Worship: Have We Lost Our Theological Identity?

In the last few years of church searching, too often I experienced worship services that seem to communicate a two-fold idea. First, several services we attended demonstrated that worship benefits us by giving us something. Perhaps the thinking in this type of service believed that worship puts God into motion to act on our behalf. Or maybe in this framework of worship was performed to make us feel closer to God, help us be encouraged for the upcoming week. Whatever the case may be, whenever we experienced this type of worship service it bothered me to the core. This is in fact is not worship at all, unless one is attempting to worship an idea or perhaps self – a type of unintentional narcissism. Whatever the case may be, too often we experienced this type of service.

The second idea of this two fold idea in church worship services is what I like to call the self-help worship. This is where the service is geared toward making those in the church and especially those unchurched more comfortable about themselves. In these worship services sermons were geared to communicate to the listener that we are not bad people. Sin is absent in their homilies. Rather we are to learn how we can live through adversity, or how we can improve our financial status, etc. The attention is on self and not God. In fact, there is actually no semblance of worshipping God in these services at all. These are the services that were so bad I would get up and leave in the middle of them.

Now, in writing these above things, I am not intentionally trying to be a pessimist, I simply believe these churches have lost touch with true worship and have turn, perhaps, to the world to set the tone for their church services. I say this because most, if not all, of these churches have campaigns to bring the unchurched into their services. In my humble opinion, this was never the intent of the church or the intent of worship. Therefore, when these things are performed, there is a loss of meaningful ecclesiological theology, the shape of liturgy is distorted, and the focus of the worship is not God. How can we possibly call this worship? Moreover, if the above things are becoming the norm, how do we redirect the landscape of the church back to a more sound theological worshipping community?

I think this at least begins with an ecclesiology that is grounded in good theology and a better understanding of what it means to be a worshipping community. This is, as Church History shows us, the underlying ordo of worship. Simon Chan confirms this in his work when he declares, “. . . a coherent theology of the church that pays particular attention to the liturgical practices that have constituted Christian worship throughout the centuries” is what is needed in churches today. Therefore, this will be the focus of the last few posts I present here on the issue of worship.

The Church: A Simple Beginning (Part Two)

The church is the body of Christ. As Simon Chan has pointed out in his work Liturgical Theology, “The church is the divine-humanity by virtue of its being the body of Christ.” Moreover, “body of Christ” is more than a mere metaphor. The church is the reality of Christ here now, post resurrection. Therefore, it can be said that those who witness the body of Christ, witness Christ, the Head. However, Christ is not the body nor is the body Christ, Christ is the Head, but Christ is demonstrated through the body, thus it can be said that Christ is seen in and through the body (i.e. the church). Moreover, Christ is presented to the church post-resurrection through Word and sacrament.

The church should never be confused with a single place or structure. Often we use the terms church building, church home, or place of worship, to indicate “the church.” These things are not the church as body of Christ. The church is not a building per se it is not a denomination either. The church as body is made up of individual Christians collectively gathered and united across the world in one body with Christ as its Head. The unity that we as the body of Christ have is demonstrated in the sacraments. This is especially seen in the Eucharist, where we collectively participate in the body and blood of Christ. This is ecclesial communion.

The church as body of Christ is more than merely a collected group of baptized people who are obedient to the Word of God, a very Western view of church. Rather, as Tillard points out in Flesh of the Church, the church is “communion united by the Eucharistic body.” Chan confirms this by declaring, “When the church is understood as essentially communion in and of the body of Christ, the primary focus of the ecclesial life is not church hierarchy but koinonia characterized by agape.” This ecclesial life is collectively demonstrated not only in our worship as we gather together, but extends to our lives as we live in the world demonstrating the love of Christ.

The Church: A Simple Beginning (Part One)

The kick off this series on worship I thought it was necessary to simplify matters. The basis of any complete understanding of worship begins with ecclesiology; better yet, the ontology of the Church. Rather than diving into deep theological waters I would like to focus on the basic ontology of the church; in other words, the basic identity of the church, not in terms of what it does, but what it is (and/or what it is not). By doing so, I think we can gain a better grasp of worship within the context of ecclesiology, which, in my estimation is the basis of understanding worship.

First, let’s look at what the church is. The church is a culture, as David Yeago has described it in his essay “Messiah’s People.” Without going into too much detail, simply put, this idea delineates that the church precedes creation rather than it coming from creation; as Simon Chan has declared, “The church does not exist in order to fix a broken creation; rather creation exists to realize the church.” (p. 23). Paul declares in Ephesians 1:4, the church was chosen in Christ before the creation of the world. Robert Jenson describes the world as a raw material from which God will use to perfect His church in Christ. Therefore, as a culture, the church is a divine-humanity, as a body, and with Christ as its Head.

Moreover, the church is “the people of God.” Simon Chan describes the church as the people of God in this way, “To call the church the people of God is to recognize that it exists in continuity with the ancient covenant people of God, the people of Israel.” (p. 24). I will be your God and you shall be my people is an oft repeated phrase from both the Old and New Testaments. The people of God in connection with the people of Israel within the identity of the church are described by Paul in Romans where we as gentiles are grafted into this body. We should never let this simple fact escape us, the church was established by a Jew (the Messiah), through a Jewish people, and we as Gentiles are included only by being engrafted. Therefore, the church was never intended to replace Israel. [To be continued]

A Worshipping Community

Over the last few years I have been concerned about a particular issue. The issue is worship, and the concern stems from my wife and my search for a new church home. About two years ago my wife and I left our church home due to a series of issues (which I will not detail) arising within the leadership of the church. It took us about a year and three months to find a new church home. During this time we visited literally dozens upon dozens of various churches, some of these experiences I posted at this blog as they occurred; you can peruse through the archives over the last year and read about a few of these.

Having visited so many different churches in various denominations led me to my aforementioned concern—worship! While we have visited many different churches across the country, since we lived in three different states in the last seven years, and we have crossed denominational lines in our visitations, however, these past few years, my concern has really hit home with me. I firmly believe that most churches (in the U.S. at least) have lost a sense of true worship, not to mention a sense of sound ecclesiological theology. Worship has become an individually geared activity to serve a particular end, such as helping one to “feel better” about one’s self, or make one feel closer to God, etc.

Therefore, much of what is called “worship” is nothing of the sort. It is merely a group of people coming together to achieve “the end” which the group believes is best suited for those gathered. Or to formulate a style of what is called “worship” which in fact caters to those outside the church in an attempt to bring them in the church in hopes of “winning their souls to Christ.” What happens in these circumstances is that the style or the ends then becomes a trade off for sound theology. In other words, the method usurps the message, and all sound theological aspects of worship are lost.

What I experienced over these last few years of visiting various churches was gimmicks, methods, or styles, and very little genuine worship at all. This bothered me, and still bothers me to no end. Therefore, over the next few days (or weeks as the case may be) I’ll be posting a series on worship. This upcoming series was not only motivated by my church visitation experiences but also by a book I recently purchased (in my gathering of books on worship) in order to revisit an issue I had once researched when I was in seminary; namely worship. The book is titled Liturgical Theology: The Church as a Worshiping Community by Simon Chan.

This book, in my estimation, really hits the ball out of the park with regard to the issue of worship. I will draw from its pages and provide quotes when necessary. The underlining occurrence I experienced in all these visitations of various churches was the idea that those who gathered thought they actually had something to offer to God in “their worship experience.” This is, as Simon Chan declares, and I firmly agree, a distortion of the glory of God. And this is all too prevalent in U.S. churches today; thus, I begin this new series. Any feedback as the series moves along is greatly desired and appreciated.