In Jeffrey Meyers' book The Lord’s Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship, Meyers goes through all the important features of the church service, illuminating their meaning from the scriptures and the reformed tradition.
One of the areas where the book has helped me is through confirming how important what goes on during Sunday morning really is. Many Christians don’t realise why going to church should be central, while I have some Christian friends who don’t even bother belonging to a church (I was in that bondage myself for many years).
It puts things into perspective to realise that Christians in China are willing to risk their lives each week to attend church, whereas many people in the West will skip church simply because they want to lie in on Sunday morning.
Sometimes the no-church mentality can be the result of selfishness. Proverbs 18:1 says, “A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire…” I don’t think the isolation Proverbs is talking about is purely quantitative. Sometimes whole groups can meet together on the basis of an isolationist mentality (see my post on home church HERE).
In chapter 15 of The Lord’s Service, Meyers dismantles the popular evangelical notion that a personal relationship with Jesus can be severed from His Body, the Church, and from the ministry and sacraments of the Church. He shows how the legacy of Gnosticism manifests itself in the unbiblical notion that the Spirit must operate immediately upon the soul of a man without external means or instruments.
The reformed tradition does acknowledge that the Lord is free to work outside His constituted means in extraordinary cases. Remember what the Westminster Confession says: outside the visible church “there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.” We don’t want to limit God, but at the same time we want to do justice to the ordinary means that Scripture reveals.
God has ordained where we are to find Him: we find Him at church. When Christ was on earth, if you wanted to find Jesus, He had a visible body you could seek out. Many Christians think that now that Christ has ascended, if you want to find Him, you have to hunt for something invisible inside yourself. But that is not true. Scripture tells us that there is still a visible body of Christ on the earth, namely the church (1 Cor. 12:12-14, 27).
This understanding displaces the unbiblical emphasis that having a personal relationship with Jesus has come to play in evangelical piety. Of course, if we use the phrase ‘a personal relationship with Jesus’ as a shorthand way to refer to regeneration, then no Christian would dispute the need for such a state of affairs to exist. But if we mean - and this is what many evangelicals mean by the phrase - something subjective that happens inside our heart, then I think we need to get our priorities straight.
One of the areas where the book has helped me is through confirming how important what goes on during Sunday morning really is. Many Christians don’t realise why going to church should be central, while I have some Christian friends who don’t even bother belonging to a church (I was in that bondage myself for many years).
It puts things into perspective to realise that Christians in China are willing to risk their lives each week to attend church, whereas many people in the West will skip church simply because they want to lie in on Sunday morning.
Sometimes the no-church mentality can be the result of selfishness. Proverbs 18:1 says, “A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire…” I don’t think the isolation Proverbs is talking about is purely quantitative. Sometimes whole groups can meet together on the basis of an isolationist mentality (see my post on home church HERE).
In chapter 15 of The Lord’s Service, Meyers dismantles the popular evangelical notion that a personal relationship with Jesus can be severed from His Body, the Church, and from the ministry and sacraments of the Church. He shows how the legacy of Gnosticism manifests itself in the unbiblical notion that the Spirit must operate immediately upon the soul of a man without external means or instruments.
The reformed tradition does acknowledge that the Lord is free to work outside His constituted means in extraordinary cases. Remember what the Westminster Confession says: outside the visible church “there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.” We don’t want to limit God, but at the same time we want to do justice to the ordinary means that Scripture reveals.
God has ordained where we are to find Him: we find Him at church. When Christ was on earth, if you wanted to find Jesus, He had a visible body you could seek out. Many Christians think that now that Christ has ascended, if you want to find Him, you have to hunt for something invisible inside yourself. But that is not true. Scripture tells us that there is still a visible body of Christ on the earth, namely the church (1 Cor. 12:12-14, 27).
This understanding displaces the unbiblical emphasis that having a personal relationship with Jesus has come to play in evangelical piety. Of course, if we use the phrase ‘a personal relationship with Jesus’ as a shorthand way to refer to regeneration, then no Christian would dispute the need for such a state of affairs to exist. But if we mean - and this is what many evangelicals mean by the phrase - something subjective that happens inside our heart, then I think we need to get our priorities straight.
This is not to say that feelings are unimportant to the Lord. The work of redemption should progressively transform every part of our being like yeast working through dough, bringing our spirit, mind, bodies and, yes, our emotions, into conformity with Christ. But it’s important to identify what kind of emotions we are talking about. If a person can listen to someone blaspheme the name of Christ and not feel revulsion, then there are probably some areas of sanctification that still needs to occur in the area of feelings. If a person can separate himself from Christ’s visible body and not feel a lack, then there are probably some areas of sanctification that still needs to occur in the area of feelings. But although feelings are important to the Lord, they are not the barometer of spiritual health, and to treat them as such is to make of them an idol.
It is because of this understand that Jeff Meyers’ book is so valuable. In emphasising the importance of liturgical worship in the New Covenant community, the locus of spirituality is taken away from the subjective and onto the objective, away from me and onto Christ.
To join my mailing list, send a blank email to robin (at sign) atgsociety.com with “Blog Me” in the subject heading.
Click HERE to friend-request me on Facebook and get news feeds every time new articles are added to this blog.
Visit my other website Alfred the Great Society
12 comments:
I loved that book. I thought the CREC liturgy was the final refinement of the Catholic liturgical tradition streaming from the temple worship of the Old Testament. But now I wonder how these excellent categories fit in with the older liturgies that all seem to have a smiler and recognizable structure. So I am curious of your opinion as a part time Anglican how you see the links between the order of the Covenant Renewal Liturgy with the traditional Eucharistic Liturgy you know the best, the Liturgy of the Church of England. This Liturgy is really a paraphrased translation, a simplification and redaction of the ancient Liturgy of St Gregory the Great of Rome, which is itself a redaction of the Alexandrian Liturgy of St Mark. Of course I believe that Cranmer added his own spin on his translation based upon his Reformed Beliefs. But the structure is still there. At one time I think James Jordan was saying that the Covenant Renewal Pattern was already present in the Anglican liturgy in the portion of the liturgy following the sermon. But latter, in another book, he was saying that the subdivision of the liturgy into two parts was a distortion of biblical worship. Any thoughts?
We live in a venerable "smorgasbord" of churches here in the United States. Perhaps that is the problem - there are too many choices. In our six plus years in the Idaho panhandle and in Eastern Spokane, we attended one mega-church for about three of those years, and the other three have been spent parsing out a handful of churches. The break came, more or less, when we moved from Coeur d'Alene to Newman Lake 3 years ago.
As one who is (admittedly) in a current struggle to find that "church home", I've identified four guiding concepts that influence the Christian (whether a satisfied church member, or a Wandering Christian like myself): "The Doctrine"; "The Social"; "The Clan"; and "The Ministry Team". There is a lot of overlap between the four, but I'll first start with "The Doctrine".
At one point shortly after moving, I threw out the "idea" to my wife that we should try and find a church within a five mile radius of our home - one of my pet peeves is that there didn't seem to be a logical reason to place roots down in a church that was ten or more miles away, given the abundance of churches in our area. I have friends who fellowship at least 15-20 miles from their homes, and it just seems to be impractical and inconvenient. I say "impractical" and "inconvenient" in the sense that attending church functions more frequently than on Sunday morning could be problematic, which is a negative when it comes to fellowship (and regular fellowship is very important in having a healthy Christian life).
Within a five mile radius from my front door, in a smattering of small unincorporated towns near the Washington/Idaho border, with a total population of less than 2,000 in this radius, there are at least 14 churches! Ideally (in my mind, anyway), a physical church should be a cornerstone for a community - a physical church should be concentrating on its "five-mile zone" for gleaning the unchurched and unsaved. However, only two prominant non-Christian church groups (Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses) seem to have this neighborhood missionary fervor.
I haven't been to all of them - actually, I've only been to two. At least five of them are doctrinal "no-no's" - they do not fit my beliefs at all. Doctrine trumped these five churches. The other nine churches could be candidates, but it would take a fair amount of vetting to find the "right" one. First, it involves attending church a few consecutive Sundays (this rules out the Adventists!). Taking the plunge and joining a mens/womens Bible study during the week. Plugging the kids into the midweek youth groups as well. We don't have any church-going friends in our neighborhood (well, there are plenty of Mormons, and there is an LDS church in that five-mile radius... just kidding!), so there isn't an organic connection.
The other nine churches, judging on building size and cars in the parking lot on Sundays, probably support no more than 50-100 regular attendees. How should we look at this? As diversity in action? The freedom of worship? Or as division and dilution? Perhaps any one of the four guiding concepts is at work - I'll get to that later. Let's examine "The Doctrine"
To Be Continued...
Ryan, I wouldn’t say that the CREC liturgy is the final refinement of the Catholic liturgical tradition streaming from the temple worship of the Old Testament because I wouldn’t say that there is any one correct or final liturgy. Under the new covenant God allows us a certain liturgical latitude within obvious Biblical boundaries, so it is to be expected that a God-glorifying liturgy in Africa can look different to a God-glorifying liturgy in New York. That doesn’t mean that anything goes or that liturgies are immune to critique, only that human creativity and diversity can play a part in how we adorn the worship of God, providing that such worship is regulated by biblical principles.
Going from being a full-time Anglican in England to a full time Presbyterian after moving to America, I can say that while there is some overlap between the Covenant Renewal Liturgy of the CREC and the traditional Eucharistic Liturgy of the Church of England, there is not a lot of similarity. The role of the blessed Eucharist is much more central in the latter, and there are innovations in the former that, though based on the Old Testament temple tradition, are without a lot of explicit historical precedent in the Christian tradition. Also, the CREC liturgy is not immune to the tendency of American innovationism, and I sometimes get the sense that we are trying to reinvent the wheel.
"The Doctrine"
Doctrine is critical - it is the glue that holds (or ought to be holding) the membership together. More than that, doctrine is the foundation for Christianity. Doctrine, in many instances, separates the true physical church from the false churches - otherwise, we would embrace the LDS, the Witnesses, and to a lesser degree, the "fringe" churches ("spirit-filled" churches, legalistic churches, "apostolic" churches, "prophet-led" churches, etc.). Then why so many choices? Traditional denominational churches (Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Adventist) and non-denominational churches abound in this five mile radius.
At least with a denominational church, you know what you're getting for the most part (or at least what you should be getting). Many churchgoers join (or reject) churches based on their denomination. Non-denominational churches are wild-cards in the spectrum of Christian thought. Many people like the fact their church is "independent", not answering to an authoritative body somewhere in Kansas (or wherever), for example. There is some truth in that - we Idahoans (I still claim Idaho as my "home") hold dearly to individual sovereignty and anti-Federalist beliefs, and we don't want anyone to dictate what we do. But, I am concerned that doctrine and church discipline can be severly compromised when there are no checks and balances. At least some churches have a board of elders who can intercede with a wayward-pastor - yet there are independent churches, some well known and prominent, that run on the notion that the pastor has complete authority. As long as the pastor is humble, God-fearing, that is fine. If the pastor loses some of his fear, and his humility is replaced by pride, or if sin prominently rises in his life, what do you do then? I have seen real-life examples of churches under the spell of the immutable pastor, and it ain't pretty. They are in "the clan", which I'll cover later.
But what of the doctrine, outside of the "doctrinal statement" that all churches have? Is the doctrine being taught? How is it imparted to the laity? From what I've seen, outside of the non-Christian "Christian" churches, the majority don't have a plan or a process. It "happens". People "just get it". This might be a fitting description of the Evangelical world today. I will digress into what a structured approach could look like.
Doctrine, in a nutshell, needs to be taught historically and systematically. Historically, the core Old and New Testament is essential. If it were possible (and I think it is), the new believer needs to be taken on a two-year journey through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Actually, this can be done in a year or less, at a very leisurely pace - I read the Bible in 6 months last year, and could have done it in four if I had stayed on-track. But what an individual can do by his/her self is not necessarily what a group can do, so I think a guided study of the Bible, led by a learned pastor or skilled lay minister, in two years is more reasonable. A church should have at least four "classes" going at all times, in order to accommodate new attendees on a rolling 6 month schedule. These classes should follow a timeline and a syllabus.
The two-year historical course is systematic as well - the whole of who God is - to see how He works materially and supernaturally on this Earth, and to see the fall and the redemption of Man. The historical course is vital to keeping bad theology from creeping in - the strange doctrines that come from "prophets" who are really gnostics with special revelation that often is rooted in one narrow passage of scripture. Historical proficiency is part of the bedrock of a healthy church.
To Be Continued...
"The Doctrine", part II
After the two-year historical "introduction" to God's word, then comes the depth, the theology, the systematic part. These can be taught at a small-group level. They can be ongoing, and can be less formal and more flexible. At this point, you hope to have a literate, grounded laity who can grapple with the more complex concepts in scripture. The modern Evangelical church, following the precepts of the best-selling Christian authors, spawn small groups out of fervor, wanting to "connect" new people immediately. There is nothing wrong with connecting, but it turns into a Christian author study and not necessarily a Bible study. The popular Christian authors of today write topical Bible studies, but are not writing systematic commentaries on the whole Bible. People are doing the "I am of Paul, I am of Apollos?" thing.
Christians, we need to borrow a page out of the LDS and JW playbook - we need to have a strong process of indoctrination in place, with the exception that ours is Biblical indoctrination without the gnostic revelation that has led these groups (and others) astray. Sola scriptura.
The summary of "The Doctrine" is that it is essential to be in a church that has a Biblical doctrine, and hopefully has a method of promulgating that doctrine. Doctrine is more important than tradition - many churches claim to be the "true" church, and that is based on their historical standing (Catholic, Orthodox as prime examples, and some post-Reformation churches as lesser examples). Doctrine trumps tradition.
The first step - choosing a church that meets the doctrine test.
A personal relationship with Jesus Christ cannot be severed from His Body, the Church. Nor from the priestly ministry of Christ through the sacraments of His presence in the Church. Remember that Gnosticism manifests itself in the "unbiblical notion that the Spirit must operate immediately upon the soul of a man without external means or instruments."
As an Orthodox Christian I understand the importance of right doctrine but don't believe that it should be elevated above right worship. In part, the debates among Presbyterians orbit around whether salvation is by "faith alone" or is by "affirming the doctrine of 'faith alone' ." Steve Schlissel, Reformed Pastor of Messiah's Covenant Community Church in Brooklyn, bluntly calls this what it is, salvation awarded for an act of "mental masturbation." His words, not mine. And I cannot agree more. If salvation is by faith alone then one cannot put as a requirement for salvation a work such as "believing the right thing." If it was the case that only those with the right opinion of very technical theology could be saved then what about infants and the mentally disabled?
Right doctrine cannot be elevated from right worship. Nor can the two be separated. For Orthodox Christians, "there is no separation between theology and spirituality, between dogma and personal experience, between faith and prayer. All of them form together a single, undivided whole." We may call this way of life, this undivided whole, Life in Christ.
It is exactly against this "gnostic" tendency to focus on either the intellectual or emotional side of Christian life in modern Evangelicalism that great people like Robin, Pastor Schlissel, Pastor Wilson, Pastor Stuart Bryan, and Bishop Tom Wright are fighting against. If you are truly satisfied being an evangelical, I encourage you too acquire what some people call a "medieval Protestantism." First step, read "Angels in the Architecture" by Doug Wilson. This is a robust, incarnational, and historical re-appropriation of the faith of our fathers.
In the New Testament uses the word "paradosis" (sometimes pronounced par-a-tho-sis) means "tradition." In the NIV translation, whenever this word refers to "corrupted man-made customs" the translators rendered it as "tradition." Whenever the word "paradosis" is used by the New Testament writers in a positive light the translators render it as "doctrine." I believe this may be where you have come up with the opposition between "tradition" and "doctrine."
As you say, "Doctrine is more important than tradition - many churches claim to be the "true" church, and that is based on their historical standing (Catholic, Orthodox as prime examples, and some post-Reformation churches as lesser examples). Doctrine trumps tradition."
If by "tradition" you mean the "corrupted man-made customs" and by "doctrine" you mean the "deposit of faith" given to the Apostles by Jesus himself and handed down by them to the Church to be protected through the ages as the right interpretation of Holy Scripture then I totally agree. To say it plainly, the "Paradosis" given to the Apostles by Jesus himself and handed down by them to the Church to be protected through the ages as the right interpretation of Holy Scripture always trumps corrupted man-made customs!
Roman Catholicism has the idea of "development of dogma" that means that what a good Roman Catholic believed two hundred years ago might make him a heretic today. The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a good example of this. Many of their second millineum saints were firmly opposed to it but now it is a dogma, a fundamental Christian truth. The very fact that it wasn't always believed everywhere and by all Christians means it could never be True because it was never part of the tradition. Subsequently Roman Catholics do not value the writings of the early Church Fathers. "If the pope says it, I believe it, that settles it." A similar thing is going on for Solo-Scriptura Christians. "If the bible says it, I believe it, that settles it."
In contrast to this, classical Protestants and Orthodox believe in an Apostolic Deposit, a Regula Fide, a right interpretation of Scriptures taught to the disciples by Jesus himself and passed on to us in a Holy Spirit directed process of spiritual fatherhood and sonship. In this sense Protestant and Orthodox confessions are fundamentally "descriptive" rather than "prescriptive." They do not dictate what must be believed but describe what has always been believed by faithful Christians.
Yet in Reformed Christianity latter confessions carry more weight than early ones, which is something shared with Roman Catholicism. The Westminster Catechism trumps the Scott's Confession in the same way that Vatican II trumps the councils of Lyons or Frankfurt. In Orthodoxy, there were confessions and councils in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries yet these are seen as less authoritative than early creeds and symbols. Another way to say this is that the latter confessions are of a derivative authority in as much as they correspond to the Holy Scripture and the witness of the Truth in the early Church. Latter confessions are more apt to be polluted and less faithful to the Apostolic Deposit and are therefore used with caution.
St Basil, the author of "On the Holy Spirit," once said that if what has been revealed to the Church was reduced to only that which has a written source what we would be left with is "mere words" or an "ideology." Yet Orthodox Christians believed that Christ gave the Church a Way of Life. For this reason, Orthodox Christians believe that divine revelation consists of more than just what can be written down in words. Besides Catechism/Propositions and Narrative, it also includes Life-Style and Symbol/Liturgy. And by that I don't mean that life-style and liturgy can be derived from the Holy Scripture, they surely can, but that part of the divine revelation given by Christ to the Church consists also of life-style and liturgy. This total divine revelation imparted to the Church by Christ is called Holy Tradition and the Holy Scriptures, particularly the Holy Gospels, are an integral and preeminent part thereof. This Holy Tradition or Paridosis and the process of handing it down are explicitly referred to in Holy Scripture. This divine revelation has one purpose, to bring sinful human beings into the life of God through union with Christ.
Archbisop Robert Duncan of the new born Anglican Church in North America said this week that Tradition means that God is doing something bigger than us, something that is going to take more than one lifetime to complete. That is a wonderful way to put it.
Ryan, I couldn't agree more with your statement: "If salvation is by faith alone then one cannot put as a requirement for salvation a work such as "believing the right thing." If it was the case that only those with the right opinion of very technical theology could be saved then what about infants and the mentally disabled?
Right doctrine cannot be elevated from right worship. Nor can the two be separated."
Mark,
I know how hard it is to be searching for a church. I've been there. I will remember you in my prayers, such as they are.
Sincerely,
Ryan
Ryan, I agree (at least with what I think you are saying): there is a big difference between saying that justification is by faith alone, and saying that justification is by believing in justification by faith alone.
Post a Comment