Worship: One, Two, Three

Mike Cosper in his book, Rhythms of Grace, helpfully suggests a framework for understanding worship.

1. One Object and Author (God)
2. Two contexts (The Scattered and the Gathered church)
3. Three audiences (God, the church, the watching world)

The progressive agenda

We live in a context where many people and ideas claim to be “progressive." Think about it for a moment: the essential point of claiming to be progressive is that one owns the future, that the future is progressing toward the position I hold... various positions claim to be progressive, which is another way fo saying, "I own the future on this issue."

Yet in view of changing cultures and times, one could begin to have serious doubts about whether we have any sense at all of wht it means to be progressive. My generation, Generation X, was told that the future belongs to us. Younger generations are told the same thing. But of course, that's not really true since every generation has generation following it. Things that seemed progressive to my generation are likely to seem retrograde to the next. At various points in recent history, practices like eugenics and racial segregation where championed as progressive. The fact that they no longer seem progressive to us just shows how much the future isout of our grasp.

However, the question of who owns the future is one that scripture specifically addresses. Revelation 1:8 reads, "'I am the alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord god, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." Then in the final chapter of Revelation, Jesus Christ himself says, "'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end'" (22:13). This statement means not just the Jesus was at the beginning and the end, but that Jesus Christ "i the origin and the goal of all history." [Bauckham] Jesus is the Lord of history throughout, even to its end, which is our future.

Thus, although we cannot state with great confidence a public policy that will be truly progressive in ten of fifty years, we can state with great confidence soething about the future: it is heading toward Jesus Christ, as Lord of all.

(pp.32-33, J Todd. Billings, Union with Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church)

A plea for expositional teaching

[I wrote this over-impassioned post for something else a little while ago, and just amended it slightly in honour of my 1000th post... I had in mind both preaching and small group study]

God inspired both the form and the content of the Bible. The Bible is a work of literature, a symphony or a work of art. The Bible’s content is words and concepts, even truths, but this content is always presented in the form of a collection of books of law, history, poetry and more. Only when the Biblical content is put in the Biblical form do we meet Christ.

If I want to read Shakespeare I could learn Elizabethan English, or study the sonnet form, but still never hear Shakespeare’s voice. I could read a library of literary critics telling me what Shakespeare is trying to communicate, but I won’t hear him say it without reading his words.

If I want to hear Beethoven’s fifth I could memorise the rhythm of the opening five bars, practice the C minor scale or even read a biography of his life. None, by themselves, will allow me to hear Beethoven.

Doctrines are sometimes understood as the grammar of the Christian faith. George Linbeck describes the historic creeds as “the grammar of religion”. The Reformation Catechisms can be understood in a similar way. They help us understand what is already being told in the Bible. They are introductions intended to make guide us to listen to the Bible, not to distract from it. That is partly why they are so short compared to the length of the Bible. They’re not meant to compete with God’s voice, but to open our ears to all that he’s saying.

I am often jealous of musically trained people who can enjoy a piece of music at a level I can never reach. But, I also remember how my uncle recalled being envied by his brother who felt he had lost the ability to enjoy music through over-criticism. There is a line to tread, but the key is to understand which has the priority. Gerhard Forde has a book entitled “Theology is for Proclamation” because he thought theology’s role was as a servant of proclamation. I agree. Theological study, at whatever level, is the servant of proclaiming Christ in the Bible.

When Calvin sat down to write the Institutes he intended it as an introduction to the study of Scriptures, with his commentaries and exegetical sermons as his major life’s work (Letter to the Reader 1539). I believe that this is a model we should follow. Thematic teaching, and Bible study skills have their place as aids, but the moment they crowd out God speaking in the form and content he chose as his revelation, we’ve made a big mistake. Biblical teaching shouldn't be an exercise in archaeology: digging through the muck, extracting the doctrines/applications and putting them in a glass box. Biblical teaching is proclaiming to someone what you’ve just heard God announce in the text. In doing this you become God’s mouthpiece, introducing the listeners to the same Jesus you saw, tasted and touched as God spoke to you by his Spirit.

We cannot explain sin better than David in Psalm 51. Theories of the atonement will not sing like the Passion narrative. Exhortations to evangelism will not encourage like hearing Paul ask for prayer that the door to the message be opened even as he sits in prison for the Gospel (Col 4). The incarnation won’t make sense until Jesus’ miracles make any other option nonsensical.

Similarly, “the one who does these things will live by them” (Lev 18) taken out of the melody line of the dialectic between law and Gospel, will lead you away from God to hell. As part of the melody it will lead you to Jesus and resurrection life, against which there is no law.

Thematic teaching will indirectly help people hear God, but they are less likely to directly hear God through it than through expositional Bible teaching. I think we should be going where the action is; where God meets us...his Word. The primary reason Christians assemble together to hear God speak, whether it is round the feet of Sinai (the original ecclesia in the Greek Old Testament) or the shore of Galilee. It should be the same for the church.

I also think that the Bible will always be more exciting than anything else. We never wanted to spend long doing football skills at school, we always just wanted to play games. Playing scales was always boring in comparison to playing a tune. Spelling was annoying, but Tolkien was engrossing. The former things are all good for enjoying the latter more, but they must play the supporting role for the main event. In the same way, having done some thematic/systematic teaching, lets go where the Father speaks in his own voice to his children.

I can’t finish without quoting Luther, who in the Preface to the German edition of his collected works, disparaged the volumes of his own writing, saying: “It was also our intention and hope, when we ourselves began to translate the Bible into German, that there should be less writing, and instead more studying and reading of the Scriptures. For all other writing is to lead the way into and point toward the Scriptures, as John the Baptist did toward Christ, saying, "He must increase, but I must decrease" [John 3:30], in order that each person may drink of the fresh spring himself.”

Why are millennials are leaving the church?

Rachel Held Evans answer seems to be attracting attention for some reason. Here are my first thoughts on an answer, for what it's worth...

Declining church membership is a Spiritual and not a sociological or marketing problem. It requires a Spiritual and not a sociological or marketing solution.

THE PROBLEM

Everyone is an individual, but you could follow Jesus and break down the reasons into three categories:

1. Some people are hardened to the Gospel for a variety of reasons. They won't even take the time to think about the Gospel because the Devil snatches it out of their mind.
2. Some people get let the Gospel get crowded out by other concerns in their busy lives. Earning and spending money consume whole lives - literally.
3. Some people are afraid of the cost of following Jesus, especially the cost in their relationships to family, friends and colleagues.

My guess is that there is good reason to think that the later two have been particularly on the increase over the last few decades. I'm not sure whether the first is improving or not.

THE SOLUTION

1. Preach the Gospel more - there will be no fruit without good seeds
2. Recommend the Gospel more - by changed lives of love
3. Pray for good soil more - because only God can change hearts.
4. Send out more workers into the harvest - because the God uses people.

Simple, but not easy! Help us Lord!