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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
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
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
KingdomTide and the Confluence of Worship and Mission
I keep trying to get this tractor in gear. It's time for a new stream of conversation on FARMStrong. I am going to begin a series of posts on the relationship between worship and mission. It's an issue we've pondered here before. Given we are a bit past the midterm of the season of worship we call KingdomTide, it would be a good moment to reflect on what I consider the very essence of this worshipping movement: the relationship between worship and mission.
For instance, consider John Piper's popular saying: "Mission exists because worship does not," or something to that effect. This clearly inspired Matt Redman's song a few years back called Mission's Flame, some of the key lyrics of which go as follows:
Let worship be the fuel for mission's flame. . . . . Let worship be the heart of mission's aim.
Though I like the song very much, something about it does not resonate in my thinking. I even wrote Matt a bit of a critique of these lyrics a few years back.
So for starters, I welcome some commentary from your own perspective. How do you describe this relationship between worship and mission? Is it a chicken and egg thing? Does one lead to the other? Is it a cyclical reality or something else? I promise not to publicly critique your comment and for the purposes of this post ask you all not to critique each other. That time will come later. I'm simply trying to help us get a sense of the varying perspectives out there, to get the lay of the land so to speak.
This should be fun.
Labels: world
posted by John David Walt | at 10/22/2008 06:02:00 AM | 19 comments
Today...