Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

worship

Liturgical Theology 3 | Liturgy = Ecclesiology

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cup_bluebackgroundSimon Chan’s book Liturgical Theology, in chapter two, makes the claim that worship is what distinguishes the church as the church. Worship is what makes a church a church, as opposed to some other kind of thing. There are other things the church does, and ought to do, but none of them are as foundational or essential as worship.

I think he is going to go on to explain, too, that what he means by worship is a lot more than that bunch of songs we sing before the message or that new genre of Christian music everyone seems to be getting into these days. It has to do with Word and sacrament. More on that later.

But this idea that worship is the essential activity of the church has some implications for talking about “missional” church, don’t you think? Is mission the foundation of the church? Or is worship? It’s not that they’re mutually exclusive (I actually think they’re quite organically linked), but what is foundational? Does mission give rise to worship, or does worship give rise to mission? Do we think of mission in terms of worship, or worship in terms of mission? The answer to that question carries huge ramifications, so it’s one we’d better get the right answer on, methinks. Read Chan’s words on the subject:

…worship could be said to be the defining characteristic of the church. n this world the church may be many other things: a voice of conscience in the community, a champion of the poor and oppressed, a preserver of traditional values and so on. But these functions are not what make it the church, for they could as well be take up by other religious and secular bodies. The church’s defining characteristic is its worshipful response to the call of God to be his people. This may explain why in the Scriptures Christians are sometimes simply called worshipers (Phil 3:3; 1 Tim 2:10; Heb 12:28; Rev 13:12-13; 14:11). Worshiping God is the hallmark of the people of God.

He goes on to talk about how many “missional” activities in the Scriptures are spoken of in terms of worship, a service we offer to God. The Scriptures treat many of the basic activities of the church as essentially liturgical acts. So not only is everything in life to be pervaded by a spirit of worship, including eating and drinking (1 Cor 10:31), but preaching the gospel (Rom 15:16) and service (Heb 13:15-16) are seen as liturgical acts, something we do primarily unto God, even though in one sense we are serving and speaking to other people.

Chan strongly argues that worship is the deepest foundation of the church, and therefore the church’s mission needs to be seen primarily as an act of worship. So much of modern evangelistic impetus is focused on the need of people. “Go preach the gospel because people are going to hell, and they need to find new life in Christ.” Of course the needs of people are legitimate, but Paul seems to have seen his evangelistic ministry primarily in terms of worship: it was a priestly service he offered to God. A couple more quotes from Chan will round out this post.

Mission is ultimately theocentric rather than anthropocentric.

What marks Christians as God’s people is that they have become a community that worship God in spirit and in truth. This is what the church must aim at in mission.

Only when mission is carried out as an act of worship will it truly build up the church. For only when the church presents people as unblemished sacrifices before God will it become the community of God’s people. In the church’s encounter with the triune God, it is formed into the community of God. In true worship we become the church.

Chan’s argument seems to be saying that the church could be failing miserably in mission and remain the church, but if she fails in worship, she stops doing the thing that makes her the church. Of course, if she is worshiping in spirit and in truth, I believe she’ll be propelled into the world in mission. So perhaps we could say that failure in mission shows a failure in worship, but failure in worship causes failure in mission.

Liturgical Theology 2 | What’s in your pneumatology?

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Simon Chan, in his book Liturgical Theology, says that the Holy Spirit was not merely given to empower the church to continue in Christ’s mission after he was gone. He says that the on the day of Pentecost, new stuff happened, that the church was transformed from being simply the people of God to being the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the actual presence of Christ on earth. Because of this, we cannot proclaim the gospel truly without telling the story of the church (as well as the story of Christ’s death and resurrection).

Herein lies the main weakness in Protestant and evangelical theology: it terminates the gospel story at the resurrection and ascension, so that the church is seen solely as the agent to retell or restate a story that ended with Christ’s resurrection. Protestantism has no sense of the continuation of the gospel into ecclesiology and pneumatology. When it comes to understanding the church, sociology takes over.

Against such a view, we need to see ecclesiology as an intrinsic part of the doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ, not an administrative arrangement for the sake of securing some practical results.

The church is an essential part of the gospel story, one that goes beyond simple pragmatics. One implication of this is that we can never dismiss the church simply because she isn’t doing "her job". If the church is only a pragmatic solution to the problem of getting the word out about the gospel, then we can just throw it away when it isn’t working. But if the church really is the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, then we cannot lightly discard it, even when it seems ineffective or obtuse. Throwing the church aside for the sake of getting a job done won’t ultimately work because the church is part of the story of the gospel, and if we try to preach a gospel without talking about Christ’s Body and the Spirit’s Temple, we end up with a gospel that merely records individual transactions and prints "Go To Heaven When You Die" tickets. We preach a docetic gospel if we forget the church. I wonder if what the missional church movement needs is a solid ecclesiology if it is going to make a long-lasting impact.

Maybe Augustine said it best: "The church is a whore, but she is my mother."

Liturgical Theology 1 | Function or ontology?

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(from my old blog…)

I’m going to be doing some thinking about worship and mission (and ultimately ecclesiology) based around a few books I’m reading. These discussions will probably veer into heavier theological territory, just to give some fair warning. That said, I am a firm believer in committed Christians engaging thoughtfully and critically with difficult theological questions. So dive in, please. Ask questions if you need some clarification, and post your thoughts.

liturgical_theologyIn the first chapter of Simon Chan’s Liturgical Theology, he asks the question of whether the church is to be primarily understood as the instrument through which God will accomplish his purpose in creation, or rather the expression of that purpose itself. Is the church here to work for the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creation, or is the church itself the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creation? If the church in the instrument of God’s purpose, then we understand it primarily in functional terms; what it does. But if we understand the church as itself the expression of God’s purpose, we look at the church in ontological terms; what it is.

It’s an important question, it would seem, and Chan comes down on the side of seeing the church as the expression, not the instrument of God’s purpose in creation. That begs a second question from me: how are we to understand all the talk about missional church? Mission implies action implies function. Is the church functional or ontological?

Now, I can’t say for sure yet because I haven’t read the rest of the book, but I am wondering if this is perhaps one of those false dichotomies: an either/or where there should be a both/and. What if the church is both the expression of AND the instrument of God’s purpose in creation?