I knew, even as I was commenting back to Larry on my last post, that I was not expressing myself as eloquently as I would have liked. There was a stronger, clearer, more pointed way to express my concern about cultures being swallowed and the danger that presents for the gospel. Enter Walter Brueggeman with this brilliant quote from "Poetry in a Prose-Flattened World" that expresses all of what I was trying to say and more:
"The gospel is...a truth widely held, but a truth greatly reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane. Partly, the gospel is simply an old habit among us, neither valued nor questioned. [It] takes the categories of biblical faith and represents them in manageable shapes...There then is no danger, no energy, no possibility, no opening for newness!...That means the gospel may have been twisted, pressed, tailored, and gerrymandered until it is comfortable with technological reason that leaves us unbothered, and with ideology that leaves us with uncriticized absolutes."
Brueggeman is focusing on the way that technical theology has reduced the gospel, but I believe that the reason for the reduction is less important than the fact of the reduction. He doesn't just report the problem and walk away. He does present a solution to the problem of this neutered gospel.
"To address the issue of a truth greatly reduced requires us to be poets that speak against a prose world. The terms of that phrase are readily misunderstood. By prose I refer to a world that is organized in settled formulae, so that even pastoral prayers and love letters sound like memos. By poetry, I do not mean rhyme, rhythm, or meter, but language that moves like Bob Gibson's fast ball, that jumps at the right moment, that breaks open old worlds with suprise, abrasion and pace. Poetic speech is the only proclamation worth doing in a situation of reductionism, the only proclamation, I submit, that is worthy of the name preaching."
Obviously, Brueggemann is focusing on the spoken, preached gospel here. I don't know that I can fully agree that poetic speech is the only proclamation worth doing in light of reductionism. I think heroic living is as worthy a pursuit A true commitment to social justice in big and small ways speaks loudly to a world that has closed its ears to the gospel, but that's not the point he's making. I think the stirring story of the gospel has to be told in a way that stirs the pot of our existence. A tolerable gospel is no gospel at all. He goes so far as to call it abrasive and well-paced. How often have you heard a sermon in the last 10 years that could be described that way? Not only are we careful not to offend those outside the church, we're so desperate to retain the remnant that we have that we won't even preach a full gospel inside the "stained glass or silk plant ghettos." (a la Morganthaler)
The church's greatest prayer for penitence must be for allowing the gospel to be reduced to an old habit. After all, we can not control the wider culture, only our own interaction with it. We can't allow the gospel to be disposable despite what our throwaway society would say about it.
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5 comments:
On the poetry/prose question, we're looking to grow a new service at our 110-year-old Episcopal Church. The new service is meant to appeal to postmodern pre-Christians, as our church planting priest calls them. He's come to us from South Carolina where he grew a church from 40 to 400 in four years.
He was talking on Sunday about a few things that are relevant: 1) Pagans understand and desire beauty. While the Spirit can come on a ballfield or in a warehouse or in a non-denominational hotel-ballroom-looking sanctuary, people do respond to beautiful spaces and beautiful things in our churches. They respond to beauty in music. They respond to visual art. This is poetry, right? 2) When people who don't go to church come to a church to try it out, they want it to be church. They want it to be on Sunday, and they expect hymns and preaching and scripture. Whatever the stage of their curiosity or seeking, they actually want to see a church in action. And church - worship, liturgy, scripture - is different from corporate speeches and conferences and memos.
Finally, he would agree with you that we have something people need, whether they know they need it or not. It's incumbent upon us to not forget how much we and they need the gospel and salvation and the Spirit.
"When people who don't go to church come to a church to try it out, they want it to be church. They want it to be on Sunday, and they expect hymns and preaching and scripture."
Listen, I'm pretty good at blanket statements, but that just might be the mother of all blanket statements.
First, what’s true for South freaking Carolina, just might not be true for less traditional parts of the country or for other parts of the world, for that matter.
Second, while your goal might be to reach “postmodern pre-Christians”, I’d like to know for myself that that’s the target audience your “church planting priest” was able to reach through liturgy and hymns.
I’d argue that people are looking for something very different from church and that even Christians are beginning to redefine what “church” is. Furthermore, I’d also argue that any church, still using liturgy and hymns, and growing, is a church that has strong relationship programming in place. No way it’s the hymns and liturgy that’s drawing them in and, more importantly, keeping them there.
For the record, I’m not suggesting that people don’t like liturgy and hymns anymore. But I am suggesting that people aren’t interested in churches who base their identity on that. I’d equally argue that people are becoming just as disinterested in churches who base their identity on more modern forms of worship. I think the only people still visiting those churches are disenfranchised Christians who misunderstand the problems of their own church and mistakenly believe that the thing they are craving is a certain worship style.
Use liturgy and hymns if that’s what your audience prefers, but know that it’s not your service that will keep them there.
Tim-
Easy tiger! "South Freaking Carolina?" I think this comment came out of Pittsburgh, but that's not really the point.
I think some of your other points are valid. Knowing Jeff's church, they are good on relationship and it looks like they're trying to take a look at worship.
Don't have time to address all your comments, but let's try to keep the tone respectful.
Listen you mansy pansy, North freaking Eastern, New England Patriots loving Boston boy! Put your video cameras away and admit that you cheated!!!
Ok, Tim,
Here's my more complete response as promised earlier. First you sound angry these days. You should talk to somebody about that.
Now, on Jeff's comments, I can corraborate this viewpoint that some non-believers are expecting church to look like, smell like, taste like church. I think that overall our attempts to change worship to more closely resemble pop culture have been a failure as an evangelistic tool. It has probably served to retain some churchgoers, but can't be credited for attracting new ones. I think this is because we adapted worship to a form that we would like better, not to a form that would be attractive to non-churchgoers.
So this is the problem--we spent all this time and energy and wrote books and went to conferences on how to revolutionize worship and in the end we missed the point that we should have been concentrating on congregational health instead. Agree or disagree, Tim?
But as for "church being church," I think there is some validity to that. A co-worker of mine who hasn't gone to church regularly in years comes to employee devotions and complains that the songs we're singing aren't "normal chruch songs." We, the insiders, love them. She, who already feels enough like an outsider doesn't know them. Plus, there's no written music to help her to figure out the melody--just a song sheet or powerpoint. I think this is a small example of what Jeff and their priest are getting at.
The problem, I think, is coming up with a middle ground. How do you create a worship service/environment that both acknowledges the culture around you and looks like church?
I've long thought that if you have a congregation that truly loves each other and equally truly loves the lost, that the worhsip form doesn't matter so much. I think McLaren and Bruggemann's point is that people are searching for beauty and that this is something that the church is uniquely equipped to provide. The adventure in missing the point has been in trying to make worship look like MTV when people already have MTV and our version doesn't measure up anyway. I think in worship, people (both Christians and not) are hoping for a non-conjured transcendent experience. In order not to be conjured, this must be more about the source of transcendence than about the form of worship, but is it conceivable that some "seekers" find the overhead projector, young hipster at the mic and the box o joe in the back of the chapel a bit shabby when they were hoping for beauty?
Have we gotten to a place with our worship that it's so esoteric as to not be welcoming to outsiders?
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