Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • The Worship Service is Worship Too

    Some time ago I read a post by Arthur Sido on The Voice of One Crying Out in Suburbia titled What is Worship? and I’ve been intending to respond ever since. The problem is that the topic brings up so many different issues that it threatens to become an incredibly long blog post. Those of you who have read this blog before know that wordiness is my besetting sin!

    So I’m going to try to give a few thoughts and I’ll write about details later if it seems the thing to do. I will obviously fail to cover all my ground. I’d suggest you read Arthur Sido’s post first. I’m not going to respond point by point. In fact, I consider most of his suggestions excellent, even though I take a different approach to the texts. Instead I’m going to just put forward a few ideas about worship, and particularly about the relationship of the Old Testament to the New on this topic.

    Before I get to the question of how much of what the Old Testament says about worship applies to the church let me comment on the definition of the word “worship.” One problem is that worship can mean different things in different places. I first encountered this problem talking to people who thought only part of the church service was worship. They would refer to the musical portion as “worship” and would complain that they had not been allowed enough time to worship at a particular service because too many other things took place. Worship would generally be defined in those conversations as the portions of the service that particularly engaged the emotions.

    We might see this as something similar to the biblical phrase “bow down and worship.” It’s a particular act of worship. I don’t have a problem with this special definition, so long as we realize what’s happening. You can define one piece of the worship service as “worship” and the rest as, well, something else, and lose the the broader meaning of worship. I recall some people who started to make a large distinction between “praise music” and “worship music” and had particular times for these things. Again, one can appropriately make a distinction between the word “praise” and the word “worship” in particular contexts, but that doesn’t mean that’s all of worship.

    On the other side, we have those who see the worship service strictly in terms of conveying certain facts. There is no expectation of poetry and emotional engagement in the service. The preference is for a few songs to kind of set off the time of preaching, the proclamation of the word. For these people the point of a church gathering is to get educated.

    Most people, of course, fall somewhere between these points. I think all fall short of the best concept of a service of worship. And no, I don’t have a problem using a term that is not explicitly used in the New Testament. In fact, I find the argument that something was not mentioned in the New Testament and thus must not be something we should do or believe to be one of the worst arguments. But that is another subject.

    Yet it is important to understand that worship can be broadened to cover everything that we do in life. I have learned a great deal of this while studying the book of Leviticus (read some of my notes on Leviticus), and also the rest of the Pentateuch. The overarching theme, I would suggest, is that God wants to bring everything into the realm of the sacred. We make some things sacred; God wants to sanctify everything. We make some places holy; God wants a holy world. We set aside sacred time; God claims rule of all time.

    The scriptural bookends for this view are found in Exodus 19:6 “You will be a kingdom of priests to me, a holy nation …” and then in 1 Peter 2:9, which alludes back to Exodus. What happened in between? Well, things didn’t happen that well at Sinai. God couldn’t make Israel a nation of priests and chose instead a priestly family, and the tribe of Levi to serve the temple. Instead of a holy nation we had a holy shrine.

    But the rituals of Leviticus see God moving into our profane spaces and trying to make them holy. The direction in which God is leading people is away from the scattered bits and pieces of “holy” and to a holy, consecrated life. I call this one of the trajectories of scripture that helps us understand how various texts apply, in this case texts related to worship.

    There are two commonly accepted ideas about how we apply Old Testament texts to the church. On the one hand there are those who think that if it isn’t restated in the New Testament, it doesn’t apply. There are others who believe it applies unless it was explicitly changed in the New Testament. As usual, these extremes don’t happen that often in practice, and there are certainly other views, but those provide the general outline.

    I would suggest instead that the Old Testament applies to the church wherever it does so based on the principles espoused in the text. We do not offer animal sacrifices in the church, but it is not simply because the New Testament says that was to end. Rather, the New Testament says that was to end because it’s function was completed. We can discover whether the function was completed by asking whether the situation that called for a particular activity, ritual, or law still applies in the time of the church. I would suggest that this question often needs to be answered differently for different people or groups.

    What does this mean for worship? I think it will suggest that it means that worship services are worship too. Those who think we worship only in the worship service should come to realize that obeying is better than sacrifice (1 Sam. 15:22), while those who think the worship service is unimportant should spend some time with those Old Testament passages that speak to the importance of ritual in engaging us with God.

    I think there is a great difference between individual needs. While worship is about God, it is about people worshiping God, and that worship experience means different things to different people. But there is that corporate need to worship together. Leave off either the acts specifically directed to God, or acts of service to others (which should be directed to God as well),  and one’s spiritual life will be unbalanced. (One can learn a great deal about worship from 1 Corinthians 12-14, especially 14.)

    Thus my title: It’s not “The Worship Service is Worship,” but “The Worship Service is Worship Too.”

    I can certainly see a number of lines of discussion I haven’t followed and perhaps should have, but I think I’ll wait to respond to comments–or until I again feel it’s a good idea to follow up.

     

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  • Organizing Small Groups

    Will Rice, Discipleship Pastor at University United Methodist Church in San Antonio, is suggesting retiring the term “small group” because he thinks it is not well enough defined (HT: Dave Black Online). It is hard to know precisely what one is talking about when one says “small group.” He’s right–it is hard.

    He also has some suggestions, such as defining the mission of the small group, making sure you have leaders gifted and trained to accomplish that mission, and evaluating the results according to the mission. I intentionally repeated the term “mission” multiple times there for emphasis. His suggestion is good. I’ve said many times, and I’m pretty sure I’ve said it within the last several posts, that I can tell how a church is doing on its mission by asking a member if they can state that mission.

    I’m also completely in agreement with the idea of finding the right people with the right gifts to put into the right position as facilitator. I’ve even written a book about it, and the title includes the phrase “small group!”

    But there’s another side to this that I’d like to underline briefly, and that’s the church (in my experience Methodist, though I have no reason to believe this is exclusively our problem) that tries to over-organize and over-control small group developments (see my earlier post Putting Up Barriers to Ministry). If a group of people meet and they don’t fit the favored definition of “small group” they are actively discouraged. I even encountered a pastor who objected to prayer groups meeting off-campus without church sanction. It’s quite possible to define, organize, and train our way out of existence. I say this as someone who loves defining, organizing, and especially training.

    I think there are small groups that develop naturally in a church that are detrimental to mission. I would suggest, however, that the solution is not to force all groups under a regimen of control, but rather the preaching of the gospel and teaching discipleship, along with appropriate, Christ-like, church discipline. I don’t mean that Rice’s good suggestions amount to forcing groups under a regimen. I’m referring to what I’ve observed in certain churches. I think one can tell the difference by observing the fruit–if groups of Christians are gathering and doing mission, it’s working.

    Somewhere between (or away from) control and chaos (with apologies to Get Smart) there’s a place where we function as the body of Christ under One Spirit.

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  • Converts to Orthodox Churches

    … are increasing.

    I don’t find this all that hard to understand. I personally have been enjoying more reading of the eastern church fathers, and have found much good material in the theology and liturgy of the Orthodox churches.

    Chron – Houston and Texas News reports on some churches in that area which are largely made up of converts and are often pastored by converts to that tradition. People come, amongst other reasons, because they are looking for stability. When the church changes as fast as the culture, one can easily wonder just what the church is for.

    While I am attracted to some of the theology, I can’t say that I am much attracted to the ecclesiology or the church structure. In fact, I find even the structure of the United Methodist Church a bit annoying. At the same time, I think I see similar ideas and attitudes in action in the ICON service at my home church, First United Methodist Church in Pensacola. Many people wondered about the traditional elements of the liturgy. There’s a tendency in many of our churches in this area toward worship services that are just contemporary. Would people want a service with the more traditional elements?

    The answer appears to be “yes.” Most of the new members of the church are coming in through that service. People are attending who haven’t attended church in years. People love the service. It combines technology, contemporary music and a traditional structure for the liturgy.

    I do like this liturgy that tends to provide stability, but perhaps we could do even more if we recovered the counter-cultural nature of the Christian message and really became God’s upside-down kingdom.

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  • Making Events Fit Your Agenda

    While I would love to see more civil discourse, I still fail to see evidence that the shootings in Tucson are the result of excessively heated rhetoric. Here’s another good discussion of the way people are using the tragedy to advance a preconceived agenda.

  • New Edition of the New American Bible

    You can read about it at Unsettled Christianity.

    While it never has been one of my top tier of translations for regular use, I was impressed with the NAB because it combined strong idiomatic language with a fairly strong score for literal translation on the scoring system I use at MyBibleVersion.com.

    In addition, I like the notes, which give a Catholic perspective, and of course the inclusion of the apocrypha.

  • It’s Broken!

    Soviet electric locomotive VL60pk (ВЛ60пк), c....
    A little bigger than the one we were playing with!
    Image via Wikipedia

    “I know what’s wrong with it,” said six year old Steven.

    From the eminence of 12 years old, I was showing Steven my electric trains, most of which I had salvaged from other sets and lovingly repaired. Suddenly one of the engines we’d been playing with just quit.

    That’s when Steven said: “I know what’s wrong with it.”

    I turned to Steven, wondering how he had figured it out. “What?” I asked.

    “It’s broken!” he announced solemnly. The look on his face told me he clearly believed he had solved the problem.

    I got quite a good laugh about that little incident, telling my parents and friends, and we all enjoyed the humor. Clearly the 6 year old’s lack of understanding was on display and very amusing. Knowing something is broken doesn’t mean you know what’s wrong, and certainly doesn’t mean you know how to fix it.

    But over the years since, I’ve begun to wonder. Nobody would really claim that just pointing out that something is broken means you’ve accomplished anything. Yet many, many people, who exceed age 6 by many, many years, behave as though this were the case.

    “My community is broken. People don’t talk to one another or know one another any more. Problems turn into lawsuits for no good reason.”

    So what is causing this? Where is the problem? How can it be fixed? Many of the same people have no idea and clearly have no intention of trying to fix it. They want to identify the problem and complain. Let me ask you this? When was the last time you did more than wave to a neighbor?

    “My church is going the wrong way. It’s broken! Things are falling apart! We’re losing members.”

    But what’s the problem, and what are you doing about it?

    I had an interesting experience with this once. I was leading a Bible study group, and somehow a text led to a series of complaints about our church.  Now there was a visitor there. I knew that she was the chair of our staff-parish relations committee. Those in the Methodist church know this is the group that theoretically deals with complaints about how the pastor and staff are accomplishing their mission. If you have a complaint in a United Methodist congregation, the SPR chair is one person to talk to.

    The rest of the group should have know who our visitor was too, but they didn’t (problem #1). The visitor pulled out a notebook as the complaints flowed, and started to ask questions. When did these things happen? What might be done? “I’m the SPR chair,” she said. She wanted to go do something about the complaints.

    What happened? The complaints dried up. Like six year old Steven, folks wanted to say, “It’s broken,” but they didn’t know where to go from there, or perhaps the desire to pursue the issue was missing.

    “Washington is broken. The politicians don’t listen to the people. We need to fix things!”

    One of my favorite questions at this point is to ask the person whether they voted in the last election. You might be amazed at how many complaints come from the non-participants. But if you want to get even closer to the problem, ask the person if they know how their representative or senator voted on the problem. If you want to get into even darker territory, mention state representatives, county commissioners, or city councilmen.

    Realizing that something is broken is important, but it’s the easy part. It’s where the work starts, not where it ends. At least if you’re not six years old, and thus don’t have someone else to make it better for you!

    (I’m submitting this to the one word at a time blog carnival, on the word broken)

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  • See I Can …

    And now for a rare humor break:

    See i can swimz. Now u climbz tree.

    Reminds me of all the things people think I should be able to do because I read Greek.

  • ISV Whole Bible Available

    The ISV whole Bible is available in electronic form. It’s a sort of pre-release, with a module available for eSword, along with Word 2003 and 2010 docs. I now have the whole Bible, even though corrections may be made before printing, so I’m planning to check my key verses and make up my numbers to post on mybibleversion.com.

    I recently found what I consider a wonderful, though simple, wording in the ISV New Testament, “no inconsistency or shifting shadow” in James 1:17.  I’ll be interested in seeing how the Old Testament translation compares with the new. I will post a link here once I’ve written up my notes.

    (HT: Better Bibles)

  • What Would Jesus Do? – Gun Edition

    From Christian Girl at College, who has been writing an impressive number of great posts. I disagree with this one, but I think we should look and think. See my thoughts on personal gun ownership here.

  • In Case of Murder, Attack Some Metaphors

    I haven’t yet commented on the shootings in Tucson. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, all of them, not just those in federal service. I’m concerned when people are killed because of senseless or unnecessary violence wherever that occurs. I don’t say this to diminish the importance of an attack on a member of congress. There is a special importance to such an attack, and we should be deeply concerned. This we ought to have done, but not to have left the other undone (Matt. 23:23).

    But how should we respond? Too frequently we look for some sort of law that is going to make us completely safe from such things. But such safety, like complete safety from terrorist attacks will remain elusive. We need to reflect soberly on what will actually accomplish useful goals. I’m perfectly happy with the idea of looking at the type of weapons available and the people who can legally purchase them, though we again need to make sure that any such restrictions actually accomplish their goal.

    But then there’s the attack on certain target maps, or on certain ways of talking about one’s opponents. I think there’s a good summary of the maps over at Unsettled Christianity. They aren’t just made by one side. That’s important. But even more important, in my view, is this: They weren’t intended to incite or encourage violence.

    We use violent metaphors in much of our speech. There is even the entire Christian metaphor of spiritual warfare. Though there are some that seem to miss the metaphorical side, or the fact that spiritual warfare is not “against flesh and blood,” the vast majority of those who use this language intend no violence by it. I don’t believe that New Testament writers intended any such thing by it either.

    Now Congressman Robert Brady (D, PA) has introduced a law to prohibit certain expressions regarding public officials. One of his particular concerns is the maps I referenced above:

    “You can’t put bulls eyes or crosshairs on a United States congressman or a federal official,” Brady said. “I understand this web site that had it on there is no longer in existence. Someone is feeling a little guilty” (Source).

    I don’t know about feeling a little bit guilty. I’d rather say that, under the circumstances, the makers of the map though displaying it was in bad taste. That’s their decision.

    But making a law against metaphor, which is what this is, is not going to accomplish anything. It may make people feel like they have done something. It may make people feel more secure, but it shouldn’t. Some may think it’s insensitive to oppose something like this at a time like this. Proponents of such measures count on that feeling.

    But just because a law claims that it will make us safer doesn’t mean it will. No law will make us safe from craziness or evil.

    From the same CNN article:

    As for support for the bill, Brady said, “Why would you be against it?”

    Because it simply creates more laws without providing any more safety. Because it allows us to pretend we’re solving problems when we aren’t.

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