Sent and Gathered (Engaging Worship)

A Worship Manual for the Missional Church

Schmit, Clayton J.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781441205223
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Rituale & Praktiken

Historic changes are occurring in the convergence of worship styles throughout the Christian church. Christians across the theological spectrum are seeking to learn from their own tradition's roots and from the liturgical expressions of believers in other times and places. Here worship expert Clayton Schmit examines worship in church settings around the globe and provides a practical manual for shaping liturgies that are informed by and relevant to contemporary missional contexts. The book broadens current ecumenical worship conversations, reveals insights drawn from the church at worship in the world, and argues for a common understanding of a theology of worship.

PART
One

Worship and the
Mission of God

1

Foundations

The missio Dei is God’s revelation of God’s self as irrevocably bound to this world. It is about God’s own passionate desire, which will not be frustrated, to move more and more into the world and more and more into each human heart.1

Michael Aune

As we begin this conversation, we need to establish the foundations our thought is based on. For this, I will identify the four common building blocks that give worship its shape. Second, I will place before us the vocabulary for worship that will be used throughout the book. Finally, I will consider the missional character of the church in the twenty-first century, the church whose worship we seek to inform.

The Fourfold Common Pattern for Worship

The church in North America is enjoying a period of increasing liturgical convergence. Not long ago, there was frequent and heated discussion about the so-called worship wars, where the liturgical practices of traditional churches were challenged by those employing various forms of contemporary worship.2 Now, as the smoke from the battlefield clears, we find that people are attempting to learn from one another: traditionally liturgical churches are adopting contemporary modes of liturgical expression from megachurches; megachurches and emerging church networks are embracing the use of arts in worship; all churches are exploring ways to use media, moving images, and technology in worship and ministry; and the worlds of the evangelical and free churches are embracing once-eschewed patterns of formal liturgy. In part, this comes as the fruit of a longstanding movement toward liturgical renewal.3 This convergence also results from the desire among churches of many kinds to accept some of the gifts of postmodern culture: renewed interest in symbol and mystery, emphasis on personal experience, capacity for instantaneous worldwide communication, eclecticism, a search for authenticity, and so forth. The result of this confluence of liturgical streams is that many churches are settling on a shared but broadly construed pattern of worship that will be familiar to those who worship within traditional liturgical settings.

The pattern that is being widely embraced emerges from the fact that when the people of God assemble, they do so as a local configuration of the body of Christ. This makes gathering a key feature of any form of worship. When assembled, the people of God gather around the traditional Christian symbols and their related liturgical actions, Word and sacrament.4 Having been gathered and fed by fellowship, Scripture, and sacramental practices (or remembrances), God’s people of every denomination and tradition are sent forth at the close of worship, dispersing back into the communities where they live and work. This increasingly accepted liturgical format is identified in four movements: gathering, Word, sacraments, sending.5 Graham Hughes gives this description of the recent trend toward liturgical unity:

Across the remarkable proliferation of new orders of service in western Christianity through the concluding decades of the twentieth century—as a response to, and manifestation of, the so-called Liturgical Movement in western churches—there is an equally remarkable uniformity, both in their basic, and in their more detailed, structures. They are commonly arranged in four components: an opening or introductory rite, followed by what is called the Service of the Word, a rite for the celebration [of] the Eucharist, and a “dismissal” or “sending” rite. The term ordo is sometimes invoked for this near universal “shape of the liturgy.”6

It may seem bold to claim that this pattern or ordo is common to most Christian traditions of worship. The claim may be especially suspicious to those in free churches. Yet when one analyzes the shape of worship in most traditions (setting aside typical Quaker worship, which gathers, prays, and leaves in silence), the pattern holds. Even churches whose worship derives from frontier revival meetings are characterized by rites of assembly, proclamation of and response to the Word, at least occasional sacramental action or remembrance, and songs and rites of dispersal.7 The sacramental portions may not always fall in the traditional place, but nearly all churches celebrate baptisms and communions in some form.8

While this common pattern for worship is useful insofar as it brings a layer of unity to the Christian church that is welcome after as much as a half century of division over musical and worship idioms, it does not automatically solve all worship problems and does not guarantee that worship will necessarily unfold in a way that is conducive to the mission of God. Some people have voiced challenges to the idea of a common order of worship. Interestingly, they come chiefly from those who most appreciate its value and are sensitive about overstating its usefulness. Lutheran liturgical theologian Gordon Lathrop, who says that “we may call this simple and widely affirmed pattern ‘the ecumenical ordo,’” is aware of a number of concerns arising from postmodern thought: “For one thing, there is the question, ‘Whose ordo?’ That is, what communities in fact follow this pattern? But also, who gains power by the privileging of this pattern?” Second, Lathrop admits to the possibility that this generally useful pattern for worship may be “painted with too broad a brush,” that it may be “only applicable in some places,” and that it might be nothing more than “a mental construct forced upon the actual facts,” an “unwarranted ‘meta-narrative’ intending to indicate a widespread similarity of practice where none exists.” His most searching question is this: “How does ordo avoid becoming ideology?” These questions remain sensitive to what goes on in local worshiping communities, “to the local particularities and the locally thick and thin moments” of Christian worship.9

In response to these worthy challenges to the claim that there is such a thing as a common pattern that is ecumenically pertinent, Lathrop concludes:

Indeed, the postmodern challenges may help us to treasure the ecumenical ordo the more, especially when it is noted that an open meeting around a multivalent pool, around an interesting set of words and around an inviting supper is not, in the first place, designed to compel [usage]. Healthy liturgy, focused on strong central signs and not individual personal decisions, makes a way of ever deeper significance available to its participants, but it also lets those participants be free.10

Michael Aune also observes that there are a couple of problems associated with the way this fourfold pattern relates to a church’s pattern of ministry. For one, we may be sent out for mission at the end of a service, but “most likely once the liturgy has ended, we go downstairs to the coffee hour instead.”11 The second and larger problem, Aune notes, is that when we are sent forth from worship to ministry in the world, the sending can carry a tone of agenda that might be at odds with God’s purpose. This has “the potential result that the missio Dei, what God is doing in the world, has been subsumed under our own agendas.” Still, Aune, a liturgical theologian doing work on worship and mission, argues that we need to shape our worship rituals with “considerable care and attention—not for the sake of exhibiting some flawless [ritual or ritualizing] technique, but for the sake of evoking an ongoing recognition of God’s presence and activity in the world.”12

The liturgical convergence that is characterized by this fourfold construction brings a welcome respite after years of warring over liturgical idioms and music. Churches of many denominations and traditions find it useful to craft their liturgies with these four movements clearly marked.13 Whether traditionally ordered or free, richly figured or spare, the pattern provides for worship that has a reasoned sense of plot and flow. The gathering, whether it contains a single entrance hymn or a twenty-minute set of songs, draws the people together in the place and moment of corporate worship. Assembled, they hear the Word of God read and proclaimed, increasingly through the use of arts. The sermon and/or artistic proclamation of the Word bring the assembly to a liturgical culmination. When the sacraments or ordinances are celebrated, a second climax is attained.14 The sending is the liturgical denouement.

Each of these liturgical actions has its own power and purpose. What I seek to demonstrate in this book is that whereas the final movement, the sending, is often considered to be the least important part of worship, it has the potential to connect the hour of Sunday worship to the rest of the work we do as Christians in our daily lives of witness and service.15 This will be the subject of chapter 2.

Our conversation about the common patterns of worship will relate principally to the ecumenical ordo described above. But there are other aspects of ecumenical practice that will come under consideration as we proceed. Among them are the liturgical qualities of time and space.

Liturgical Time and Space

Even though some churches disregard much of the church calendar, all communities of faith acknowledge the need for Sabbath, a common day (whether it is Saturday or Sunday) for worship. Most acknowledge at least two liturgical seasons, Christmas and Easter. There are many more days and seasons that can be observed, and some faith traditions adhere strictly to a full structuring of liturgical time. Monastic communities still pray the daily hours in addition to celebrating weekly and seasonal observances. For some faith communities, daily, yearly, and three-year lectionaries guide the use of biblical texts in worship. The use of the liturgical calendar and both the values and problems relating to the use of lectionaries will be addressed in part 2 of this book.

There is also some level of ecumenical agreement as to the shaping of liturgical space. Generally, we establish our assembly seating before or around a pulpit, a table, and perhaps a baptismal font or pool. The ways that space communicates, facilitates, and sometimes dominates worship will also be discussed in part 2.

Rehabilitating Our Vocabulary

One of the most taxing issues in liturgical studies in recent years has been developing a meaningful vocabulary with which to discuss the range of worship practices today. Some old terms, such as ritual, rubric, and liturgy, have been so closely associated with medieval Roman Catholic worship or its contemporary cousins that they have been eschewed by those in free church traditions. Meanwhile, terms like contemporary and blended worship have been so widely used that there is little agreement as to what they mean. What passes as contemporary in some places incorporates music and forms that are anachronistic by a quarter century. What appears as blended worship in one place may pass as a traditional liturgy in another. As we begin, it is necessary to identify the terms that will be used in this discussion and those that, for the sake of clarity, will be avoided.

Sidebar 1.1: The One, the Few, and the Many

Who is present for worship? Those who assemble are the body of Christ, made up of people with differing roles and varying degrees of spiritual engagement. They are the many who come to participate in the songs and prayer, listen to the Word as read and preached, give assent to the community’s place in baptism, be nourished by the Eucharist, and be sent out into service to Christ. Among them may be both the initiated and those inquiring into the faith; some, spiritually mature and well versed in the local patterns unfolding about them; others, newly initiated and still learning the forms, songs, and patterns of prayer. They will be people diverse in age, culture, and circumstance.

Also present are the few with specialized roles. They may be people in the choir. . . . They may also include the trained laypeople who perform the ministerial functions of canting, accompanying music, reading Scripture, leading in prayer, and serving as acolytes, banner bearers, and crucifers. In more central roles, there are usually the preaching minister and the presiding minister. . . .

These are the constituency of worship, people who are present to one another as the community of faith. But the list is incomplete, for they cannot gather as the people of faith unless the center and focus of that faith is also present. Worship cannot be godly, or God-pleasing, unless it is the gathering of God’s people in the presence of God. Christian worship is the assembly and active participation of the many, the few, and the One.

Clayton J. Schmit, Too Deep for Words: A Theology
of Liturgical Expression (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 2002), 27–28.

Worship and Worship Leader

We start wit...