In the circles I move in, the issue of preaching is, perhaps, top of the list of things churches need to change in order to lift their game. The feeling is that there is a need for more passion, more authenticity, more engagement, and more confidence that God is here, that he speaks, and that his word is powerful to move and change people—whole people, that is, not just their expertise in how to read the Bible.
Now, there may be some truth in these observations. But that’s not my concern here. I want to turn the spotlight around 180 degrees. My concern, as someone who spends my time in the pews, not the pulpit, is that what goes on in our pews is also in need of more passion, more authenticity, more engagement and more confidence that God is here with us as we meet on Sundays.
For whatever reason, our participation is often half-hearted, cautious and emotionally disconnected from what we are doing. If the Apostles’ Creed is said, it is usually muffled and mumbled, and comes across more as an excuse to stretch our legs than an opportunity to declare to the world our heartfelt beliefs. If written liturgy and prayers are used, they are often spoken in rushed and hushed tones, and an outsider might be forgiven for doubting that we believe God is hearing each word we speak (and what wonderful words they often are!). The Lord’s Prayer is often rattled off as one might recite a telephone number or times table. Our sermon listening is unresponsive, with very few heads nodding in agreement (and not nodding off) or displaying visual (or verbal!) cues to the preacher that we’re listening and we are keen to hear more. And unless we’re at a big convention, our singing rarely gets out of first gear, and there is little correlation between the words we sing and how we sing them. David’s exhortation in Psalm 33:1-3 to
Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous!
Praise befits the upright.
Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;
make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!
Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.
hardly seems to fit, and not just because we don’t play ten-stringed lyres.
Our approach to church often reminds me of Norm in the old Life. Be in it ads, before he gets off the couch: we’ve made the effort to be there, but not much more.
Now, of course, if this isn’t you, or if this isn’t your church, praise the Lord! But for the rest of us who spend more time in the pews than in the pulpit, perhaps we need to lift our game too. If our purpose in life is to glorify God and serve his people, then what happens in the pews each Sunday should have passion, authenticity, engagement and confidence in the power of God—every bit as much as what happens in the pulpit.
Thankyou Claire. We all need to be reminded of this.
I nod my head enthusiastically to what you say Claire.
I love head nodding. When I was a younger preacher I used to serve in a church where a beautiful older lady used to suffer from a disorder which meant that she kept shaking her head up and down.
Whenever I was struggling in my talk I would always look at her nodding away and would fire-up. She really stood out from all the dead-pan-ers.
Also, when you see a preacher struggle and become boring, our normal tendency is to put your head down in pain. Much better to start nodding your head at the good things. Guaranteed the preacher will improve.
Interesting comments Claire. In my experience I’ve found that the churches that emphasise “teaching” as the primary purpose of church tend to tacitly encourage passivity from the congregation.
Churches that focus on corporate “worship” and “liturgy”, as much as teaching eg using the whole body to worship, engaging the congregation through them being active in singing/saying the service tend to engage the congregation as active participants in the service rather than making them bystanders.
Thanks for your post Claire.
To help me understand, I have a question.
If someone came up to you in your gathering and said I want to be more passionate, authentic, engaged and confident in the power of God, what would you say to them?
Thanks
Di
Hi Claire,
When you speak of “authenticity,” what exactly do you mean?
Maybe, for some (a significant minority?) in the pews their lack of responsiveness is authentic.
Well said! Claire, Do you think that part of the problem stems from not understanding and believing the dialogue that is taking place in the liturgy?
Thanks for the feedback and questions!
In answer to Di’s question of what to say to someone who wanted to do what I’m suggesting, there are a few things I’d say.
Firstly, we’re all different and so how one person does this might be different to another – and I think the differences between us are part of the diversity that God has blessed us with.
The second thing would be to reflect more deeply on the relational aspect of what happens in church – and I mean relational in both the divine and human dimensions. So, if God is really with us, and interested in what we have to say to him in prayer and praise, then our conduct and emotional expression should reflect the wonderful reality that through Christ we have access to the God of the universe, as his sons and daughters!
If our public prayer, speech and singing are a means of building our fellow believers (1 Cor. 14; Col. 3:16) then our practice of these activities should match that purpose. For example, I think there’s often more warmth and encouragement in the way we tell someone how well they’re looking, than in the words that are spoken/sung during a service reminding them that God loves them or demands that we live lives that honour him.
I remember being very surprised when we went to our friends’ church to see their baby baptised. Our own church is small, but this big congregation put out no more sound than our church did with a quarter the people!
Some exhortation from the front may be in order, I think, but we all need to set an example. If you aren’t standing with your head up, saying the creed and prayers clearly, and singing “lustily and with a good courage”, why should anyone else?
Incidentally, I associate mumbled, rushed prayers with the Masses I attended as a child. Thoughtless prayers are not Protestant.
“Thoughtless prayers are not Protestant.”
People can pray thoughtlessly, it’s a shame because generally a lot of thought and very good theology has gone into the prayers included in a formal liturgy and of course The Lord’s Prayer is a set form prayer-it is disappointing to hear that people would utter that thoughtlessly.
Must say I’ve heard plenty of bad theology in those freeform prayers that start “Lord we just wanna………”
Very interesting to read your comments re those in the pews at church.
I think part of the issue is the confusion there has been about church.
We have so downgraded the importance of the praise of God to the meeting with one another, that the bland response reflects the bland purpose we have attributed to the gathering. If those leading don’t have a high view of the significance of the service, then those in the pews won’t either.
And sadly, little thought is given to the flow of services; so a confession or creed is ticked off as things which should happen, but with little or no thought to their placement in the service and little or no introduction
I have also been in church for communion where so much time has been spent telling me what this IS NOT, that it can hardly mean anything by the time we participate!
Just a few thoughts.
Every blessing,
Mark
But Mark, meeting to encourage one another IS a high purpose. The body is there to serve and build itself up in love. I think we’re at church to praise God to each other as part of our upbuilding, not as an end in itself.
Or have I misunderstood you?
Hi Ellen
I think that encouragement and building up happens because of praising God and submitting to his word together.
If I make the praise of God and submitting to his Word my first aim as we gather, then there will be tremendous encouragement and inspiration to go on praising and submitting in the week to come.
Mark
My view is a bit different, and as it happens my minister preached about church today from I Tim 3:15. He had three points
We are God’s household, so we as a church ought to be like a loving family, where people serve and help each other to grow up into Christ (ie, church isn’t all about the sermon but about everyone ministering). Then we are the church, the earthly gathering that reflects the heavenly reality of our presence with Christ, so we ought to be regular attenders. And we are the pillar and foundation of truth, proclaiming the gospel to the world, individually as well as corporately.
It seems to me that praise is not a separate thing but intrinsic to these ideas, and that worship occurs when God’s word is proclaimed in an atmosphere of brotherly love. (Note that Rom 12:1 is in the context of serving the body.) Therefore, I’ll stick with seeing church as meeting together to encourage one another, with my role being to serve however I can. This is not a bland purpose: it is love.
Hi Ellen
Thanks for sharing again.
My plea is for a purposeful God-ward focus in our gatherings.
If this is what Old Testaments saints did; and this is what we’ll be doing in eternity, then surely we should be doing it now.
This is not to the exclusion of serving one another – not at all!
I first wrote on this back in 2003 here: http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/archive/indepth/786a/
There is not much more I would add even now. I realise of course many disagree – that’s fine – so long as we can love and respect one another at the same time and continue learning with all humility.
Mark
Hi Mark and Ellen,
Responding to Mark several posts ago: I don’t think we’ve given our church meetings a ‘bland’ purpose so much as horizontal one. That is, somehow we’ve been so keen to emphasise (rightly) that worship involves the whole of life that when we come together as believers we don’t quite know what we’re doing, beyond encouraging one another and hearing the Bible taught. Obviously these are not ‘bland’ purposes – but if Christ is with us when two or three are gathered together in his name, and God’s people are commanded individually and corporately to praise him, then there should be a vertical dimension to our meetings as well as a horizontal (which I take it, is what you’re saying).
It’s because of this that Ellen’s earlier comment that ‘we’re at church to praise God to each other as part of our upbuilding, not as an end in itself’ can’t be right on its own.
We do encourage one another as we praise God (that’s why our praise must be intelligible cf. 1 Cor. 14:15-17) but surely our praise more than a means to this end. If the chief end of man and woman is to glorify God then our praise (in thanksgiving, proclamation, song, and prayer) has a purpose independent of its impact on others – it is an end in itself – but in God’s kindness we also glorify him as we build each other up while we praise him!
Some thoughts…
I find that the horizontal/vertical categorisation of church activities is unhelpful as it tends to distort the nature and dynamic of each activity and also tends to sideline the grace of God in the gospel.
Does everyone here agree that we are a gathering around the word of God? or is something else being thought?
My hunch is that we need to do a lot more work on the notion of ‘praise’.
cheers di
Hi Di,
Just to clarify, I’m not saying that aspects of our church meetings are either horizontal or vertical. The whole of life has a vertical God-ward dimension. But if we are speaking or singing words addressed to God (or about him), as we should be doing when we come together, then being mindful that this is what we are doing and doing it in a way that reflects that spiritual reality doesn’t distort what we’re doing.
And I would say it highlights the grace of God in the gospel, rather than sidelines it. (Though I confess I’m not sure I understand your point here.)
You may be right, that we need to do more work on the notion of praise, but in the meantime I’m sure it’s not singing ‘Tell out my soul’ or ‘How great is our God’ with little enthusiasm or conviction! Do we really want to say to God “yes, you’re great, but I can’t get too excited about it’?
I would argue that the church is heavenly, and that Christ’s church is gathered around him in heaven (Heb. 12:22-24).
When Christ’s heavenly people gather together on the Lord’s Day they do so for two primary reasons: worship and fellowship.
Of these two main purposes, worship is the harder to biblically prove. Gathering for fellowship is easy to prove from verses like Hebrews 10:24-25: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
Meeting together for worship is proven from the Lord’s institution of the Supper, when he said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” The word “remembrance” is an allusion to the fourth commandment, and the fouth commandment was not simply a day of rest, but also a day of observance or worship, as a comparison of Exodus 20:8 and Deuteronomy 5:12 shows.
Therefore, worship is all of life, but also something we observe through Word and sacrament on the Lord’s Day. But fellowship is also a key reason for meeting together. Both vertical and horizontal aspects are important in our gatherings.
Hi everyone. I’m with Claire. Whatever else we do in thinking theologically about our assemblies, we need to be engage ourselves in the pews.
Half-hearted singing as a typical response by a believer is terrible regardless of our personality types. Singing whole-heartedly, with lots of gratitude in our hearts and so on, seems right to me.
In regards to Di’s question:
Would it be more precise (though long-winded) to say we are gathering around God himself, present by his Spirit, as he addresses us in his word?
I am concerned that many people think that God is with them in his Spirit – but may not appreciate/believe we are to gather around his word – we are to come “to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” and must “not refuse him who is speaking.” (Heb 12).
Re singing.
I take it that our singing is our response to the glorious gospel. Therefore if singing is not ‘hearty’ then I would first ensure that the gospel is central in our gathering and so in our songs. If the gospel is not central to our songs we can’t expect right heart response.
There is the issue that singing can be enthusiastic but not of the Lord – with engaging tunes and distorted theology.
In the face of poor singing we need to preach and pray that the gospel would grip the hearts and minds of people.
(I do acknowledge that poor song leading, poor tunes can impact, also quality of acoustics of buildings etc.)
I am interested to explore why people in the pews may not be engaged.
Di
There are probably a lot of reasons why people are not engaged in worship services. I think you hit on some of them, Dianne. Here are a few off the top of my head:
1. The person is not regenerate.
2. I don’t think we adequately grasp or believe that worship takes place in the Jerusalem above, around the very throne of Jesus Christ and through his mediation. How can that be boring!
3. We haven’t done, at least in America, a good job of communicating the truth that worship is a dialogue, between the Lord and his people.
4. Sometimes our songs or liturgies are not worthy of heartfelt singing because of errors or poor content or music.
5. All of us are prone to going through the motions, and this possibility increases in churches where there is a set liturgy.
6. We don’t seem to understand very well how God is truly experienced, and how necessary the Word is in experiencing God. The two articles about experiencing God by John Woodhouse (recently posted on the Sola Panel) could help us a lot.