Last week, pastor Trevin Wax posted an interesting blog entry about the way serious preaching demands serious presentation. Specifically, Wax is watching a trend of churches “focusing on the centrality of the Word in worship,” and noting that it clashes with the contemporary “chatty, street-level style of worship” marked by “casualness and novelty.” “Form and content mirror one another,” notes Wax, and when they clash, “something’s got to give.”
When the people of God are gathered to hear the word of God, the informal, “Hi there folks!” is not the right way to start a service. Wax uses the memorable analogy, “It’s like eating steak on a paper plate.”
It would be easy to miss the point, and to settle into the well-worn rut of worship wars. The gravitational pull of the old liturgical-versus-nonliturgical black hole can already be felt. But that wasn’t Wax’s intention, and it isn’t mine in bringing this up. Low-church evangelicals may or may not be trending toward more traditional liturgical forms, I don’t know. Hunter Baker thinks so, and Hunter Baker sees the future.
The big question for me is, how does a church send the signal to its Sunday morning congregation that it is serious about what it’s doing?
As a free church evangelical in suburban southern California, I participate in the general trend of casual service-openers. I think it’s a great, culturally appropriate way to start out a gathering. I suppose we could bang a gong, or plunge the sanctuary into darkness, or bring up the music to a dramatic opening. But it seems more normal and natural for somebody to go up front and say nice human things like “Hello” and “Welcome” and “Have a seat, let’s get started.” That’s how the indigenous peoples talk in my country, and that’s how church starts.
But here’s the key: At some point in the service, and it has to be a pretty early point, one of the ministers presiding over the worship service needs to get our attention and let us know that we’re doing a very serious thing. We’re going to worship God together. We’re going to hear his word proclaimed and applied. We’re going to place ourselves under the authority of that word and take the consequences of admitting we are not our own. We’re going to pray with one another, to try to say and hear the things we most need to say and hear. The prophet Isaiah is going to shout at us from across the centuries! The apostles are going to tell us what they saw and heard and touched! God himself will speak through his own holy word.
This is church! We’re not messing around.
Happily low churchy guy that I am, I am always straining my ears to hear the modern version of the ancient anaphora, the Sursum Corda, the pastor’s call to the congregation to “Lift up your hearts!” It doesn’t usually happen in the first sixty seconds in the kind of church I’m at home in. It usually waits. First we say some normal, hospitality-minded words of welcome; and then some normal, information-distributing words of announcements; and maybe even some normal, defenses-lowering words of casual friendliness. Maybe even a joke, maybe even a quick reference to current events.
But the Sursum Corda‘s coming. One of the pastors is going to do something to send the signal that we are approaching the holy. There will be some summons, some expression of an intentional elevation of our minds and hearts to consider the things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. And when that happens, we all know we’re officially having church.
Just like all the millions of believers snoozing and waking their way through a more formal Sunday liturgy, I can’t promise I’m always catching all the cues that are being sent to me. And I can’t promise that everybody in the congregation is catching the same cues I am. Sometimes I know to lift up my heart at the sound of the first serious quotation of Scripture. Sometimes it’s the opening prayer, or the tone of the first words after the announcements. Often it’s the drum or the bass guitar in the first song that gets through to me at a deeper level. My pastor is especially good at calling us to stand up together and sing, and the way to the heart is often through the feet. After more than a decade in a stable, healthy church, sometimes I get the Sursum Corda just from seeing the face of a faithful preacher or worship leader, regardless of what words he’s saying. He gets the benefit of me remembering that time he spoke the word of God to us six years ago.
I’m no liturgist or worship leader; I’m an amateur and a lay participant at all that stuff. I don’t have real opinions about it, and wouldn’t expect anybody to listen to me if I did. But here’s what I know for sure: The message we gather to hear on Sunday morning is serious business, and the medium needs to fit the message. The call of Sursum Corda sounds a lot of different ways, but it’s got to be heard every time we gather. I am always listening for it, because I always need to lift up my heart to the Lord.
August 23rd, 2010 | 4:42 pm | #1
Maybe the answer really is liturgy.
August 23rd, 2010 | 6:11 pm | #2
Maybe the answer really is liturgy.
Or maybe the answer is Biblical community and fellowship instead of passively watching and listening to a performance. Instead of ritual, perhaps a functioning priesthood of all believers is in order. Worship is not a spectator sport.
August 23rd, 2010 | 6:35 pm | #3
I agree that worship isn’t a spectator sport. Liturgy literally means “the work of the people.” The Church has used a liturgy since the Apostles. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. A Biblical fellowship isn’t mutually exclusive with liturgy. The priesthood of all believers is real, but the role of bishop, priest, and deacon within the Church hierarchy is not the priesthood all believers share.
August 23rd, 2010 | 6:47 pm | #4
“Liturgy” means “work of the people.” A true liturgy involves the congregation’s active participation in worship. It is dialogical, not monological. The traditional form of the Sursum Corda is a case in point:
Leader: The Lord be with you.
People: And also with you.
Leader: Lift up your hearts.
People: We lift them to the Lord.
Leader: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
People: It is right to give him thanks and praise.
August 23rd, 2010 | 9:45 pm | #5
The traditional meaning of liturgy, in English (rather than the Greek roots), is something along the lines of “set pattern for worship.” So long as there is a regular pattern for a church, it has a liturgy. An extremely simple service of singing, a sermon, and announcements constitutes a liturgy. Even an “unprogrammed” Quaker service has a liturgy. So the “liturgical/non-liturgical” division evangelicals often use is misleading.
I think the basic questions we have to ask with regard to liturgy are:
1) How thick of a liturgy, i.e. how many elements, should our services have? I and many of my evangelical peers (college and post-college age) who grew up in churches with rather thin liturgies get to see responsive readings, creeds, catechism, and weekly communion in the churches we now attend.
2) How much of the liturgy should be conducted only by the “professionals” up front, and how much should the whole congregation participate in?
3) How often should the specific sections of the liturgy change: weekly, seasonally, or some other schedule?
August 23rd, 2010 | 9:46 pm | #6
Change 1) above to
1) How thick of a liturgy, i.e. how many elements, should our services have? I and many of my evangelical peers (college and post-college age) who grew up in churches with rather thin liturgies get EXCITED to see responsive readings, creeds, catechism, and weekly communion in the churches we now attend.
August 23rd, 2010 | 10:00 pm | #7
“2) How much of the liturgy should be conducted only by the “professionals” up front, and how much should the whole congregation participate in?”
The funny thing is, the balance only tips strongly toward the professionals in churches *without* traditional liturgy. That’s where you get to watch the professional singers, the professional guys in the polos, and the professional everybody else, while you sit back and listen, and once in a while get to sing along — frequently to songs that were mainly written for professionals to sing.
Conversely, the more formal liturgy there is, the bigger the participation of the congregation, in hymns, responsive readings, unison prayers, recited confessions, prayer responses, and so forth. Only in the sermon (and in some churches, a single choir anthem) does the congregation because listeners rather than participants. So I never got the tacit equation some make with informal, less “liturgical” worship, and making worship less one-sided. In my experience, it’s precisely the opposite.
August 24th, 2010 | 6:46 am | #8
Wow, almost a thousand words and not one mention of the eucharist.
How far Protestantism has fallen.
“There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying Amen. This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to genoito [so be it]. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.
And this food is called among us Eukaristia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone.”
August 24th, 2010 | 8:52 am | #9
PR’s above-quoted passage is from Justin Martyr’s First Apology, written in the middle of the second century AD. It deserves to be read more widely by North American evangelicals.
I myself see little edification in mere chattiness in the worship service. It does nothing to focus our hearts on Christ and his word. I find it an irritating distraction at best. Better to begin with a passage from a Psalm, e.g., 124:8: “Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”
August 24th, 2010 | 9:11 am | #10
[...] Low church and liturgy. [...]
August 24th, 2010 | 9:12 am | #11
[...] Low church and liturgy. [...]
August 24th, 2010 | 9:43 am | #12
But here’s what I know for sure: The message we gather to hear on Sunday morning is serious business, and the medium needs to fit the message. The call of Sursum Corda sounds a lot of different ways, but it’s got to be heard every time we gather. I am always listening for it, because I always need to lift up my heart to the Lord.
I appreciate the accent on the different sounds. Serious business can at times be taken as a reference to somber, quiet, “ordered.” It is a high-culture European way of thinking about what should happen in my view, and it has very little to do with formal or informal liturgies.
In many Pentecostal communities, or even in African-American churches, seriousness means dancing, lifting one’s hands, running, waving flags, shouting, spontaneous response to a sermon, testifying aloud, etc. It’s not terribly different from what I read recently in the 14th-century priest William of Pagula’s handbook for priests in which he tells priests to instruct the faithful to genuflect and say the Lord’s Prayer, or “Glory to you Lord who is born,” or “Hail salvation of the world, Word of the Father. . .” when the host is elevated. Like Catholic worship in Latin American or Africa, it’s not always so tame.
The point is that when Christ is present in the power of the Spirit there is a desire to get to the lover of one’s soul. The heart does not lift itself up so much as it is lifted and compelled to move toward the triune God. Worship ultimately is about ecstatic embrace regardless of the particular human response to such an embrace. The Eucharist simply underscores presence and encounter.
I personally think at least part of the problem is time. It takes time. . .more time than most North Americans want to give these days.
August 24th, 2010 | 10:07 am | #13
On the practical side, at the church I attend the service begins with the worship leader getting up and offering a few words of relection on what is about to transpire. It may be based on a Bible passage, a hymn verse or a personal insight. It’s casual, yet serious. It focuses the congregation on the comming worship, explains some aspect of what worship is and sets an appropriate tone. It works pretty well.
August 24th, 2010 | 10:35 am | #14
I’ve had a lot of different worship experiences over the years. In my younger days, it was the plain brown wrapper of Baptist church, with Baptisty hymns (verses 1, 3 and 5) and “Special” an offering, all as warm-up for the sermon.
Then I had a number of years with a much more liturgical form in a Presbyterian Church, with lectionary and seasons of the Church year and confession and responsorials. We read our “joy” of a sheet of paper, monotone and in unison, “We rejoice today that …”
I’ve experienced and enjoyed chanting psalms in the choir stalls with the Cistercian brothers at Monastery of the Holy Spirit, in Conyers, GA.
Then I spent a number of years in a WillowCreekSaddleback “seeker sensitive” style church.
And for the past 10 years, I’ve been in lot of charismatic worship where we like to “jump in the river of joy, drink of the Holy Ghost wine” and “dance like David.” If there were chandeliers, we would be swinging from them. IOW, very expressive worship, very participatory. On Sunday mornings, I’m all over the room, spinning and jumping and shouting, dancing with Jesus and the angels; my wife sits quietly in one place, sings softly and receives wonderful visions of heaven. The worship flows. There is no set length of time for each song. Often, people come up with a Scripture, an exhortation, a prophecy, or a tongue with an interpretation.
I do not miss the Baptisty worship, or the “seeker sensitive” days. But sometimes I do miss the liturgy and the lectionary and the Church year, and I hope to go back to the monastery again and chant psalms with the brothers there. But if I went back there to live, I would miss much more the worship I have known these past 10 years. In the liturgy, sometimes we did lift our hearts to the Lord, and occasionally I even experienced my heart being lifted up by the Lord (I like how Dale drew that distinction). But not like I’ve experienced in these latter years.
I am not making a judgment on any of these forms; I am happy for Christians to practice all of these, and some others I know of as well. But I am merely speaking of how I have experienced worship.
August 24th, 2010 | 1:02 pm | #15
PR,
The way you phrased your comment makes me want to ask you for a word count: How many words about church is it acceptable to write before explicit mention of the eucharist becomes mandatory? 850? 225? And can this rule of liturgical corrrectness be imposed retroactively on the reformers, the church fathers, and the apostles, or is it just for blogs?
But snark aside, I did have some comments on the eucharist in the first draft of this post. I cut them in the interest of making it a more focused contribution about style, not content. The actual Sursum Corda is of course part of the western anaphora, the eucharistic preface. “How to do communion appropriately” is a classic focal point for being intentional about how a service is conducted.
But I was talking about something else, and I think such talk is permissible, not a sign of “how far Protestantism has fallen.”
August 24th, 2010 | 2:43 pm | #16
Justin Martyr is clear enough, I think. We don’t needs debates about what any reformer taught. As Lewis points out, progress is only real progress if it gets one closer to one’s destination. Therefore, progress can sometimes mean turning around going the other direction. That’s the light in which I see the Reformers. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel. I don’t want to consult marketing professionals and sociologists for info on how to conduct a service. The info I need is much older from persons much holier than me.
August 24th, 2010 | 5:00 pm | #17
Arthur Sido’s mockery of liturgy is based not only on a complete caricature but also on a comprehensive misunderstanding. Having attended evangelical churches most of my life and having experienced Anglican liturgy (as well as having observed Catholic liturgy), I can only tell you that most Protestant and Evangelical services feel more spectator and passive than the higher liturgies. Ritual and tradition aren’t automatically lifeless and passive. So to say is to confuse adjectives with nouns.
August 24th, 2010 | 5:20 pm | #18
I suppose we could bang a gong, or plunge the sanctuary into darkness, or bring up the music to a dramatic opening. But it seems more normal and natural for somebody to go up front and say nice human things like “Hello” and “Welcome” and “Have a seat, let’s get started.”
How about asking people to keep pre-service conversation in the foyer, and borrow the liturgical practice of entering the church in silence? Silence fails your “normal and natural” criteria, but I do not know of a better way to prepare the heart for worship.
August 24th, 2010 | 7:04 pm | #19
Did you know that there are abortion liturgies? Some Episcopalians do them.
August 26th, 2010 | 11:28 am | #20
I’d like to draw attention to pentamom’s comment in #7. It’s true.
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