01.14.07

worship .. an agenda for biblical people

Posted in gospel at 7:43 pm by len

As David Fitch and others have pointed out, evangelicals, and in particular charismatics, have distorted the “worship” gathering into either “lecture hall” or “rock concert.” The “lecture hall”? setting deals with humans in a modern and Enlightenment fashion: individuals are capable of acquiring truths through propositions and words, and this will somehow lead to transformation.

Unfortunately, the hour long sermon or lecture does not form us, and cannot adequately respond to the powerful enculturation which the current generation experiences in a variety of settings day by day. Similarly, self-expression does not lead naturally to worship of God and can feed the illusion that self is at the center. Alan Hirsch writes that the driving ideology of much ministry in the west is consumption. We become consumers of the “worship” experience. Fitch comments,

“Evangelicals go to church on Sunday yet are unaffected we either sit passively in a lecture hall taking notes for later use or we indulge in a rock concert /pep rally that titillates our emotions but leaves little to order our selves into the glory of God. Neither traditional nor charismatic forms of evangelical worship are sufficient to orient persons God"s glory amidst the secular cultures of desire.”? (105)

Honestly, we’re afraid of what real worship might mean, so we would rather sing the praises of a new order while remaining solidly in the old. Because most of our security is there. Addressing the same issue, Jim Wallis wrote that “at times, Scripture judges the value of worship, the inner circle, by looking at the shape of the outer circle, or the daily obedience it produces. Our worship should spread from the inner circle to the wider circle of our everyday lives as Christians, and our daily speech and acts and attitudes are ordained to be a wider and transformed worship.” (Agenda for Biblical People, 110).

Any call to worship that doesn’t require us to fall at the feet of the Lord… Jesus who is Lord when Caesar is not.. and to lay ourselves on the altar as living sacrifices, to change our allegiance..is merely a religious sham.

One of my concerns about the “worship movement” and restorationist teaching in particular is a kind of dualism or sacramentalism where it is believed that if we just have the right kind of worship, passion, and the exercise of spiritual gifts in the assembly then we will release power for change in ourselves and in the world. In this framework, worship is transformative ipso facto, or in the catholic sense, ex opere operato.. it is transformative automatically, magically.

I wish it were so.. but I have never seen it, and I’ve been in passionate worship settings for many years. In the end, dualism divorces worship from work, work from prayer, and worship from justice and personal change. But the first work of worship is always change.. metanoia.. repentance. Dualism.. and any teaching about worship that doesn’t somewhere have political implications.. cannot possibly see the kingdom of God rightly. Dualism divorces spirit from flesh.. it is non-incarnational, and it works against the call to join God in His mission in the world. Jim Wallis reminds us that,

“the renewal of the church will come not through a recovery of personal experience or straight doctrine, nor through innovative projects of evangelism or social action, nor in creative techniques or liturgical worship, nor in the gift of tongues, nor in new budgets, new buildings, and new members. The renewal of the church will come about through the work of the Spirit in restoring and reconstituting the church as a local community whose common life bears the marks of radical obedience to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
“Practically, this means a clear recognition that the demands of obedient discipleship will bring us into conflict with the ordinary social values and normal patterns of the world systems which continually seek to fashion us into their image and conform us to their molds.” (Agenda, 100-101)

It was these concerns, the concern to hold the Word and the Spirit together, the concern that discipleship be kept within the frame of worship, that got me writing two years ago when I penned the series “Worlds in Collision.” It wasn’t long afterward that I read “Colossians Remixed.” A similar concern comes across strongly in McLaren’s recent book, The Secret Message of Jesus. The final, and unpublished, chapter of that book looks at the Lord’s Prayer.

I have seen a couple of references to the line “Your kingdom come… on earth as it is in heaven” used to justify the centrality of gathered worship, in a particular charismatic pattern. McLaren doesn’t find that in the Lord’s prayer, and I doubt that was in the mind of Jesus, or in the minds of the disciples when they first heard it. I agree with McLaren that the New Testament isn’t much concerned with a particular experience of God, nor is it concerned that we begin practicing now for a book of Revelations like experience later. Rather, the New Testament is concerned with the practice of love and justice. It is concerned with transformation and redemption. When God’s kingdom comes, we experience shalom in all its dimensions. When God’s kingdom breaks into our world, the existing structures are challenged, the blind receive sight, the powers are thrown down from their rule and the poor and humble are exalted. That will be cause for celebration! Meanwhile, when we enthrone Jesus as Lord in our daily practices, our relationships, and our work on behalf of the powerless, we really are participating in the inbreaking of a new world.. the kingdom of God.

TO that end we gather and exalt the Lord. Together we are equipped by the Spirit working through a variety of gifts for the good of all, and for the sake of the world. GIve me intercession with feet.. that brings the good news to the poor and sets the captives free. Laborare est orare.. to work is to pray.

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