By the Waters of Babylon

Worship in a Post-Christian Culture

Scott Aniol

• Publisher: Kregel Publications
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780825443770
• eBook ISBN: 9780825485824
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

A guide to biblically shaped worship, which has the greatest missional impact in a post-Christian culture By the Waters of Babylon examines a relationship between worship, culture, and evangelism that is centered in a desire for biblical fidelity rather than cultural relevance. Imagine how the Hebrews felt during their years of captivity in Babylon. How could they sing the songs they once sang in the spender of Jerusalem now that they sat in exile? Christian worship in the West faces many of the same challenges as this tragic account of Israel's captivity. By all accounts Christendom is dead, and unbiblical beliefs have progressively permeated Western thought, expectations, and culture.So how should churches respond to this seismic shift in their relationship with an increasingly post-Christian culture while still following the biblical mandate to reach that culture with the gospel of Jesus Christ? By the Waters of Babylon will help Christians wrestle through this critical issue of the relationship between Christian worship and evangelistic witness, especially in the context of an increasingly hostile culture. The author demonstrates that biblically regulated, gospel-shaped corporate worship that communicates God's truth through appropriate cultural forms will have the most missional impact in a post-Christian context.

chapter 1

WE SAT DOWN AND WEPT:
PROBLEMS FOR WORSHIP IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

By the waters of Babylon,

there we sat down and wept,

when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there

we hung up our lyres.

For there our captors

required of us songs,

and our tormentors, mirth, saying,

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How shall we sing the LORD’s song

in a foreign land?

Psalm 137:1–4

Imagine how they felt. For four hundred years, ever since King Solomon finished building the grand Temple in Jerusalem, the Israelites had enjoyed free and rich worship in their land. David had successfully defeated most of Israel’s enemies, he had made all the preparations for the Temple and the worship to take place there, and under Solomon’s reign the kingdom flourished.

On the day of the Temple dedication many years ago, hundreds of Levitical singers joined with 120 trumpeters in the Temple courts as they made themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord: “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever” (2 Chron. 5:13). And ever since then, elaborate rituals of worship according to God’s instructions took place there for the benefit of all the people.

Yet false worship from the pagan nations crept into the land, and as a direct result of this terrible breach of God’s law, the kingdom split in two. Even then, faithful Israelites were able to worship God freely, and regular Temple practices continued.

That all changed in the early sixth century BC. Nebuchadnezzar swept into the land, and after several defeats and deportations, he finally destroyed Jerusalem, including its magnificent Temple. The Israelites now found themselves in a strange land. They no longer had their own culture, protected from foreign influence. They no longer had the Ark of the Covenant, their altars, or their Temple. They no longer had their worship.

Imagine how they felt. How could they take up their lyres and sing the songs they once sang in the splendor of that great city? How could they worship their God according to his instructions when they didn’t have the tools he required? How could they rejoice in his steadfast love when they were surrounded by their enemies? They were captives in Babylon; they had no reason to sing.

Instead, they sat down and wept.

Although the circumstances are certainly not exactly parallel, Christian worship in the West faces many of the same challenges as this tragic account of Israel’s captivity. Emperor Constantine’s legalization of Christianity in AD 313, and especially the establishment of Nicene Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire by Theodosius I in 380, created the conditions for what has come to be called Christendom—the union of church and state in the West such that Christianity and the West became almost synonymous. In fact, many of these early religious leaders envisioned Christendom as the New Israel, erecting ornate sanctuaries and altars, establishing a priesthood, and developing elaborate worship liturgies reminiscent of the Hebrew worship of old.

This situation persisted for hundreds of years, and while it was theologically problematic and led to many errors that resulted in need for Reformation, in the kind providence of God it did create some benefits. The most significant of these is likely the fact that free worship of the true God was permitted and even expected across the empire. The fruit of these freedoms is particularly evident in the Reformation worship traditions. With significant theological errors confronted, Reformation traditions of various stripes were enabled to perpetuate free and open God-centered, Bible-saturated worship.

Yet once again God’s people were taken captive. This time, however, the invasion was not by a pagan nation but by secular philosophies, ideas that questioned the supernatural and placed their trust fully in human autonomy and reason. These influential philosophies had begun to emerge much earlier, but during the eighteenth century they came to dominate thought in the West, putting to an end the impact Christian worship had enjoyed for hundreds of years.

The people of God once again found themselves in a strange land. But this time, many of them didn’t even notice.

Such is the context for what I address in this book. By all accounts Christendom is dead, and unbiblical beliefs have progressively permeated western thought, expectations, and culture. So how should churches respond to this seismic shift in their relationship to an increasingly post-Christian culture?

This question has been answered in several different ways in recent years: First, some churches continue to practice Christendom-shaped worship and completely ignore the unbelieving world around them. Churches were lulled into passivity during Christendom since everyone attended church, and thus failure to recognize the death of Christendom has left many churches impotent in their mission to evangelize the nations.

On the other hand, some churches have recognized their need to reach unbelievers with the gospel, yet they continue to operate with Christendom methods by expecting unbelievers to come to them. The church growth movement followed this pattern by insisting that a church’s primary service should be an evangelistic meeting designed to attract and meet the needs of “seekers.” This perspective drew fire from some who argued that this ignores worship altogether, others who complained that believers were not discipled, and still others who claimed that this “attractional” model of evangelism just did not work.

Yet in the past twenty years a new movement has emerged in evangelical Christianity that has reshaped the conversation in subtle yet profound ways by suggesting that the two priorities of worship and mission are not separate but in fact essentially connected, subsumed under the umbrella of the mission of God. Recognizing both the death of Christendom and the biblical necessity of reaching the unbelieving world, this missional church movement has significantly altered discourse about evangelism and worship, influencing evangelical churches with both a new posture toward culture in general and a new vocabulary regarding every aspect of its existence.

Missional? Emergent? Emerging? What?

If you are an evangelical Christian, chances are you’ve heard the term “missional.” Perhaps you’ve used it yourself! Yet since many different kinds of churches use the term to describe often quite divergent philosophies, the term itself can be misleading. As Alan Hirsch notes,

However, the word missional has tended, over the years, to become very fluid, and it was quickly co-opted by those wishing to find new and trendy tags for what they were doing, be they missional or not. It is often used as a substitute for seeker-sensitive, cell-group church, or other church growth concepts, thus obscuring its original meaning.¹

As a result, many different groups have adopted the term even though they may share little more with each other than a desire to reach the lost.

A second and related challenge is that the idea of missional is strongly associated with the infamous “emergent church” movement. While true that those in the emergent church do share with the missional church movement an impulse to engage the culture with the gospel, they do not necessarily share a common definition of gospel. For example, Mark Driscoll, an early emergent leader who has since repudiated what he sees as doctrinal heterodoxy in the movement,² is quick to distinguish between emerging and emergent:

The emerging church is a broad term referring to a wide variety of evangelicals seeking to be the missional church. In contrast, Emergent is an organization promoting a more theologically liberal and non-evangelical version of the missional church that often does not even meet the definition of a church. . . .³

He acknowledges the confusion with the terms, however, which reveals the connection between emerging, emergent, and missional:

Over the years, I and others have attempted to explain the difference between the emerging church and the Emergent Village (or emergent church). Despite our best efforts, the terms are so similar that they understandably cause confusion for those unfamiliar with them. Because of this confusion and ambiguity, some have moved away from using the terms emerging or emergent. I prefer to use the term missional to describe those who want the church to be a missionary in culture. Some people use the term emerging church as synonymous with missional church, but for others, emerging church is synonymous with emergent. I believe that when the question on which this chapter is based [What can traditional or established churches learn from “emerging churches”?] refers to “emerging churches,” it means “missional churches.” The Emergent Village is a liberal subset of the missional church.⁴

A final challenge is the association of missional with liberal theology and the social gospel. As is clear from the history of the missional movement, this association has legitimate grounding due to the prevalence of these two theological priorities among those who initiated the ideas embedded in missional. However, leaders in the conservative evangelical missional church movement explicitly repudiate what they consider unbiblical extensions of the missional impulse, including a redefinition of gospel that limits it to social action only.

So allow me to define what I mean by “missional” in this book. My focus is primarily on the conservative evangelical North American missional church movement that traces its philosophy to Lesslie Newbigin and the Gospel and Our Culture Network.

In order to clarify definitions and distinguish themselves from other groups that claim the title of “missional,” several conservative evangelical missional leaders joined forces in April of 2011 to frame a “Missional Manifesto” with the purpose of articulating core ideas underlying the term “missional” and urging evangelicals to live in light of these ideas.⁵ The framers of this document are Ed Stetzer, Alan Hirsch, Tim Keller, Dan Kimball, Eric Mason, J. D. Greear, Craig Ott, Linda Bergquist, Philip Nation, and Brad Andrews. When I talk about being “missional” in this book, I am referring primarily to the manifestation of missional ideas represented by groups who identify with the doctrinal core and missional characteristics of this Missional Manifesto.

Is the Missional Answer Right?

Missional ideas have come to saturate almost every sphere of evangelicalism in recent years. For example, the use of the term missional, as opposed to missions or missionary, is growing quickly across various evangelical groups. David Bosch wro...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Chapter 1. We sat down and wept: Problems for worship in the twenty-first century
• Chapter 2. Exile in Babylon: Missional Answers to post-christendom ministry
• Chapter 3. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
• Chapter 4. Singing the songs of babylon: A History of contextualization
• Chapter 5. Hanging lyres or building houses: Evaluation of approaches to culture
• Chapter 6. Songs, Houses, and Gardens: What is culture, anyway?
• Chapter 7. Language, Literature, and The King’s meat: A biblical model for cultural engagement
• Chapter 8. Future Hope: Worship in the Heavenly Jerusalem
• Chapter 9. Zion’s song
• Chapter 10. For thus says the Lord: Who Regulates Worship?
• Chapter 11. The Lord’s song in a foreign land
• Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover