #CongregationalPrayer” quote=”Seven things I learned from ‘Pastoral Prayer.’ Or ‘the long prayer’ as I called it. It was interminable, but its lessons have stuck with me. “]

We can speak to God about all of our needs.
God is big. My father was the pastor, and he was talking to God whom he addressed as “father.” He talked to God like he was big. When I was a kid, my father was big too–so to hear my father speak to God this way was revealing. He prayed like God could really do something for the missionaries in Africa or the victims of flooding in China. All my father prayers started, and still do, with praising God for who he is.
God is Father. My father talked to God with familiarity and sincerity as well as respect. This paradox was not lost on me as a young child. I learned that God is big, but he is also good. A heavenly father.
God cares. He cares about this person who had this ailment, and that family who has lost someone. He cares about the people in the world who didn’t have clean water or food. He cares about the missionaries who are bringing good news.
I learned that he wasn’t just the God of people in my church, and not just the God of Christians, but of everybody. We prayed for our town and about the leaders of the country, and for the leaders of other countries. That they would be wise and that they would be obedient.
I also learned that God could do something about these things we were praying about. My father prayed with expectation. But I also learned that the prayer wasn’t some kind of a magic trick. The prayer wasn’t valuable for its utility–there was something else going on. That prayer was, in large part, for the sake of the one who prays.
At some point, I figured out that I could send my own small requests to God during the Pastoral Prayer. My father had opened the conduit, as it were, so I figured I could still fire up some requests alongside his.

There are more things that I learned, but the important thing is that I learned them because they were repeated every week. They have stuck with me for many decades now, because of the repetition.

My current church always prayers for another local church, and a missionary. I love this ritual it shapes us. we come to know, among other things, that the Body of Christ involves other congregations and denominations in this town. These other churches are not in competition with us but are all trying to achieve the same thing–the learning and spreading of the Good News.

Offertory Prayer and the Offering

We continue in our response to the Word with the offering.

The offertory prayer is a regular reminder that God has blessed us richly. All that we have comes from him. He gives the gifts through which we love our neighbours.

Giving is both a sacred duty and a “joy.”

These terms seem contradictory, but they are not–when you fully understand that God has given you everything, and everything you have belongs to God, giving is quite easy. When you think that what is your’s is your’s, cheerful giving is impossible.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Just as your parents always gave you a nickel to drop into the collection plate, the weekly giving, and the prayer that goes along with it, is a training exercise that is meant to train us into joy. #offering #tithe #tithing ” quote=”Just as your parents always gave you a nickel to drop into the collection plate, the weekly giving, and the prayer that goes along with it, is a training exercise that is meant to train us into joy. “]

Just as your parents always gave you a nickel to drop into the collection plate, the weekly giving, and the prayer that goes along with it, is a training exercise that is meant to train us into joy. The joy that comes from understanding that all we have belongs to God and are to be used for his purposes.

Other posts in this series:

The Order of Worship (6): Lord’s Supper

The Order of Worship (1): The Call to Worship and Greeting

Order of Worship (4) The Creed

March 3, 2019 / Trent / 0 Comments

pixagod / Pixabay

The dialogue continues. God contributed most to the conversation in the Proclamation section of the liturgy. In this section, we do most of the talking as we respond to the Word and the Grace we received from our Father’s hand.

Song or Hymn of Response

The song we sing after the sermon is not just a song. At least it shouldn’t be. It should be a song that articulates musically and poetically, the appropriate response to God’s Word and Grace. Which song we sing depends on the sermon, for the service is a unified whole.

In some churches, a great deal of thought goes into the choice of this song. The content of the lyrics is a significant determiner. Some churches just sing one of the ten songs that we’ve been singing for the last few months. What the song says doesn’t matter as much as the feelings the song generates.

The concern here is the dialogue of worship. God says something, presumably significant–let’s say today’s sermon was about “Gracious Giving”–and our response is, “Glorious Day.” It’s nice to have conversations each Christmas with dear Aunt Martha, they are beautiful and relational, but because of their lack of coherence, they don’t really go anywhere. In this analogy, we are dear Aunt Martha.

The Apostles’ Creed

Although many proclaim it, there is no such thing as a “No Creed But Christ” church.

Either you affirm one of the traditional creeds, or you will affirm another more organic creed that rises up out of your context and your interpretation of the Bible within it. The problem here is that culture tends to influence the formation of this creed. Either way, you will be a “creedal” church. And your creed will be reinforced with ritual.

I suggest that we might as well adopt the traditional creeds of the Christian tradition. The Apostle’s Creed is the one that reviews the foundational doctrines of orthodox Christianity.

The Apostle’s Creed affirms

the Trinity,
the historical facts of the gospel,
the person and work of the Holy Spirit,
the existence of a “holy” universal church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection,
and life everlasting.

This creed is not infallible, but it is based on the Bible within a long tradition. It is old, and in this, there is some merit. New is not necessarily improved.

Even with the regular recitation of a traditional creed, we are still in danger of ritualizing other non-biblical cultural beliefs. But without this practice, what is to prevent the church from sliding away from the basic tenets of Christianity without even being aware of having done so?

[click_to_tweet tweet=”In the absence of a Creed (or despite one), here are 12 organic creedal statements that some churches may have passively adopted. #noCreedButChrist #noCreedButTheBible” quote=”In the absence of a Creed (or despite one), here are 12 organic creedal statements that some churches may have passively adopted. “]

Here’s a partial list of organic creedal statements that rise out of context and a particular interpretation of the Bible.

“New means improved.”
“We experience the Holy Spirit in worship through our feelings.”
“The most important aspect of the Bible is its inerrancy.”
“It is better to be married than to remain single.”
“There are spiritual things and then there are sacred things.”
Sin is doing bad things.”
The worst sins are sexual.”
“Christian living is about striving.”
“All people are created equal”
“The worshiper’s experience is important in the Sunday service”
“Worship is singing and singing is worship.”
“Efficiency and practicality are Christian virtues.”

Would you add anything to this list? The comment section awaits.

If you don’t recite a creed, take a long hard look at the implicit creeds that have been ritualized in your church. This is a good practice for every church, even those who regularly recite a traditional creed.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Either you affirm one of the traditional creeds, or you will affirm another more organic creed that rises up out of your context and your interpretation of the Bible within it. Either way, you will be a ‘creedal’ church. #ApostlesCreed #NoCreedButTheBible ” quote=”Either you affirm one of the traditional creeds, or you will affirm another more organic creed that rises up out of your context and your interpretation of the Bible within it. Either way, you will be a ‘creedal’ church.”]

Other posts in this series:

The Order of Worship (1): The Call to Worship and Greeting

Order of Worship (3): Proclamation

February 28, 2019 / Trent / 2 Comments

If the liturgy is a dialogue between God and his people, in the Proclamation section God does most of the talking.

God speaks to us primarily through his word–the Bible. The sermon is an encounter with, not just the Bible, but God as revealed in its pages. What we find in the Bible is a collection of ancient texts that were written for us, but not to us. The Bible is a story. That’s not all it is, but it helps us to understand how to approach it. It is not our story, but it is the story in which we live, not just Christians, but all of humanity. It is a story centered on Jesus Christ–the Word as spoken of by John in the first verses of his gospel.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Prayer for Illumination

Rituals are not empty, they are full in the sense that they train us on the deepest level. What sort of training is provided by the weekly repetition of the prayer of illumination? It trains us how to approach the Bible. This prayer is an admission that we need God’s help, to understand what we find in scripture, an admission that we can’t rely on our own reason and knowledge to understand. This is an acknowledgment that the Bible is a book that must be read with spiritual assistance–the Holy Spirit.

This prayer focuses our attention beyond ourselves as readers, indeed, beyond the text to our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Word of God. In this prayer, we anticipate the working of his Grace through our encounter with the text. In a real sense, then, we are preparing for a supernatural event.

The Sunday Prayer of Illumination will change how we approach daily devotions on Monday, for it is a reminder that the words of the Bible are a site of miraculous encounters.

The Sermon

The sermon is, or ought to be, about the Bible.

What is the Bible?

What the Bible isn’t is an encyclopedia, or an instruction manual for life, or a rule book. It’s hard to resist looking at the Bible in these ways because our cultural default is set to view everything as an object that might have a use.

In a recent Tweet, Tim Keller said, “It is impossible to understand a culture without discerning its idols.” This applies to our culture as well. And one of our idols is Reason. Rationalism is the idea that the best, or even only, way to know things is through human reason. Our confidence in human reason has taken some blows in the last century, but we still stubbornly hold onto our faith in it. It is so powerful that it has effected how we read and understand the Bible.

As Christians, we believe that the Bible is true. As Westerners, we believe that truth is an object of human Reason. The Bible, then, becomes nothing more than an object that we study and use as rational subjects. We look for “applications,” instead of implications. We get too wound up about biblical inerrancy. But truth is much bigger than fact or useful information. The Bible becomes something more like an encyclopedia than a story, or a poem, or a painting. As Western Christians we must resist this limited notion of Truth.

So what is the Bible?

Rather than give a long rational treatise on what the Bible is, let me do what the Bible does and offer a picture of what a sermon, rooted in the Word, can be.

The image is found in Ezekiel:

37 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ²He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. ³He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

⁴Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! ⁵This is what the Sovereign Lordsays to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. ⁶I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

⁷So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. ⁸I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

⁹Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” ¹⁰So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army

We are dry and lifeless. The Word of God, preached by inspired human authors, brings life. God could himself speak directly to the bones, but he chooses an intermediary–Ezekiel. He uses the preacher before us.

This image presents the Word, not as an object that we approach as rational subjects, but as active agent. We are the passive pile of dry bones–we are the object; the Holy Spirit is the subject. He brings life though the hearing of the Word. God is active in the sermon.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Do we listen to the sermon to learn about life or to receive it? The former is a happy by-product. The sermon is not the reflections of a pastor. It is an act of Grace, and we receive the life that flows from it. #sermon #preaching #liturgy” quote=”Do we listen to the sermon to learn about life or to receive it? The former is a happy by-product. The sermon is not simply the knowledgeable reflections of a pastor. The sermon is an act of Grace, and we receive the life that flows from it.”]

Other posts in this series:

The Order of Worship (1): Call to Worship and Greeting

Order of Worship (2): Confession

February 16, 2019 / Trent / 0 Comments

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In some churches, there is only an occasional song of confession, but somebody usually includes a confessional element in a prayer at some point, but confession isn’t a very big part of what I call modern, non-liturgical church services.

Confession is important. It is about sin, and sin is a big thing in Christianity. We all sin more or less continuously, so we need to repent again and again. And when we do so honestly and regularly, we get a much better picture of who we are. And how much we need forgiveness.

In the traditional liturgies of most denominations, we practiced confession weekly, and in this repetition, garnered long term beneficial effects. These benefits are derived from turning our love toward God, through ritual. Rituals have the power to shape our identities, and if we are not deliberate, cultural liturgies will shape them instead.

The Law

The liturgical worship service is structured around a dialogue between God and his people. God calls us and Greets us, we respond with praise. Then God speaks through his word; we are reminded of God’s expectations for us in the reading of the Law. This is often the Ten Commandments, but there are many suitable passages, like Micah 6:8. The point here is that we need to be reminded that God has expectations, and we have failed to live up to them. We are disobedient and rebellious.

Thus, we need to repent.

Call to Confession

We are called to confession. We have to be called because we don’t really want to do it. True confession is hard because we have to look at who we really are. An honest look at oneself does not happen easily. We might need some practice–maybe even a thousand cracks at it. But if you deliberately practice confession in church every week, it will begin to be a daily rhythm, and you’ll be good at it in less than 20 years.

The call to confession reminds us that what’s wrong with the world is not out there somewhere but within me. I need a reminder, especially if I look at social media occasionally. The sins of others are so obvious on Twitter. The call to confession repeated weekly can begin to remind me that I am the problem with the world.

Until we realize that our biggest problem in life is not out there, but in us, we haven’t really come to a Christian understanding of reality. The repetition of ritual helps us to accept this reality in ways far deeper than intellectual consent. This is the power of ritual.

Prayer of Confession

If confession is just a mention in a prayer by the worship leader, then I might quickly confess the first sin that comes to mind. I can usually remember one. But, this is inadequate. I have committed a lot more sins than this one. Then there are the sins of omission. Then there are the sins that I would have committed in different circumstances. All of these damn me.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Our appreciation of God’s Grace is proportional to the degree we understand our need for it. #Grace #Sin #Confession #Liturgy” quote=”Our appreciation of God’s Grace is proportional to the degree we understand our need for it. “]

Our appreciation of God’s Grace in Redemption is proportional to the degree we understand our need for it. The only way for us to understand our need for God’s salvation is to meditate on our sin, and then confess it.

This past summer I was in England and I worshiped in Anglican churches. Praying in unison each week a prayer of penitence from the Book of Common Prayer is a moving experience when you attend to the words. Here’s an example:

Most merciful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we have sinned in thought, word and deed.

We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves. In your mercy forgive what we have been, help us to amend what we are, and direct what we shall be; that we may do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with you, our God.

Amen.

Ritual Confession

“But if you confess every week it is no longer moving, or special.”

We overemphasize experience in our culture–in church, we have a danger of emphasizing religious experience. Occasional experiences don’t shape us as regular ones do. The function of the liturgy is not to be new and special, but to shape us into a particular people. To conform us to reality, if you will.

It’s almost a given that we must avoid “empty ritual.” But what we must realize is that there is no such thing. Rituals are full. We give a child a quarter to drop into the collection plate every week. We insist a child say the words, “I’m sorry,” even when they clearly don’t mean it. These are important things to do, for they shape the identity of the child. The shaping isn’t intellectual–in the head–nor is it a changing of the heart. In Desiring the Kingdom, James K. A. Smith says that routines and rituals affect us in our gut or bones.

We are shaped into a certain kind of people by a liturgy of confession.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”The ritual of confession reminds us of two things–it reminds me that I am no worse than anyone else, and it reminds me that I am no better. #liturgy #Confession #Grace” quote=”The ritual reminds us of two things–it reminds me that I am no worse than anyone else, and it reminds me that I am no better.”]

Then, in the dialogue of worship, God speaks again.

Assurance of Pardon

As difficult as confession is, before we even start the confession, we know what’s coming. Amazing Grace. The assurance of pardon.

Human sinfulness is a big deal in Christianity, but God’s pardon and adoption into his family is the other half of the story. Both should, then, be a significant part of our weekly gathering.

God’s pardon is really good news. In the Old Testament, regular blood sacrifice established a pattern of purification. Sacrifice was God’s way of removing human uncleanness so that people could be restored to fellowship with God. The sacrifices reinforce the idea that death is the penalty for sin. But it’s clearly an act of Grace that God even allows for a substitute. Old Testament animals functioned as a substitute death. The inadequacy of these sacrifices is evidenced by the need for repeated sacrifice.

The death of God himself on our behalf is a once and for all sacrifice for our sake. We do nothing to earn it. It is a free gift. We do nothing but open our hands and receive it.

At this point in the liturgy, God gives pardon. And we receive. Repeated every week we become persons and a people of Grace.

In the prayer of confession, we come to realize and admit that we are in a hard place. We cannot save ourselves. We are unworthy to be anywhere near a holy God. When we get honest about our sin, we come to an understanding of how much I need Jesus, and then we experience his Grace.

Response of Thanksgiving

We confess, God pardons, and then we express gratitude.

This is to be the pattern of the Christian life. Like inhaling and exhaling.

But in order for this to become the pattern, it needs to be reinforced.

If we don’t practice it weekly, we won’t ever get the hang of it. We will spend a lifetime not knowing ourselves, and worse yet, not knowing the extent of God’s Grace.

Occasional confession is a liturgy of omission. A church that occasionally confesses is not much better than one that never confesses. The repetition is where the shaping occurs. The church that has a significant confession element every week will more effectively disciple the people into experiencing a pattern of confession and forgiveness that will alter their lives. The Sunday confession models the prayers we can offer on Monday and beyond.

If your church does not practice regular Confession and Assurance, is it time to consider including it in our weekly worship services? If it does, allow the power of ritual to turn out love towards God.

Other posts in this series:

The Order of Worship (3): The Proclamation

The Order of Worship (1): The Call to Worship and Greeting

February 13, 2019 / Trent / 2 Comments

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When I was a kid, Sunday church services were interminable. I thought that it might be a lot easier to endure if I had some idea as to where we were in the service. So I asked my dad, the pastor, if he could write out the service elements, in order, onto a piece of paper so that I could track along. I reasoned that the long bits, like the congregational prayer and sermon, might be easier to suffer if I knew where we were in relation to the end.

Being the child of the pastor, I thought I had privileged access to this information. He chuckled and showed me last week’s bulletin. There it was–The Order of Worship–a list of all the elements in the worship service. It had been there all along, for just anyone to follow. So every Sunday, I followed along and found that the church became less arduous when I knew where we were.

I discovered something else–every service followed the same pattern. The order of worship wasn’t this week’s order. It was every week’s order. Eventually, I didn’t need to look at the bulletin. I always knew where we were and the pattern became a comfort.

The Pattern of Worship

For a long, long time, all Christian church services were liturgical. They followed a regular and predictable pattern. Even after the huge disruption of the Reformation, services were still governed by a liturgy regardless of denomination.

I am only speaking from my own experience, but I began noticing some congregations were abandoning formal liturgies in the late 80s. I started seeing church signs announcing “Liturgical Services” at a different time from the “Regular Service.” Now we have lots of these modern, non-liturgical churches.

These have a very simple order of worship. If they did publish one, it would look something like this.

Songs

Sermon

Songs

I’m being a little facetious because there are a few prayers and an offering, but these events have been shortened and are now rather streamline. It should be noted that the songs will sometimes connect to elements of the old liturgy they’ve supplanted–songs of praise certainly, sometimes confession or Thanksgiving or even a re-worked apostles’ creed–but when we rely on songs to carry these liturgical elements, they are no longer weekly occurrences and this is significant.

I suppose we’ve simplified things so as to avoid confusing visitors to our Sunday service. After all, many of our neighbors are no longer familiar with church. This may be reason enough to keep the Order of Worship simple.

But perhaps we’ve lost something. Through the liturgies we practiced and learned together important patterns that are meant to shape the way we live out lives.

An Active God

What does God do during the church service?

In the modern, non-liturgical churches it is easy to get the idea that God doesn’t do very much. At least little is implied about his actions. During the songs, he might be sitting there listening and smiling. And what does God do during the sermon? He is of course speaking, but do we frame the sermon in such a way as to leave the congregants no doubt that it is not just the preacher who is speaking? Are the faithful are allowed to think God is listening indifferently–after all, he knows it all already. How many people would say that His attention is drawn to another church somewhere else in the world that happens to be singing at the time because God likes the singing part the best?

In modern, non-liturgical churches, it’s easy to think that the people are the main or only actors in the Sunday service. We arrive, we sing, we pray, we listen, we eat and drink and then we leave. (There is another scenario, which is a concern for worship leaders, were only the worship band is active, and the rest passively consume, but this is a topic for another day.)

God merely receives human worship.

Passivity is not a characteristic of God as presented in the Bible. The passivity we attribute to him is a product of secularization. In the West, we have created artificial categories between physical things and spiritual things and then we marginalize the spiritual things. The Western church is not immune to secularism. Lot’s of people still believe that God is there, but they aren’t really sure what he does. It seems like he’s a long way off, no doubt hearing our prayers, but is he really acting on them? Christians influenced by Modernism experience a narrowing and weakening the presence and power of transcendent things in the immanent frame.

By stepping away from traditional liturgies, we’ve not eliminated liturgies, we’ve just adopted new ones. If we haven’t been deliberate, we’ve simply replaced tratitional liturgies with secular ones. Thus promoting and perpetuating secular ideas through corporate worship.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Some churches are promoting secular ideas through corporate worship because they’ve replaced traditional liturgies with secular ones. In secularized Christian worship, God is passive. Agency lies primarily with people. #worship #liturgy ” quote=”Some churches are promoting secular ideas through corporate worship because they’ve replaced traditional liturgies with secular ones. In secularized Christian worship, God is passive. Agency lies primarily with people.”]

Habits and Rituals

Habits, rituals, and liturgies are important. They shape how we think and they shape who we are. We can ritualize God’s passivity and the weekly repetition will eventually shape how we think, and even who we are. God’s passivity won’t just stay in church, we will eventually come to think of God as passive in our lives and in the world as well.

The converse is also true. If we shape our worship service around God’s active interaction with his people, this idea will leak into Monday and beyond.

Traditional liturgies shape worship as an active dialogue between God and his people–(all his people, not just the ones with instruments.)

The Call to Worship and God’s Greeting

The first words the worshipers hear in the service are important. At one service, the first words I heard were,

“I want to thank you all for coming to church this morning.”

Seriously?

Who greets us? This greeting is all about the actions of the worshipers. We have decided to come to church this morning. Apparently with some inconvenience, for we have earned gratitude from somewhere. Who owes us this gratitude? The worship leader? God? Does God owe us something because we chose to come to church instead of watching the first half of the football game?

The Call to Worship suggests that someone is calling. It is God himself who draws us to church. He gets the first word. We are not there because we chose to be there; we are not there because our parents made us come; we are not there because we are trying to impress that cute girl with our religious zeal; we are not there because this is what we always do on Sundays. We are there because God has drawn us there.

Our bodies are there, but where are our hearts and minds? The call to worship marks a turning toward worship, toward the throne of heaven, toward God. The preceding week was full of joys and challenges involving relationships, obligations, worries, and diversions. In the call to worship we are turned from ourselves, toward God.

And The Greeting is his.

What kind of people do we become if we are regularly thanked for deciding to come to church? What kind of people do we become if we repeat, week after week, God’s active calling to corporate worship?

Acts of Praise

Next comes an act of praise. Our action follows God’s action.

Importantly, this act of praise is not the result of the worship leader asking us to stand and sing nor is it caused by the first cords of music. Praise is the result of our attention being directed toward God.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Praise is not the result of the worship leader asking us to stand and sing. Praise is the result of our attention being directed toward God. #Worship #PraiseandWorship” quote=”Praise is not the result of the worship leader asking us to stand and sing. Praise is the result of our attention being directed toward God.”]

This may not be automatic for everyone. But it’s what the liturgy teaches through repetition. With ritual repetition, this will eventually come to be our natural response.

To make the Sunday worship service just a bunch of human activity, well, that’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit without Roger Rabbit. Our Sunday worship needs to show God’s activity because he is active. If we can’t see what he does in Church, how can we see him as active in our lives, let alone the world?

God doesn’t just sit up in heaven waiting for Sunday when some people will sing songs at him. A weekly reminder that God calls us to worship will begin to change how we view ourselves, the world and the God who sustains it all.

Other posts in this series: