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Worship and Mission: Part 3
One of the challenges we face in making the connection between worship and mission is our own quickness to settle for what I call the "should-must" motive. The rationale goes like this, "God did this, therefore we must do that." Said another way: "Jesus came all the way from Heaven to Earth therefore we should get out of these cozy pews and take the Gospel to the nations. While this is certainly true, it stops short of a real theological rationale, settling for a moral-ethical motive. The "should-must" motive feeds into the classic "indicative to imperative" play. It works to a certain extent because it puts the imperative on our shoulders. The imperative quickly gets mixed in with the urgent. "Time is running out, we must do something now." This leads to all sorts of inadequate strategies and structures of getting God's mission done.
The primary problem is this approach subtly throws the responsibility back on us to "get-er-done-for-God." We turn to a hierarchy of strategies ranging from nobility to altruism to philanthropy to duty to guilt and finally shame. (I once read a statistic that said the number one givers to missionaries are other missionaries. Go figure.) Sure God will help us and that's where prayer comes in play. There are those who go and those who give and those who pray and those who take an occasional vacation break mission trip and then there are the indifferent masses who give a salute and don't get involved. This leads to a representative structure wherein those who are serious about the mission represent the rest of us who know we should be serious about it too.
Not only does this moral-ethical approach hopelessly bifurcate worship and mission, it goes further to endlessly atomize the work of mission into multiple departments and even compartments. Worship and Mission. . . . . I want to say, "What God has joined together let noone put asunder."
Our task is to recognize that while the mission of God has deep moral and ethical dimensions, there is a deeper rationale for this work; a reason dwelling in the very heart of the Godhead. Anybody want to take a crack at it? How do we get past the thin motives and into the deeper realities?
Labels: worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 11/25/2008 08:11:00 AM | 8 comments
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The Many Faces of Worship
Labels: many faces of worship
posted by John David Walt | at 11/22/2008 06:59:00 PM | 0 comments
Friday, November 21, 2008
The Many Faces of ??????
hat tip to Joe Nader. posted by John David Walt | at 11/21/2008 04:24:00 PM | 4 comments
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Many Faces of Worship
Labels: many faces of worship
posted by John David Walt | at 11/14/2008 09:30:00 AM | 2 comments
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Worship and MIssion: Part 2
More on what the "inside-out" idea of worship is about. Getting back to the relationship between worship and mission, and continuing to track with Schattauer's essay referenced in the prior post, I want us to consider this word from Pannenberg writing some 25 years ago.
There is no reason for the existence of the church except to symbolize the future of the divine kingdom that Jesus came to proclaim. This explains in what specific sense worship is in the center of the life of the church: The worship of the Christian community anticipates and symbolically celebrates the praise of God's glory that shall be consummated in the eschatological renewal of all creation in the new Jerusalem. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia: Westminister, 1983)
I like what he is saying. It is emphatic but it seems a bit incomplete. It seems all anticipatory and missing the crucial formative element of memory. Consider Rodney Clapp's analysis here:
Liturgy also implies and enacts mission... All liturgy is related to mission. . . . The church exists for the sake of the world. . . . Worship teaches and forms us to live by the Jesus story so that others--the entire world, the church prays--will learn to live according to reality and wholeness. The people, the culture, that is now the church is joyful that God has already drawn it together, but it lives in hope of a greater joy, a joy that achieves fullness only in the kingdom's fullness. (Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society)
One more from Darrell Guder that puts an exclamation point on these ideas:
Our postmodern society has come to regard worship as the private, internal, and often arcane activity of religionists who retreat from the world to practice their mystical rites. By definition, however, the ekklesia is a public assembly, and its worship is its first form of mission. . . . . The reality of God that is proclaimed in worship is to be announced to and for the entire world. (Darrell L. Guder, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America)
Do these thoughts provoke any stirring in you or are they mere statements of what is already obvious to you?
Labels: quotes, world, worship, worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 11/13/2008 08:15:00 AM | 0 comments
Monday, November 10, 2008
The Many Faces of Worship This just in. Seriously, you can be the 1,558,339th person to see this one. Warning: I'm not mocking. . . . . just having some FARMStrong fun. (and seriously-- this body has hit the floor before.)
Labels: many faces of worship
posted by John David Walt | at 11/10/2008 09:05:00 PM | 7 comments
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Worship and Mission: Part 1
A few years back I came across an article by Thomas H. Schattauer entitled, "Liturgical Assembly as Locus of Mission." In the article he explores the way worship and mission get connected in worship services. He offers three alternatives: "inside and out" (conventional) "outside in" (contemporary) and "inside out" (radically traditional). Relying on his descriptions I will offer a brief summary of each alternative.
INSIDE AND OUT
The relationship between the inside activity of worship and the outside activity of mission is portrayed thus: worship nurtures the individual and sustains the community in its life before God and in its life together and from where Christians go out to serve the church's mission as proclaimers and doers of the gospel. They return to worship, perhaps with a few more folk gathered by this witness, and the cycle begins again.
OUTSIDE IN
A contemporary response to the conventional model has been to bring the "outside" activities of mission directly into the context of worship. The sacred precinct of liturgy becomes one of two things--either a stage from which to present the gospel and reach out to the unchurched and irreligious, or a platform from which to issue the call to serve the neighbor and rally commitment for social and political action. . . . The church's worship is reshaped to take up the tasks of the church's mission, construed as evangelical outreach, social transformation or both.
INSIDE OUT
This approach locates the liturgical assembly itself within the arena of the missio Dei. The focus is on God's mission toward the world, to which the church witnesses and into which it is drawn, rather than on specific activities of the church undertaken in response to the divine saving initiative. . . The gathering of a people to witness to and participate in this reconciling movement of God toward the world is an integral part of God's mission. The visible (or public) act of assembly (in Christ by the power of the Spirit) and the forms of this assembly--what we call liturgy--enact and signify this mission. From this perspective there is no separation between liturgy and mission. . . . . Like a reversible jacket, the liturgy can be turned and worn inside out, and by so doing we see the relationship between worship and mission--inside out.
So what do you think of this taxonomy so far? While it may be oversimplified, I think is extremely helpful in getting a good scope on the landscape. Can you see the differences? How might you classify your own church or group according to these?
More to come.
Labels: world, worship, worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 11/01/2008 02:49:00 PM | 4 comments
Today...