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Upon recently moving to Philadelphia I have had to find a new church to become an attendee of. As I was visited various churches, I decided to evaluate my preference based on three criteria; the quality of the preaching, the sense of community in the church, and the liturgy. This is because I have become convinced that liturgy plays a central role in the life of the Christian church, no less than the preaching and fellowship. Most Evangelicals are “non-liturgical.” Now, in reality, all forms of worship are liturgical. Our English word liturgy comes from the Greek word leitourgia, which means “a public work.” So the real question is not whether a service is liturgical but how much we consciously ordered our liturgy.
Human beings are highly symbolic creatures. We are constantly having our beliefs and mentalities confirmed or challenged by the swirling sea of symbols that engulfs us. Symbols are meant to convey certain ideas people, and thus it is easy to understand that practically everything we do is symbolic. If I drive an Audi, a BMW, or a Ferrari I am trying to convey the idea that I am well off financially. The car you drive is a symbol. So are the kinds of clothes you wear or the type of architecture that your office building is constructed in, not mention the art, music, and literature of the culture around you. If you think that you are uninfluenced by symbols, most you simply haven’t thought about how influenced you really are. Symbols are most effective when they are strung together to form a ritual. A ritual, for our purposes here, is a group of symbols (or symbolic ideas) that are meant to convey a narrative. By participating in a ritual of symbols and symbolic acts we gradually acquire, to a certain degree, the narrative this ritual communicates. Think of the average American “work ritual.” Think how influential this schedule is on our lives. In pre-industrial societies people did not think in terms of “weeks” and “week-ends.” Time, for them, revolved around the seasons because they were tied to the land. But today weeks and weekends seem “natural” to us. Our ritual of the work week shows how highly we value work, production, industry, success, achievement, etc. Five days of hard work follow by two of rest (and often indulgence) reflects the modern American mentality of working hard so that we can enjoy brief but powerful moments of pleasure. The endless, repetitiveness of this cyclic ritual reinforces, for some people, the hallow meaninglessness of it all.
Therefore, we have seen that human beings are ritualistic (and therefore liturgical) creatures. We are daily (and often unconsciously) imbibed with mentalities and values from the kinds of rituals we engage in. Above I alluded to the modern ritual of work, which reinforces the narrative of our culture, which is based on achievement, sudden bursts of hedonism, materialism, work-aholism, etc. It is obvious that many of these things are in conflict with the Christian faith. And since Christians, who are commanded by the apostle not to be idle but to work, must engage in this work ritual, it is necessary that Christians have an alternative liturgy that counter-acts the worldliness of the worldly “liturgies.” By engaging in the church’s liturgy we are disciplined; we learn to train our hearts towards the story of the gospel rather than the narrative of the world. Most traditional worship services begin with a call to worship. The glory of God is extolled and we are invited to adore Him in the reading of a Psalm and the singing of a hymn. However, with the glory of God in view, we are moved next to grasp our sinfulness. Therefore, it follows that we confess our sins to God and ask for His forgiveness. We are given the assurance of the gospel; that Christ has died for sins so that we might inherit righteousness and everlasting life. With this in mind, the service proceeds to the preaching of the Scriptures. Through the Bible God instructs us; He develops the maturity of our faith. After the sermon we are called to partake in the Lord’s Supper, where we grow in our unity in Christ through communion with his spirit and meditation on his passion. We find our faith strengthened. What we see here is nothing less than our participation in the gospel narrative; the glory of God, human sinfulness, the Atonement of Christ, our sanctification through the Word and the Spirit, and our communion with God through Christ. Thus traditional liturgy trains us in the gospel and directs our gaze towards God.
Churches who do not cultivate such self-consciously liturgical services will fail to discipline its members in the story of the gospel. Even worse, they may allow the values and mentalities of the world seep in. This in fact is what I believe occurs often in church worship services. “Non-liturgical” services very often incorporate the “liturgy” of the world. Church services become aimed at entertainment or emotional experiences rather than disciplining people in the gospel. The average Evangelical service in America often reinforces our culture’s individualism and self-absorption. The church’s music is meant to make me feel a spiritual high. The sermon is meant to make me feel good. Worship becomes about what God can do for us rather than what we should become for God. A very well-meaning lady I once talked to said that her church was non-liturgical so that people off the street would feel welcome. I understand the desire of many Christians to make their churches look welcoming, especially because of the negative press that Christians often get in today’s culture. However, we must see what being “seeker sensitive” really means is that the liturgy of the Church is adapted to fit the liturgy of the world.
Our outreach to non-believers must be model on the outreach of Christ. True Christ took the form of a servant and humbled himself, even to death on the cross, for our sake, but he also rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father. Christ descended into our corrupt world so that he could ascend again, taking the saints with him. Likewise the Church needs to be missional to be sure, but in its condescension to non-believers the Church cannot forget that it must also ascend, taking those for whom it descended with it. The mission of the Church is to be the instrument with which God turns the gaze of men away from themselves and towards Himself. Unless we do this the Church ceases to be a vehicle for salvation and becomes merely a business selling entertainment, emotional experiences, or a temporal fix to an existential crisis. Unless the overriding concern of our liturgy is to discipline men in the adoration of the ineffable glory of God, we merely cater the desires of the world. When we do everything according to the desires to the non-Christian walking in off the street, we find ourselves controlled by the ethos of these same people. The worship of the Church ceases to be something established on a firm foundation, but rather something that sways back in forth with the changing winds of (usually popular) culture. This reinforces the idea that the Church, or even Christianity itself, is meant to whatever people feel that it should rather than what God would have it do. When the very worship of God is done to the desires of men, what else shouldn’t be?
Ultimately, the Church is meant to transform people, not people the Church. Our liturgy must reflect this fact. It must raise people up rather than bend down to do their bidding.
