Renewing Liturgy

S. Joel Garver

Introduction

How does our worship shape and communicate an identity and ethos? How does it shape our common life as a local gathered congregation? How does it shape our experience as worshippers within a particular denomination or tradition?

In what ways can our worship draw together and embody our identity as Reformed believers? Or our situation as persons who inhabit a postmodern culture? Or our calling as Christians committed to a contextualized, catholic, and missional vision for the church?

How can the patterns, words, and actions by which God meets us in worship contribute to our spiritual and corporate health – our health as individual believers, as congregations, and within wider traditions? How can worship cultivate, maintain, and safeguard that health?

Evidently, that’s quite a daunting list of questions. Let’s at least begin to tackle some of them. I want to do so by staking out some claims for discussion. In particular, I want suggest several ways in which Christian liturgy can help us work through these issues.¹

Changes in Worship

Let me begin with a bit of autobiography.

I grew up within a typical, somewhat formal – one might even say “stodgy” – mid-20^th century sort of Presbyterianism. We regularly used the Lord’s Prayer, Gloria Patri, Doxology, Apostles Creed, and other elements rooted in historic patterns of Christian worship. These were poured together with generous shots of post-Reformation hymnody, slightly pompous organ music, a choir of warbling middle-aged ladies with a few men in the back row, and the various niceties of suburban middle-class culture. Add a few jiggers of Presbyterian-style preaching – emphasis on doctrine and morals – and you’ve got a pretty good 1950s-style liturgical cocktail…except it was still going on well into the 1970s.

But then came the 1980s and various newer patterns began to displace older ones, even among conservative Presbyterians – changes in the style of singing, instrumentation, order of worship, character of preaching, degree of formality, and so forth.

I won’t go into all of those changes. Many of them were creative and effective ways of trying to bring the Gospel to bear upon a rapidly changing culture. Some perhaps were less felicitous. Some clearly were a matter of muddling through. All the changes were, I think, well intentioned and motivated by a desire to reach people with the Gospel.

To be honest, even as a teenager, I didn’t care for a lot of the changes. I’m a creature of habit and like what I’m used to, my comfort zone. Sure, I spent a lot of time as a kid pretty bored by traditional worship, but I preferred boredom to the unfamiliar. And I am still convinced there is something right and good when the Creed or Lord’s Prayer feels like a family member one has grown up with. Yet I also knew there was something weirdly nostalgic and overly-cautious going on in my likes and dislikes as a teenager. So I set myself to the task of studying the history of Christian worship and visiting around to other traditions as I had opportunity.

What I learned was the fact that much of what we did in worship – including the earlier more “traditional” patterns – had only been introduced into Presbyterian practice fairly recently. Moreover, compared to many traditions, all of our worship (to varying degrees) represented relatively ad hoc adaptations to varying cultural and theological circumstances.

In light of that, I was able to see that many present and past conflicts about worship are not simply the struggles of a tradition-bound or highly-principled conservatism over against an innovative, unprincipled, or excessive revisionism. Indeed, much of what we now perceive as more “traditional” would have scandalized our older Presbyterian forebears for all kinds of reasons I’m sure you can imagine.²

Out of this experience and realization I grew to appreciate two insights.

[1] I saw the drawbacks of a traditionalism that idealizes or romanticizes one particular point in the past or tries to preserve or repristinate one particular moment in the history of worship. Much of what one could say with regard to sectarian approaches to theology applies by analogy to our patterns of worship.

Preservationist models not only tend to misconstrue the nature of some past moment – ignoring the cultural situatedness of that moment – they also tend to misconstrue the present, worrying that every kind of change is a declension into something worse. It’s as if we’re continually on the verge of breaking out into the Toronto blessing or, worse still, incense and vestments.

Moreover, such traditionalism can easily end up presenting an “all or nothing” choice: either [a] we hold onto some past moment as the truly authentic expression of biblical worship or [b] we lose hold of all principles and anything goes. If that’s true, then if we reject traditionalism, we’re left with a laissez faire model for worship in which liturgical preferences end up as expressions of mere personal taste, inclination, or accommodation.

Such an approach to worship, I submit, reflects a sectarian approach to theology. That’s the first insight.

[2] I grew to appreciate the patterns of historic Christian liturgy as embodying both form and flexibility – giving us structure and guidance without having to buy into a rigid set of rules or laws.³ In this respect, liturgy can help us cut through the dichotomy of mere preservation over against an “anything goes” alternative.

A false traditionalism ends up alienating the Gospel from the contemporary context, enshrining it within a contingent and situated moment of the past. It leads us to neglect our present mission and how that mission can come to creative expression through our worship now. It fails to wrestle with the question of how worship prepares God’s people to be sent out into our present world.

An overly laissez faire alternative, on the other hand, makes it difficult to bring the Gospel into the present context at all. Darryl Hart, whose views on worship often strike me as overly traditional and insufficiently contextual, nonetheless makes a helpful point concerning this.⁴ He suggests that some contemporary worship is the liturgical equivalent of theological liberalism – making such deep concessions to contemporary sensibilities, that the “once delivered” character of Christian faith is compromised. The irony is that denominational traditions that are sometimes theologically very conservative nonetheless retain an aversion to set forms and end up promoting liturgical liberalism.

From another perspective, however, that irony makes sense. If theological identity is bound up with doctrinal precision more than (or to the neglect of) a common liturgical life, then liturgical form grows indifferent to theological content. After all, in many such traditions, theological content already floats relatively free from worship-form or, at least, is confined to the sermon and perhaps private catechesis. But as Hart points out, it is naïve to think that we can effectively pass along the faith intact, if the form in which faith comes to liturgical expression entirely changes with each passing generation.

So the tension we need to negotiate is the ongoing one facing us in every area of church life, the tension between “sameness” and “difference” – how the “once delivered” character of the faith can be brought to bear contextually upon our immediate situation. It is my conviction, with regard to worship, that the resources of Christian liturgy can assist us in negotiating this tension. Through liturgy the contours of the Gospel remain distinct, repeating the patterns of salvation history in new ways that nonetheless connect us with the church catholic.

Liturgy trains and cultivates a practical wisdom, piety, and imagination that can appropriately recognize what is fitting and good without reducing such discernment to mere “taste” or preference. All of that’s to say, liturgy can give expression in our worship to the kind of reformed catholic, missional vision we seek to confess and practice.⁵

The Nature of Liturgy

Having set out some background, my claims all still need a lot of unpacking. Perhaps a brief sketch of the nature of liturgy will prove helpful at this point. I offer, therefore, several very general observations about worship:

[1] Biblical and Christian worship has always been liturgical in character.

The genius of liturgy is not to create an aesthetic experience of the sublime. Gold leaf, embroidered vestments, and jeweled chalices are lovely, but they’re not what liturgy is about.

Rather, liturgy is a way to articulate and foreground the biblical character of worship. Theologically and scripturally, worship is divinely initiated, involves responsive dialogue, stresses the corporate and participatory, maintains an objective dimension, and ministers to us through speech and action and persons, that is to say, through word and sacrament and human relationships. Liturgy attempts to bring these emphases to concrete expression.

In part, what I am claiming about the biblical and Christian character of liturgy is a historical claim about the kind of worship we see modeled for us in Scripture and the cultural contexts to which Scripture bears witness. It is also a claim about the kind of worship the Christian church has developed over the centuries.

[2] There is an internal logic to the historic pattern and flow of Christian worship.

This logic of liturgical form is governed by the shape of biblical models, the insights of theological reflection, the trajectory of salvation history, and the needs of practical piety. I’ll return to this point below. It is also a large part of my remarks about how liturgy promotes and guards our spiritual health as assemblies and associations of believers.

[3] As already mentioned, Christian liturgy balances form and order with flexibility, creativity, and an ability to adapt to varying and changing contexts.

While some periods of church history have been characterized by rigidity and conformity, others have allowed for flexibility and innovation.⁶ Liturgy finds freedom within contours and trajectories that grow out of Scripture and the collective wisdom the Spirit grants the church. It enables us to make responsible discernments about present liturgical expression.

But that’s all still rather abstract. Let’s flesh matters out a bit more. When I speak of “liturgy,” I mean worship that moves through a kind of pattern or rhythm, in which God:

[a] SUMMONS us as his people
Calling – e.g., God gathers us into his presence and calls us into his life and mission; we respond with prayer and doxology.

[b] SANCTIFIES us to himself
Cleansing – e.g., God’s presence compels us to confess sin and he grants his pardon; we respond with thanksgiving and praise for his great mercy and grace.

[c] SPEAKS to us in his word
Counseling – e.g., God speaks to us through his word, the story of God’s mission; we respond in faith by confessing that story as our own and offering ourselves to his service through prayer and offerings.

[d] STRENGTHENS us at his table
Communing – e.g., God accepts our offerings betokened by bread and wine and feeds us with his own life to strengthen us for mission; we respond by receiving his communion and by offering thanksgiving and praise.

[e] SENDS us into the world
Commissioning – e.g., God grants us his blessing and sends us into the world to carry forward the Gospel story; we respond in thanks and go out in peace.⁷

The emphasis throughout is upon God’s action and then, within that, our response, celebrating God’s great acts of redemption and renewal.

When God meets us in worship, we respond to him as Christ’s own Body through the ministry of the Spirit. We enter into the worship that the Son himself has offered through the Spirit both in eternity and in his incarnate life – a worship that he continues to offer to the Father in and through that same Spirit. The Son’s own worship expresses his vocation as the one sent out by the Spirit of God. As he was sent, so he sends us.

Therefore, in liturgy we rehearse the Gospel and are caught up into the mission of the Triune God. The order and flow to liturgy aims at drawing us further into the life of the Trinity and impelling us outward. Indeed, worship is missional because it is Trinitarian.

Or think of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. When they found themselves troubled and confused, Jesus met them along the way. When they confessed their troubles and doubts to him, his words and presence began to change them. He unfolded God’s word to them, pointing to his own person and work. He sat at table with them, giving thanks and breaking bread. The disciples recognized their Lord’s presence with them and hurried to tell others the good news.⁸

In whatever way the details of this pattern are filled out, in the Emmaus story we can recognize, along with the original audience, a pattern of worship – indeed we see what grew to be the pattern of historic Christian liturgy in all of its variety, and it resonates over and over again with the shape of the biblical story, the actions of our Triune God in the events of salvation history.

Liturgy, therefore, reflects and inculcates healthy theological priorities.

How Liturgy Shapes Us

Given this background and the general nature of liturgy, how then does liturgical worship shape our common life as congregations within a wider communion of churches? Here are six avenues for further discussion:

[1] Liturgy is the “work of the people”
[2] Liturgy is discipleship
[3] Liturgy is narrative
[4] Liturgy is mission, charity, and justice
[5] Liturgy is catholic
[6] Liturgy is humbling

Let’s consider each of these briefly.

[1] Liturgy is the “work of the people.”

Of course, this is true as a matter of sheer etymology. The term leitourgia is, in Greek, a public work, the work of the laos, of the people.

But this is true practically as well.

The corporate character of worship embodies the corporate character of God’s salvation. As Mark Earey writes, “At the heart of liturgy is an understanding of public worship that goes beyond the personal encounter with God (without denying it) to the corporate drama of being the people of God.”⁹ If God is recreating humanity in the image of his Son, then the corporate life of that renewed people must give expression to that.

Proper liturgy deliberately evokes our corporate response, gives voice to our common celebration, and engages us together in dialogue with our Creator and Savior. In all of this, liturgy draws us into the enacted story of salvation. Liturgy embodies our full, conscious, and active participation as the people of God – the church at prayer, serving as a priestly people, interceding on behalf of the whole church and world, and being sent out together on God’s mission.

Liturgy at its best also safeguards us against clericalism, congregational passivity, or the notion that worship is a spectator sport. It thereby makes us conscious of our place in God’s salvation and shapes the vocation of every Christian as a participant in God’s work in our world.¹⁰

This is especially true in the sacramental life of God’s people as they gather at the Lord’s Table to share in the Body of Christ as the Body of Christ. Newbigin rightly notes, part of the burden of the Protestant Reformers was to transform the eucharistic liturgy from a spectacle into something in which “the whole congregation would be involved” – a transformation from private devotion while the medieval priest confected the eucharist into a public engagement of the congregation in a shared practice of prayer and celebration.¹¹

Unfortunately, Newbigin laments, “because of the partial failure of the Reformation, Christians became accustomed to a kind of worship which was robbed of its central element – the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup.” As Newbigin suggests, medieval spectators were transformed into modern hearers who went to church to hear the pastor pray and preach. He comments, “In some places even the last vestiges of congregational participation were eliminated, and the preacher had to say Amen to his own prayers – the ultimate limit of morose sacerdotalism.”¹²

This sort of Protestant sacerdotalism, according to Newbigin, “cannot be called true Christian worship.” Rather, “Christian worship is the corporate act of the whole body, in which everybody right down to the last man standing at the back of the church has a part to play.”¹³ Again, if Christian worship is to be formative of who we are together as God’s church, his new creation people, then worship should involve the conscious, active participation of the congregation in a variety of ways.

[2] Liturgy is discipleship

In liturgy we practice what it means to be a follower of Jesus and anticipate the shape of his kingdom. If our liturgy embodies the life and character we want to cultivate, then our liturgy will help press those values and habits into our lives. One author writes:

Corporate worship should engage, in a representative way, with things that matter in our daily lives: hospitality, listening to God, community, sharing the good news, serving our neighbour. This connection is not simply one-way (with worship reflecting life); nor is it an empty symbol. Because it is engagement with the living God, corporate worship, with its symbolic and representative nature, has the potential and the power to be formative; it can shape our lives in Christ and our understanding (including our unspoken assumptions) about God.¹⁴

In worship, we listen to Scripture read and explained, not only because the Bible is important on Sundays, but also because listening to what God is teaching us through Scripture is important every day.

We pray and intercede for various needs in the church and world not only because it’s a nice churchy thing to do, but also to remind us that God cares about those sorts of things all the time and wants us to share in and act upon that concern.

We partake together in the table of the Lord not only because we commune there with Christ by faith, but also because we learn God’s own hospitality and grace, which we in turn must share from our own tables.

And so on for everything we do as we gather in worship.

In liturgy, moreover, we grow familiar with and take upon our own lips the language of Christian prayer, adoration, response, confession, and blessing. We do this so that later on, in our day to day lives, we may more readily find the words we need to pray for others, to speak God’s blessing, to cry out in need, to confess our faults, and to give praise to our Savior.

Thus, our spiritual formation as individuals, as congregations, and as a denomination can find a rich source of sustenance in the practices of Christian liturgy.

Newbigin emphasizes a further dimension to liturgy. He writes, “Christian worship is a protection for those who take part in it against the false standards and convictions of the world.” As we are “drawn week by week into this act of adoration and self-giving to the living Lord who is revealed to us in Jesus Christ,” Christian worship becomes for us “the most powerful possible antiseptic against the infection of worldliness.”¹⁵

When we make liturgical words and actions central to our lives, we guard against worldliness and break the hold of secular ceremonies – rituals of consumption, power, fear, suspicion, doubt, self-absorption, and so on – ceremonies that hide themselves in our lives. Ritualized habits and routines are inescapable. The question is whether the rhythm of our lives will be shaped by the pattern of the Gospel or by worldly and fleshly parodies, false patterns that too often make inroads even into our churches.

[3] Liturgy is narrative

In liturgy we rehearse and celebrate the mighty acts of God for our redemption. We do this both in the wider pattern of the church year as well as the weekly pattern of worship, enfolding us into the story of Christ and his church.¹⁶

The pattern of Christian liturgy as I outlined it above is therefore also the pattern of the biblical narrative, the story of God’s pursuing love to rescue his fallen world. It is the tale of the Emmaus disciples, of God’s provision for Noah on the ark, of Israel’s exodus from bondage, of the building of God’s temple under Solomon, of exile and return.

It is, above all, the story of Jesus Christ – Jesus who answered God’s call upon his life; who in his baptism identified with us in our brokenness; who heard, enacted, and spoke the words of God in his ministry; who offered himself up all along a way that led ultimately to the cross; who sat down in table fellowship with his closest disciples, with community leaders, and with poor sinners; and who poured his Spirit out upon the church to empower them in his ongoing mission to our world.

In the broadest strokes, liturgy takes the pattern of Jesus’ own life and vocation, places it upon our lips and in our actions within the context worship, and, in doing so, makes it our own.¹⁷

Not only in our preaching and teaching, then, but also in the very pattern of liturgy, we tell and re-tell the story of salvation. Within this context, the sermon need not bear the entire weight of the Gospel message within the service of worship. Rather, the spoken message of the sermon finds its place woven into the larger texture and design of the liturgical fabric. Scripture remains the warp and woof of the church’s entire liturgical life, centering itself upon the narrative of Jesus Christ. The Gospel news is the content of the church’s prayer and praise, her teaching and actions, drawing us ever further into Jesus’ own vocation and identity.

By weaving God’s mighty saving acts into the pattern of our worship, we emphasize the character of biblical faith as a story. Doctrine is not unimportant, but whatever we pray, preach, and profess – even the great Creeds of the church – they remain subservient to Scripture as canon, to salvation history as the center of human history, to the drama of God’s mission.

[4] Liturgy is mission, charity, and justice

In liturgy we bring our brokenness, the needs of our communities, and the troubles of our world before God so that he can take them up, heal them by his Spirit, and empower us to carry forward his present work.

Newbigin writes, “true Christian worship is an offering on behalf of the whole of mankind” since the “Church as a whole is called to be God’s holy priesthood for all of the human family.”¹⁸ Therefore, the church should never turn into a “self-enclosed community” that shuts itself to the wider world.

This is especially true in the prayers of the church.

In liturgical prayer, we pray for all our sisters and brothers in Christ, other local parishes, the leaders of nations, peoples at war, those in danger – our cities, our neighbors, the poor, the imprisoned, the sick, the dying, and the oppressed.

We stand beside the needs of our broken world in all of its trials and problems and offer them up to God. By offering up to God those things that weigh most heavily upon his own heart, we allow his priorities to also weigh upon us: his mission in the world, the unity of his church, the restoration of human wholeness, and the practice of justice and mercy.

One writer on liturgy relates the following story:

Lucy was brought up as a regular worshiper in an Anglican church. When she left school and went to university, she began attending an independent church, which deliberately avoided any conscious liturgical structure for its worship. The services were always lively and enjoyable and the sermons challenging – yet there always seemed to be something missing. After several months, she realized what it was: what her home church called the “Prayers of Intercession.” At her new church they often confessed their failings to God (in prayer or song) and frequently prayed for help in sharing their faith. But in four months they had never prayed publicly for the government, or for those who were sick, bereaved, or in need. Those things came up now and again if the sermon happened to lean that way, but there was no sense of regularly bringing them before God. And she only noticed that it was missing because for years and years she had belonged to a church in which the intercessions were part of the liturgical structure. If she was honest, Lucy had to admit that she often found the intercessions one of the most boring parts of the service, but, boring or not, they made a difference to her understanding of what corporate worship was all about. What is more, she realized that her passionate concern for justice in the world (about which she was often teased by her friends) had come, not from sermons, but from years of exposure to public prayer for the poor and oppressed.¹⁹

When we offer up our prayers in this way, we are offering ourselves up in Christ for priestly service to God. This self-offering typically comes to ritual expression through the collection of our tithes and offerings and in the gifts of bread and wine.²⁰

When we offer ourselves up in this way, God feeds us at his table and sends us out into his world to do his work. Newbigin writes,

It means that people go out from the church not merely comforted with the assurance that they are saved, and not merely crushed by the unbearable knowledge that they are sinners, but rather re-enlisted in Christ’s army as fighters for the rule of God in this world. This means they are liberated from care about their own salvation in order to be totally at his service for the world's salvation.²¹

[5] Liturgy is catholic

While allowing for creativity, flexibility, and contextualization, in liturgy we are caught up into something that comes to us from beyond the horizon of our present culture and time. We are connected to the worship of the church in all ages and places, as well as the treasures and gifts of our own Reformed tradition.²²

By deliberately connecting us to the wider church, liturgy conveys an ethos of receptivity and gratitude with regard towards the wider church, recognizing and accepting the gifts of the Spirit wherever they may be found – in our own tradition, in the practices of the church catholic, and in more recent ecumenical work of liturgical renewal.

Newbigin likewise reminds us that liturgy never exists for the sake of one particular congregation alone or unto itself. Rather, proper Christian worship is always catholic and missional in character. He writes, “It is not only the congregation present which is involved” in Christian worship, but it is also “the act of the whole universal Church in earth and in heaven.”²³ Our worship must therefore “reflect the catholicity of the whole Church.”

This doesn’t mean that local and immediate concerns and expressions are ignored or suppressed. Nonetheless, says Newbigin, they “must be seen within the context of the whole fellowship” of the church universal, so that what we do in worship should be “recognisable as the worship of the universal Church.” Liturgy, of necessity, involves coordinating our local and denominational identities and agendas within a larger, catholic context.

This sort of catholicity is, of course, difficult since all manner of practice has grown up among Christian churches worldwide. Still, some of the basic patterns towards which I’ve gestured retain weight and priority given their biblical character, ancient origins, and ecumenical usage.²⁴

When we worship this way, we see tangibly that what we have in common with other Christians – past and present – is more important than our differences. Yet we do so in a way that also preserves our distinctiveness as evangelical and Reformed.

The great, broad tradition of Christian worship comes to particular, contextualized expression among us. Our theological catholicity comes to fruition in liturgy.

[6] Liturgy is humbling

By celebrating the mystery of our redemption in Christ through liturgy, we recognize worship is not primarily a lecture hall for the communication of doctrinal formulae. Nor is it primarily a way for me to meet my own personal needs. Nor is it even simply a matter of celebrating the worthiness of God.

Rather worship is the repeated encounter with our living Lord through word and sacrament to produce Gospel-shaped lives for the sake of mission.

This is profoundly humbling.

Liturgy reminds us again and again that our identity and renewal is neither a private, individual possession nor a product of our own efforts, either individually or corporately. Our salvation remains always a gift we receive from outside of us. It is continually made present to us in the word of the Gospel and in the Gospel sacraments offered freely to us.

The grace of the Gospel is not dependent upon what we might feel at the moment or upon our personal worthiness or upon our intellectual grasp of theology or even upon how much beauty and excellence we can work into our liturgy. It is dependent upon the promise of God held out to us in word and sacrament, upon the lips and in the actions of our sisters and brothers in Christ.

This is humbling.

Liturgy, furthermore, is a community practice. It therefore teaches us to wait upon one another, to set aside our own agendas, and to coordinate our actions with those of fellow believers. It leaves no room for self-assertion or self-absorption. Liturgy, as a corporate activity, teaches us consider always the good of the whole community and the demands of charity.

And as a regular, repeated pattern, liturgy does not draw attention to itself, but rather assists us in nurturing a proper self-forgetfulness. We settle into familiar words and actions, until they are something we wear as comfortably as a favorite pair of sneakers or well-worn jeans. We are freed up to worship our God and to settle into place among his people, responding and praying with a child-like simplicity.

This too is humbling.

Liturgy, moreover, is the common possession of all Christians. In some form or another, it is the most widespread and common grammar of worship among all those whom the Spirit has gathered and continues to gather through the Gospel. It thereby helps us re-prioritize our identity as Presbyterian within the life of a wider church.

In liturgy we not only break away from individual self-absorption, but we can also begin to unravel habits of self-absorption, self-assertion, and schism that taint our tradition. Not only do we begin to settle into our place within a local congregation through our common worship, but as Presbyterians we can also begin to inhabit a broader, catholic identity. In liturgy we concretely receive, with gratitude, words of prayer and song, and patterns of action and blessing, bequeathed to us by the larger church.

And this again is humbling.

In liturgy and its catholicity we become part of something “bigger than us.” But liturgy is “bigger than us” not only in its catholicity, but also because liturgy is about God preparing us for his mission. Liturgy doesn’t sit still. It moves. God summons us into his presence. He challenges and assures us through his word. He feeds and strengthens us around his table. And, finally, he sends us out, back into his world as agents of change, as heralds of his Gospel, as a reconciled and reconciling people.

Liturgy reminds us that God never calls us out of the world simply to confer upon us some kind of privileged status. No, God’s calling serves his mission. In liturgy we are summoned together so that God can prepare us for service. He calls us in order to commission us to bear his saving purposes out into the world. And what could possibly be bigger than that – or more humbling?

We continually need to learn, then, how we might better worship in Spirit and truth. Why? So our liturgy might more and more form us into the people God would have us be – form us as individuals, form us as congregations, and indeed form us in our wider associations. And as God forms us, he equips us as part of his whole church for his saving mission to our world.

Notes

1. None of what follows should be taken to imply that liturgical worship is somehow an easy-fix, a cure for all of the church’s ills. Worship is only one piece of a much larger and holistic work of renewal. Even the best liturgical practices – apart from faithful teaching, living fellowship, pursuing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly – remains at best only a preservative of the status quo in church life and not a habit of ongoing renewal. At worst, such practices can devolve into empty formalism amidst the trappings of piety.

Nor should my remarks be taken to suggest that Presbyterians need to impose liturgy upon their churches. Part of what distinguishes the Presbyterian tradition from Anglicanism is a tradition of “common order” rather than “common worship.” That is to say, while Presbyterian churches have constructed and commended common elements of worship and arrangements of those items, as well as model prayers, Presbyterians have never enforced a set liturgy or required prayers upon their congregations. Everything I say in what follows should be taken in a spirit of commendation that respects liberty of conscience and the need for contextualization.

2. Specifically, our spiritual forebears would very likely see our more recent sense of “traditionalism” as having already sold out the regulative principle: caving into contemporary sensibilities, indulging an unruly emotionalism, replacing time-tested language with colloquial idiom, preaching without proper discrimination, constructing novel rites of passage, and so forth.

The history of worship in our tradition, after all, is one of ongoing debate and controversy over matters such as the church calendar, communion tokens, sitting in pews, not coming forward to receive the Supper, the posture of prayer, the use of composed prayers, the Gloria Patri at the end of Psalms, the recitation of Creeds, rituals for publicly professing faith, musical instruments, clerical garb, extra-biblical hymnody, and so on.

Part of what this history reveals is the degree to which, even at its origins, Reformed understandings of worship were fully contextual, even if biblically principled, since the articulation of those principles was itself a contextualized discernment to which later generations would demur.

3. My appreciation for Christian liturgy began in high school, in large part through exposure to Anglican and Lutheran churches, as well as mainline Presbyterians and Catholics, peppered with a variety of other traditions and experiences. That appreciation and interest stayed with me and grew, leading to reading and study, as well as more formal coursework in liturgics and participation in a wide variety of liturgical contexts.

4. Hart has expressed this upon more than one occasion. See, for instance, his Deconstructing Evangelicalism: Conservative Protestantism in the Age of Billy Graham (BakerAcademic, 2004) 174. While I find many of Hart's criticisms helpful, his own positive vision of a self-enclosed, theological gemeinschaft strikes me as highly problematic and, indeed, untrue to the Reformed tradition it attempts to preserve.

5. Appropriate liturgy is itself a matter of discernment. French Reformed liturgical scholar, J.-D. Benoit writes,

It is therefore necessary to have a constant control of liturgy by Scripture. The liturgy must not deviate from Scripture. In fact, the valid liturgical developments are those which spring spontaneously from the piety of the Church, enlivened by Scripture and in its fidelity to Scripture….the deciding factor is Christian judgment – the Church, not necessarily in its hierarchy, but in its experience and living continuity. In doing so the Church uses a certain spiritual tact, a certain discernment, a certain evangelical sensitivity. There are some liturgical texts and experiences which the consensus of believers accepts, and others which it rejects. In so doing it acts naturally, organically, without needing a council or ecclesiastical decision. It is in this living conscience of the Church, and more especially in its worship, that we must seek the continuity of its tradition. The more the Church is nourished on the Bible, the more surely and spontaneously does it effect this process of assimilation and elimination, by which its tradition is formed. (Liturgical Renewal, SCM 1958: 67-68).

6. Arguably, church history has been characterized by a dialectical relationship between these two poles of conformity and flexibility. What we know of the earliest centuries seems to suggest a great deal of diversity, flexibility, improvisation, and contextualization – particularly as the Gospel went out to new places and people, and worship came to expression within a variety of cultures and languages.

Later, in the west, there were periods of codification and conformity, particularly with the spread of literacy and written texts, as with the reforms introduced under Pope Gregory the Great. Even still, by the end of the middle ages, there remained a great deal of local variety, as rites were accommodated to local conditions and customs.

The humanistic studies of the Protestant Reformers, as well as the reforming responses of the Roman Catholic Church, led to a period of liturgical revision and creativity, often growing out of historical study and patristic ressourcement. New impetus for liturgical reform arose in the 19^th century, giving rise to the contemporary period of ecumenical liturgical renewal, which has come to fruition in the production of the many resources now available.

7. This is not to say that every one of these elements must be present in every instance of the church’s worship or in this precise order. There are times and occasions in which communion may not be offered (e.g., a midweek service of prayer) or in which a sermon may not be given (e.g., a Good Friday tenebrae service, consisting in a series of readings).

Nonetheless, two observations should be kept in the foreground. First, these five elements are thoroughly biblical and form the steady diet of the church’s worship. If any one element is regularly left out, the balance is thrown off. Without the tangible event of the eucharist, worship can grow intellectual and overly-spiritualized. Without confession of sin, worship can fail to embody proper humility before God or to recognize our continual reliance upon his forgiveness. And so on.

Second, the order given here is both logical and biblical. It resonates with various series of events in biblical history (see below), but also with the shape of individual offerings in the Old Testament as outlined in Leviticus, the sequence of multiple offerings, the flow of the book of Revelation, and so on.

8. N.T. Wright uses this example on several occasions in his writing and speaking on worship (e.g., see The Meal Jesus Gave Us). It is a useful example, in part because it so helpfully draws the connection between our eucharistic table fellowship and the table fellowship that Jesus shared with so many during his earthly ministry (see also Dining in the Kingdom of God: The Origins of Eucharist according to Luke and The Breaking of the Bread: The Development of the Eucharist According to Acts by Eugene LaVerdiere).

9. Liturgical Worship: A Fresh Look – How It Works, Why It Matters (Church House 2002) 18. Also in this connection, I would recommend Tod E. Bolsinger’s book, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian: How the Community of God Transforms Lives (Brazos 2004).

10. C.S. Lewis notes in his Letters to Malcolm that corporate prayer allows for and facilitates a degree of self-forgetfulness that is fitting in a context in which we, individually, are not the focus. Lest one think this runs counter to my point about liturgy making us conscious of our place within God’s renewed people, I would suggest paradoxically that it is in self-forgetfulness within a greater whole that we are most conscious of our place within a corporate identity.

11. Lesslie Newbigin, "The Good Shepherd": Meditations on Christian Ministry in Today's World (Eerdmans 1977) 33, available online. I draw most of the quotations from Newbigin that follow from this same work, but Newbigin makes many of the same points throughout his works. Every place in which Newbigin speaks to liturgy and worship is profitable.

12. The Good Shepherd 34.

13. The Good Shepherd 30.

14. Earey, Liturgical Worship 8.

15. The Good Shepherd 31.

16. When I speak of the “church year,” I mean primarily the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany cycle and the Lent-Easter-Pentecost cycle, both of which focus in upon events in the life and ministry of our Lord. Not all churches within the Reformed tradition follow the church calendar and, certainly, there is no necessity in doing so. The remarks that follow above will apply to whatever degree a church makes use of the liturgical calendar.

Having said that, I would nonetheless suggest that there is sufficient biblical warrant for celebrating the primary events of the gospel through the use of the calendar. Moreover, doing so is fitting and useful in balancing the church’s diet of teaching, in cultivating piety and focusing our attentions, and in connecting us with the wider practices of the church catholic.

17. This is not to say, of course, that each and every moment and action of liturgy somehow replays an event in the life of Christ. That mistake is found in some commentators within the earlier centuries of the church (and which is part of the “mysteriological piety” criticized by Schmemann in his Introduction to Liturgical Theology). As with “What would Jesus do?” the character of our calling is in the overall shape of Jesus’ vocation, not in mimicking his every action.

18. The Good Shepherd 30.

19. Earey, Liturgical Worship 9.

20. In much of western liturgy, the general intercessions follow the sermon as a response to God’s sharing his word with us and the call of that word upon our lives. That’s to say, our priestly offering-up of our prayers for the church and world functions as a response to the Gospel message. The intercessions are then connected with the collection of our monetary gifts. In many traditions, the bread and wine are set upon the Table in conjunction with the collection.

In our congregation, representatives of the congregation bring forward the bread and wine and set them upon the table. This action suggests that God’s work in the eucharist is one that takes up our meager offerings into the self-offering of Christ, along with our prayers, in order that his grace might transform both our gifts and us into vehicles of his mission.

It is probably worthwhile noting at this point that the Westminster Directory for Public Worship stands alone among Reformation liturgies in placing the general intercessions before the sermon, a practice that is followed in many Presbyterian churches and which represents a break with the older Scottish tradition found in Knox’s liturgy. In this instance, I think that Westminster’s departure from the western pattern is an unfortunate one, representing, I suspect, a growing disconnection between pulpit and table, the preached word and the eucharistic word.

21. The Good Shepherd 25.

22. In particular, I would point to the restoration of the epiclesis (the invocation of the Holy Spirit in the eucharistic prayer) within western liturgy as one distinctive feature of the Reformed tradition that has shaped liturgical renewal in many denominations and is well worth keeping.

Likewise, at the time of the Reformation, our tradition deliberately emphasized the eucharist as an action of the congregation. In Scotland, in particular, each communicant passed the elements to his or her neighbor as a ritual expression of the one Body present at the Table. So important was this practice to the Scottish Kirk that when the General Assembly adopted the Westminster Directory for Public Worship, the adopting act specified that the Directory was not to be interpreted contrary to the practice of the Kirk.

While we may construct different rites for our own contexts, it is instructive to see the thoughtful, contextual, and deliberate reforms made by our spiritual and liturgical forebears.

23. The Good Shepherd 30.

24. One might raise an objection at this point concerning the nature of the liturgical catholicity proposed here. It seems that the kind of catholicity I am advocating is one that draws upon patterns that have been passed down and renewed, not so much in our own conservative Presbyterian traditions, as within Roman Catholicism and mainline Protestantism. Moreover, the global, catholic church in the present time is increasingly evangelical and Pentecostal, forms of the Christian faith that do not typically worship in a liturgical way. Shouldn’t genuine catholicity in worship embrace these worship forms as much as it does liturgy?

Such an objection is surely legitimate and important, but I would offer at least two lines of reply.

First, there is a diversity of gifts within the church and we should readily and gratefully receive the Spirit’s gifts to the church wherever they may be found. Thus, we must certainly approach Pentecostalism and every other tradition from a posture of humility and with a willingness to learn and receive.

Nonetheless, we are also called to discernment. It does not follow from the mere prevalence or seeming success of a particular tradition that we need accept all that it might offer. As biblical Protestants, we rightly reject even longstanding practices of the invocation of saints and eucharistic adoration in light of the teaching of Scripture. Likewise, all other traditions must be evaluated in the light of Scripture and Christian wisdom. It may be the case that certain aspects of worship are not areas in which we have as much to learn from some parts of the church.

Second, every variety of contemporary Christian expression nonetheless has common roots in an ancient, medieval, and reformational catholicity that was, in fact, preponderantly liturgical in character. When discerning what we might learn and receive from various traditions, we do well to give greater weigh to those patterns that are more ancient and more widespread historically than those that arise from more contemporary innovations, especially when historic patterns seem to have a greater resonance with biblical teaching and example.