Liturgy and Character Formation

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Chris Wiles

Most of the conversation in the last 30 years or so has centered around the question: “How do we make our worship relevant to our culture?”

Douglas D. Webster says that the answer to the question is consistently answered in the wrong way:

Many respected church consultants are offering straightforward, unambiguous answers. They are promoting strategies that encourage churches to establish a market niche, focus on a target audience, meet a wide range of felt needs, pursue corporate excellence, select a dynamic and personable leader and create a positive, upbeat, exciting atmosphere.” (Douglas D. Webster, Selling Jesus: What’s Wrong With Marketing the Church, p. 20-21)

Sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark argue that “where religious affiliation is a matter of choice, religious organizations must compete for members…Religious economies are like commercial economies in that they consist of a market made up of a set of current and potential customers and a set of firms seeking to serve that market.” (Roger Finke, Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, p. 17)

The task of the Church is not to cater to consumers. The task of the Church is to be relevant to our culture. One of my greatest fears is of reaching an era when we no longer see the difference. This line will always be blurry when we see the Church as a business – when marketing replaces mission, and youth culture is elevated to the status of golden calf (before you argue, do your homework…I even have a series on this starting here).

Mark Galli writes:

“[T]here’s a reason Jesus said ‘You shall be my witnesses,’ and not ‘You shall be my marketers’ . . .Should it surprise us that in this church-marketing era, members demand more and more from their churches, and if churches don’t deliver, they take their spiritual business elsewhere? Have we ever seen an age in which church transience was such an epidemic?” (Mark Galli, “Do I Have A Witness?: Why Jesus Didn’t Say, ‘You Shall Be My Marketers to the Ends of the Earth.’” Christianity Today, October 4, 2007).

The gospel doesn’t need to be “made” relevant. The gospel is relevant. The question is therefore: how does our worship unveil Christ’s relevance?

LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI

Historically, the Church has embraced the Latin phrase les orandi, lex credendi. Literally, it means “the church believes as she prays/worships.” More recent language has taught us that “what you win people with, you win them to.” In other words, our worship not only reveals what we love, but can actually shape what we love. Jamie Smith wrote an entire book called Desiring the Kingdom, in which he argues that our culture follows various secular “liturgies” that shape our character. Think about it: if someone is glued to World of Warcraft all day, we conclude negative things about their character. In other words, certain habits (such as the use of technology) shape our character.

Which means that the goal of the Church’s liturgy is worship that is both a response to God’s character, but also a response that shapes and forms our character.

Now, let’s be clear. The Church is neither a building nor a service. The Church is the body of Christ, made flesh in those who follow Him. Therefore, a “worship service” is a gathering to celebrate the relationship between God and the new humanity found in His Church. By definition, then, a worship service is primarily for believers. It is not for the lost; it is for the found. However, can the service be arranged in such a way that outsiders feel safe and welcome in the gathering? Can it be arranged so that it also helps lead them further toward God’s character, and shapes their own?

I believe the answer is “yes,” and we have only to appeal to 2,000 years of church tradition to see such a pattern. In Tim Keller’s words, the Church engages in two things: “come and see” and “go and share.” On Sundays, we “come and see;” through the week we “go and share.”

COME AND SEE

All that leads us to the question of how: How can we avoid questions of preference in shaping our liturgy? I borrow from the Bifrost Arts Music Liturgy and Space curriculum in suggesting that worship is (1) the expression of God’s love as well as (2) the formation of God’s love. Let’s examine how this impacts believers and unbelievers:

Believers
Those who are “in Christ” enter a new relationship with Him. By God’s saving grace we have fellowship with God and each other. Believers

The questions then are as follows:

1.1 How does our liturgy help us express our love for God? Does it lead us to confess sin? Does it lead us to express our thoughts and feelings to the full depth of God’s character?

1.2 How does our liturgy help form our love for God? Does it lead to a change in our character? Does it lead to repentance? Does it lead us to treat others differently?

2. Unbelievers

This is a harder case. Unbelievers have a relationship with God – they are His enemies (cf. Rom 5). Our desire is to see that relationship reconciled. Yet through God’s common grace, all men are aware of the presence of the God in whose image they were created (cf. Rom 1:18). Which means they can appeal to such ideas as love, truth, beauty, and goodness even before they are led to the ultimate source.

Therefore the questions are the same, yet their applications a bit different:

2.1 How does our liturgy help unbelievers express a love for God? Does it communicate God’s attributes (wrath, love, Holiness) in an understandable way? Does it display the full richness of God’s kingdom? Does it offer an invitation for unbelievers to respond to God – maybe even make a decision for Christ?

2.2 How does our liturgy help form a love for God in the life of an unbeliever? Does our liturgy – both music and sermon – lead them to repentance? Does it encourage a decision to follow Jesus? Does it also give offer them a richer life in His Kingdom after they’ve made this decision?

The purpose of asking such questions is to redefine the strategy for planning our liturgy. It’s no longer about appealing to consumerist preferences, but unveiling the gospel’s true relevance for our world today.

Unseen: “Surface Tension” (Study Guide)

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Chris Wiles

I’ve been slow. Click the link to download the study guide to the first message from “Unseen” at Tri-State Fellowship.

Unseen Handout 1

Unseen: Sneak Preview

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Chris Wiles

The above video is the trailer for the message series “Unseen: Exposing the Paranormal” beginning this Sunday at Tri-State Fellowship.

Below is a description as well as a schedule for the series. If you’re in the area and are looking for a local church, we’d love for you to see us.

“Look, I know the supernatural is something that isn’t supposed to happen, but it does happen.” (The Haunting, 1963)

Do you believe in the paranormal? Do you believe there’s more to our world than what you can see on the surface?

If you’re like most Americans, the word “paranormal” makes you either laugh or shudder – sometimes both.

Which one are you? Do you see such beliefs as the leftovers from a superstitious past? Surely we don’t need to be talking about ghosts and demons in an age of science and reason. Or do you see a spiritual side to everything? Do you believe your life to be governed by powerful spiritual forces – one of which may be very dark? Perhaps you’re somewhere in the middle – perhaps open to the idea, just not sure where you land.

What you don’t know can’t hurt you, right?

Join us Sunday mornings as we seek to pull back the curtain of the unseen world and expose the reality of the paranormal.

Brace yourself – “Unseen” just might be unforgettable.

Schedule:

Date	Title
April 15	“Surface Tension:” Is reality more than meets the eye?
April 22	“Sympathy for the Devil:” The identity of Satan
April 29	“Master of Puppets:” What does Satan want?
May 6	“Final Word:” Who really wins
May 13	“Power Play:” The gospel and spiritual warfare
May 20	“Postcards from the Paranormal:” Q&A

“Why Jesus Wants You Dead” (Discussion Guide)

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Chris Wiles

Click the link below to download the discussion guide from the sermon on Sunday at Tri-State Fellowship:

Dirt Under His Nails Handout 6

“Character is a Four-Letter-Word:” Study Guide

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Chris Wiles

Click below to download the study guide from this week’s sermon:

Dirt Under His Nails Handout 5

Jesus the True and Better Priest

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Chris Wiles

All along we’ve been observing the way that religion alone cannot cover over the stain that sin produces.

Which has led many to draw the conclusion that Jesus came, in some way, to eradicate religion. “I have a relationship,” we insist. “Not a religion.”

The problem with this statement should be obvious: the people who make such statements are often looked at by others as the most religious. Further, Jesus never came to eradicate religion, only its hypocritical, self-centered expressions.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells the crowds that gathered to hear Him preach:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹ Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-20)

All of which means that Jesus came not to eliminate religion, but to redeem it. The Law remains permanent – its demands indelible. Only total perfection can earn God’s favor. Yes, in Ephesians 2 Paul says that Jesus “nullified” these commandments, but by that he only meant that Jesus’ death satisfied their demands and requirements – not that they were discarded altogether.

What the first century world needed was a Savior who would do more for them than merely highlight their sin and increase their burdens – activities the Pharisees and religious leaders had elevated to the form of both science and art. What they needed – what all people need – was forgiveness.

Which actually brings us back full circle to the healing stories throughout Luke’s gospel. The Pharisees were astonished – even angered – that Jesus would claim to forgive sin, because not only was this a claim to be God, but this also robbed them of their rights and powers:

“How does God normally forgive sins within Israel? Why, through the Temple and the sacrifices that take place there. Jesus seems to be claiming that God is doing, up close and personal through him, something that you’d normally expect to happen at the Temple. And the Temple – the successor to the tabernacle in the desert – was…the place where heaven and earth met. It was the place were God lived. Or, more precisely, the place on earth where God’s presence intersected with human, this-worldly reality.

The Temple was also the place where the high priest had supreme authority. Already we can see what we should have experienced if it was indeed true that Jesus was going around telling people that a new government was taking over, that God was in charge from now on. His healings, his celebrations, his forgiving of those in dire need of it – all these were up-close-and-personal versions of the larger picture he knew his hearers would pick up on whenever he spoke of God becoming king. These actions and sayings were ramming home the point, dangerous though it was, that the present rulers were being called to account and were indeed being replaced. This was the time for God to take charge, to fix and mend things, to make everything right. Starting with you here, and this person there. Whether or not the authorities liked it. Whether or not the self-appointed pressure groups approved.” (N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus, p. 79-80)

Religion concerns itself with rituals, with temples. But Christ is the true and better religion. He is the true and better temple. He is the true and better high priest who exercises these activities.

We’ll return to this exact theme in tomorrow’s post.

“Surface Shines, Inside Rots:” Pharisees on the Right, Pharisees on the Left

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Chris Wiles

“We’re all ok, until the day we’re not. The surface shines, while the inside rots.” (Rise Against, “Audience of One”)

In the passage we read in Luke on Sunday (Luke 11:29-54), we saw Jesus encountering the Pharisees. It’s true that the gospels do not portray the Pharisees all that favorably, but let’s not forget that of all the faith persuasions of Jesus’ day, these guys were the most conservative and most faithful to the Biblical text. The problem, of course, was that they couldn’t stop adding their own traditions to those of the Bible, a practice that Jesus sharply condemns.

But we shouldn’t be so quick to assume that we’re any different, lest we wrongly – and proudly – stand before God and say, “At least I’m not like one of those Pharisees.” In the last post, we hinted that religious behavior might be one way of managing sin and covering shame. The real question is what kind of religious person you are.

See, the myth of the suit-and-tie-wearing, uptight moralist is rapidly disappearing from the evangelical marketplace. Yet the image remains as a convenient scapegoat. After all, it’s become fun to pick on the ‘religious’ people of our day. Jared Wilson writes:

“…it becomes clear what they mean is ‘traditional people’ or the uncool. My feeling is that the Bible-thumping, starched suit-wearing, hellfire and brimstone religious people taking the fun out of fundamentalism are becoming fewer and farther between, while the church is brimming with self-righteous hipsters and cooler-than-thous. The Pharisees look like Vampire Weekend now.”

Which means you can be a Pharisee in one of two ways:

(1) A Pharisee on the “right,” embracing so-called “traditional” values (stereotypes?) associated with the religious person.

-OR-

(2) A Pharisee on the “left,” embracing more “progressive values” that align with the culture of our own day.

Looking at their values, it’s easy to see the points of comparison:

Pharisees on the Right:	Pharisees on the Left:
Respectability: Traditional religion emphasizes being “respectable.” Good, upright behavior is what earns God’s approval –as well as the admiration of others.	Authenticity: Today’s crowds are more likely to talk about an “authentic” life. “It’s not a religion,” we insist. “It’s a relationship.” We want to be liked by others – so we distance ourselves from “those” types of Christians.
Necktie: Being respectable means looking the part: dress up to go to church.	Skinny Jeans: Christians can be hip – it’s what separates us from those rigid fundamentalists, right?
Organ only: Hymns are the only way to worship God. Other forms of music are sneered at for being both musically and morally wrong.	Guitar only: We’ve evolved. We threw away the stale traditions. But now we insist on whole new ones: the guitar is the only acceptable way to worship. Who needs John Newton when you have Chris Tomlin?
King James Bible: The only “real” way to understand God is in the good King’s English of seventeenth century Europe. Because that makes a lot of sense.	Blue Like Jazz: We want “non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality.” We want to know God personally and experientially. So we elevate the experience of our own culture over the experience of 2,000 years of Christian thought.

And I’m not picking on Donald Miller or his fans with the Blue Like Jazz reference; the book truly is worth a read. But the issue is that when we elevate experience over tradition we’re only narrowing our minds rather than broadening them.

The problem with the Pharisees on the left is that in the desire to kill the sacred cows of the past, whole new herds have been raised. Today’s Pharisees are prone to using abstract concepts such as “social justice,” “mission,” “kingdom,” etc. While these are all concepts the Bible teaches, they often fail to move beyond abstract theory to concrete practice.

So the Pharisees on the left and right really do have a lot in common:

Self-focused: Approval – man’s or God’s – is earned through one’s individual performance.

Need to be liked: We want others to think well of us. We want God to think well of us. Therefore we use our religious systems – whether on the left or right – to make ourselves acceptable.

Tradition-centric: Both sides say “My tradition is the only acceptable way to experience God.” The Pharisees on the left sneer at the stale traditions of the past, and the Pharisees on the right shake their head at the laissez faire attitudes of rising generations.

Surface shines, inside rots: In both cases, these attitudes can become masks to conceal the real issue of sin and shame.

Most will fall somewhere in between these extremes or, more likely, be some curious blend of the two. But Jesus came neither to affirm religion nor reject it entirely: He came to redeem it, which is something different altogether.

One of the surest ways of knowing where you fall is simply this: when you encounter others, how do you measure them? Do you measure them against Christ and His righteousness? Or do you measure them against the standards of your own culture? In other words, do you desire that others come to resemble Christ or come to resemble you?

If it is the latter, than God help us all. But if it is the former, than we all fall short.

Which tells us that we don’t need the shallow, empty, hypocritical religiosity of the right or left. What we need, then, is not less religion, but deeper, more vibrant, true religion. And that – in at least one sense – is what Jesus came to offer.

“Can’t No Preacher-Man Save My Soul:” Sin, Shame and Barton Hollow

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Chris Wiles

The video is of the band The Civil Wars with their song “Barton Hollow.” You have to love the chorus:

“Ain’t going back to Barton Hollow
Devil gonna follow me e’er I go
Won’t do me no good washing in the river
Can’t no preacher-man save my soul.”

Of course you notice the recurring motif of dirty hands and washing in the river in the video. The allusion, obviously, is of baptism, the outward symbol of inner cleanliness.

But it “won’t do me no good,” the song repeats. Many people avoid Jesus and the Church because of this very reason: “There’s no forgiving what I’ve done.” And so many live with a persistent sense of shame.

In Luke 11:29-32, Jesus tells the crowds that this is an “evil generation” that “looks for a sign.” The reference He then makes to the “sign of Jonah” is all about judgment over sin. This is such a fire-and-brimstone kinda passage – it’s all about the need to acknowledge just how dirty we are, and our need to get clean.

Which means that, in a way, the lyrics to Barton Hollow are right: no “preacher-man” can save the soul. But it also testifies to those who walk “miles and miles in…bare feet,” and never find true rest.

Many can’t seem to find a way to get rid of the stain that covers them – nothing can wash it clean. Which is why so many turn to various ways of covering it up.

And one of the best ways of covering it up, best ways of hiding it, is through religious activity. To “sugar over” the stain with outward displays of religious piety. And it’s precisely that behavior that Jesus targets, a subject we’ll be exploring in some of this week’s posts.

“Party Crashers:” Study Guide

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Chris Wiles

Download this week’s study guide:

Dirt Under His Nails Handout 4

The Contagious Gospel: Jesus as a Friend to Sinners

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Chris Wiles

To finally put the last piece on this week’s series of posts, we need to go back to Luke 5. It’s right after Jesus heals the paralyzed man who’d been lowered through the window. And, as we saw, Jesus calls Levi away from his life as a tax collector to be a disciple of Jesus – and the “establishment” is a bit concerned about the company that Jesus seems to be keeping.

If your memory is really good, you’ll remember that we learned in Luke 4 (when Jesus read the selections from Isaiah) that Luke’s gospel intertwines the ideas of forgiveness and healing. It’s what Wright calls “the gift of shalom:” restoring God’s original goodness, or shalom, to each individual, both physically and spiritually.

CONTAGION

But the metaphor of healing can be taken another way, too, can’t it? You could easily see how sin might be viewed as a contagion – something “dirty” in that culture. That was the attitude of the Pharisees. They’d already started whispering rumors about Jesus behind His back. Jesus even picks up on it: The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ (Luke 7:34)

See, the central lie of religion is this: when the sacred encounters the profane, the profane always wins. Jesus spent time with some people religion tended to frown upon. The religious leaders assumed that if Jesus spent time with these people, He must be one of “them.”

QUARANTINE

Religious moralism is so concerned with keeping up appearance that it avoids broken people at all costs. The problem, as Jesus identifies it, is that healthy people don’t need doctors; sick people do.

Which means that when we look at Jesus, we don’t find a guy who’s actively trying to pursue the “wrong crowd.” He had a message of hope and healing, and that naturally drew people to Him. Craig Blomberg, a New Testament scholar, writes:

“Jesus thus defies the conventions of his world by his intimate association with a group of people deemed traitorous and corrupt in his society. Still, he does not condone their sinful lifestyles but calls them to repentance, transformation and discipleship.” (Craig Blomberg, Contagious Holiness, p. 102)

There is no “quarantine” procedure for Jesus. He gets right in and heals their brokenness. And He does so not by overlooking their sin, but by absorbing it.

JOHN COFFEY: ABSORBING EVIL

Most are familiar with the film The Green Mile, the film based on Stephen King’s serial novel. The main character is John Coffey, a death row inmate who proves to have an extraordinary power to heal. When the prison guards discover this power, they sneak Coffey from prison temporarily to see if his power can heal the warden’s wife, who is dying of terminal brain cancer in her home:

The clip shows an unexpected healer, bringing a shocking level of intimacy to this broken woman’s home. The fracture of the clock, the shaking ground – these things almost seem to call to mind the events of the cross: the earthquake, the tearing of the temple curtain. John Coffey’s initials are no accident, allowing the film to present us an unlikely Christ figure who absorbs the evil around him, bringing wholeness and purity.

We don’t have time to analyze all of the films themes (including where the film ceases to harmonize with Christianity), but Jesus does something like this: He can offer healing only because He takes evil on Himself through His sacrificial death on the cross. “The deformity of Christ forms you,” wrote St. Augustine. “On Him is the punishment that brought us shalom, [wholeness, goodness, peace].” Isaiah wrote. “By His wounds, we are healed.”

HOW GREAT A DEBT

This is something that no other religious system before was capable of. Even the various sacrifices of the Jewish legal system were meant only to point to the day when Christ would be sacrificed once-for-all.

In Luke 7, we see Jesus interacting with a “sinful woman.” The scene is right after Jesus’ complaint that the Pharisees think Him a “drunkard.” Luke places the story here because he has a point to make: the lie of religion is not always right. The Jewish laws stipulated that certain people were clean and unclean, just as we saw yesterday. But when the profane encounters that which is most sacred, the sacred wins. Jesus brings cleanliness through forgiveness of sins: He is the true and better sacrifice who can do this.

So it’s actually quite shocking when a woman of a “sinful” reputation (many believe her to have been some sort of prostitute) is associating with Jesus. She anoints Jesus’ feet not only with expensive perfume, but her own tears. But here’s where it gets messy: she lets her hair down. In Jewish culture, this was a level of intimacy that was potentially scandalous:

“The woman’s actions…need not be viewed as inherently erotic, but the observers would have viewed that at best as culturally inappropriate…and at worst as so sexually suggestive as to be shameful. [One commentary writer] points out that loose hair did not in and of itself link a woman with prostitution, and if she were unmarried it produced no stigma at all. But Simon’s response…clearly implies that her behavior here gave the assembly reason to disapprove of it.” (Craig Blomberg, Contagious Holiness, p. 133)

When questioned, Jesus tells a story about the magnitude of forgiveness. Two men owe a great debt: one owes just over two months worth of wages. The other owes two years. Obviously the one who had been forgiven the greater debt was the one who showed greater love. Jesus acknowledged the woman’s “many” sins (7:47). But because of this great relief she could show love in a way that the Pharisees could not.

INFECTING WITH LIFE

In chapter 8 we see this pattern continue, and Luke gives us two stories back to back in Luke 8:40-56. One is a woman with some type of bleeding disorder – apparently some type of menstrual issue. The other is a young girl, only 12, who dies before Jesus can even get there.

Both women remain nameless. Both are ceremonially unclean: the woman because of her menstrual bleeding, the daughter because she is dead. And notice in verse 43 that the woman had been bleeding for 12 years, the same amount of time the little girl had been alive.

But despite her uncleanliness, she reaches out and touches Jesus’ robe. And that’s when the miracle happens. Jesus does not become unclean from her touch, but by touching Jesus she becomes clean. When she confesses what she had done, Jesus tenderly calls her “daughter.”

Jesus’ healing does not stop there. When he gets to the little girl’s home, she has already passed on. But a touch of Jesus’ hand and the command of His voice lift her from the dead.

The Pharisees were worried that the unclean would infect the clean. Jesus infects everyone around Him with life.

SPREADING THE CONTAGION

This means that we have a whole new paradigm to look through. We don’t have to be like the Pharisees, sneering at others while we perform our quarantine procedures. The gospel teaches us that there is no division between the “good” people and “bad” people, only a division between the proud and humble, the forgiven and the broken.

This is a powerful theme of Luke’s gospel, one that is central to his entire portrait of Jesus. It is a message that Jesus’ followers are to carry out in their own day and age – to spread Jesus’ message of hope and healing in our own communities.

We’ll close with the testimony of Brian “Head” Welch, former guitarist for the band Korn, now a follower of Christ:

…thorns compose…

reflections on faith and culture by Chris Wiles

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