Christ-Centered Worship

Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice

Chapell, Bryan

• Editorial: Baker Academic
• Año: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781441210845
• Categoría: Théologie et religion
• Categoría: Rituels et pratiques chrétiens

The church's worship has always been shaped by its understanding of the gospel. Here the bestselling author of Christ-Centered Preaching brings biblical and historical perspective to discussions about worship, demonstrating that the gospel has shaped key worship traditions and should shape today's worship as well. This accessible and engaging book provides the church with a Christ-centered understanding of worship to help it transcend the traditional/contemporary worship debate and unite in ministry and mission priorities. Contemporary believers will learn how to shape their worship based on Christ's ministry to and through them. The book's insights and practical resources for worship planning will be useful to pastors, worship leaders, worship planning committees, missionaries, and worship and ministry students.

Part 1
GOSPEL WORSHIP

1

THE GOSPEL OF STRUCTURE

Structures tell stories. Martin Luther knew this when he designed the first Protestant church in Torgau, Germany. Prior to the construction of this chapel for the castle of Luther’s protector, the Elector John Frederick I, Protestant services were held mainly in churches that were formerly Roman Catholic. The main architectural change that occurred when Protestants took control of such churches was the replacement of a cross on the spire of the church with a rooster, symbol of the new dawn of the Reformation. And it was not rare in the competing tides of Reformation times that if Roman Catholic forces returned to power, they would replace the rooster with another cross.

Each faith movement signaled its control by the changed “hood ornament” most obvious to all in the town or region, but the basic architecture of the church changed little. Thus, when Luther had the opportunity to design a church that would reflect the new perspectives of the Reformation, he made sure that the basic structure of the church would convey the gospel story he wanted to tell. No structural change would have been more obvious to sixteenth-century worshipers than the placement of the pulpit. In deliberate contrast with the Roman Catholic practice of placing the pulpit at the front of the congregation, Luther arranged for the pastor to preach among the people. The pulpit was at the center of the long wall of the worship sanctuary. In addition, the altar, while still located at the front of the church, was no longer separated from the people by screens that had designated sacred space for clergy alone.

Luther preached “the priesthood of believers,” and his structures conveyed the same message. The placement of the pulpit silently explained that the preacher was not more holy than the people. He ministered among them because all were fulfilling holy callings as they served God in the occupations for which he had gifted them. The architecture of the altar “said” there was no need for priestly intercession or separation, since everyone had equal and immediate access to God. The early Calvinistic churches of the French Reformation pushed the idea further by putting the pulpit in the center of a circled congregation.1 This structure not only symbolized the priesthood of believers, but also asserted the centrality of the Word in Christian worship.

Informed, Not Ruled

I do not mention these architectural details in order to mandate designs for church architecture. In fact, the various ways in which the Reformers expressed their views can also argue for the liberties in church architecture that modern Christians have obviously exercised. But such freedom is best applied when we have some sense of the story we are trying to tell, and this requires understanding our place in God’s unfolding plan for his church. We should not ignore the wisdom of church forebears just because it’s old, or automatically reject it just because we didn’t think of it. We consider the history because God does not give all of his wisdom to any one time or people. Slavish loyalty to traditions will keep us from ministering effectively to our generation, but trashing the past entirely denies God’s purposes for the church on which we must build. If we do not learn from the past, we will lose insights God has granted others as they have interacted with his Word and people.

Always we are to be informed by tradition; never are we to be ruled by it. The Word of God is our only infallible rule of faith and practice, but an unwillingness to consider what previous generations have learned about applying God’s Word discloses either naïveté or arrogance. God intends for us to stand on the shoulders of those faithful before us. He gives us a mission for our time, but he also gives us a history to prepare us for our present calling. Without critically and constructively examining this foundation we are ill equipped for building the church God wants today. This is true not only for the structures of church architecture, but also for the structures of church worship.

Designed to Communicate

Just as church leaders through the ages have structured their buildings to reflect their understanding of the gospel, they have also structured what happens inside those buildings to do the same. Already we have seen how the placement of pulpit, altar, and pew could convey a message. What was done in the pulpit, at the altar, and in the pew was also structured to communicate. For example, in the Roman Catholic Mass, the priest stood between the altar and the people when dispensing the elements to symbolize his intercessory role. By contrast, many Protestant Reformers intentionally stood behind the Communion Table when administering the Lord’s Supper to demonstrate the people’s immediate access to Christ.2 The physical placement of the furniture, pastor, and people was designed to communicate a clear gospel message: “Nothing and no one comes between Christ and the believer.”

We may think that “the medium is the message” is a modern insight, but the ancient church practiced such communication principles long before Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase. Church leaders understood that if the message was inconsistent with the means by which it was communicated, then the message could easily get lost. Thus, they painted the message of the gospel with every communication brush their structures would provide: building architecture, decoration, pulpit design, furniture placement, the position of worship leaders, and even the placement of participants in the worship service.

Never was there only one right structure for communicating the gospel for all regions, cultures, and times. Nor was adequate wisdom always applied. Sometimes the truth of the message got lost in embellishment; other times the beauty of the gospel was veiled in reactionary starkness. But in every age, including our own, those who build churches have been forced to consider how their understanding of the gospel gets communicated by the structures in which it is presented.

Gospel Worship

Gospel understanding is not only embedded in physical structures, but it is also communicated in the worship patterns of the church.3 The structure of a church’s worship service is called its liturgy.4 Many Protestants think “liturgy” only describes highly ceremonial worship in Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican churches. We normally talk about our worship in terms of a “Sunday service” or the “worship time.” The activities that surround the Sermon we may describe as the “song service,” “the service of prayer,” or simply as “the worship.” However, the biblical word for all that’s included in our worship is “liturgy” (latreia, see Rom. 12:1), and it simply describes the public way a church honors God in its times of gathered praise, prayer, instruction, and commitment.5 All churches that gather to worship have a liturgy—even if it’s a very simple liturgy.

The customary ways that a church arranges the aspects and components of its public worship form its liturgical tradition. Similar to church architecture, a church’s traditional worship practices can be very elaborate (sometimes called liturgical, or high church) or simple (non-liturgical, or low church). The differences in worship services can be significant, leading many onlookers to think there is no rhyme or reason to the varying liturgical approaches. In this increasingly secularized era, even church leaders may not know why different elements of their worship services are present or sequenced as they are—and may think everything is up for grabs as long as people are not put off by the changes.

But, analogous to church architecture, the order of worship (another way of describing the liturgy) conveys an understanding of the gospel. Whether one intends it or not, our worship patterns always communicate something. Even if one simply goes along with what is either historically accepted or currently preferred, an understanding of the gospel inevitably unfolds. If a leader sets aside time for Confession of Sin6 (whether by prayer, or by song, or by Scripture reading), then something about the gospel gets communicated. If there is no Confession in the course of the service, then something else is communicated—even though the message conveyed may not have been intended.

Similar to church architecture, differing church traditions and cultural contexts have resulted in great variation in the structure of Christian liturgy. But, also similar to the physical structures of the church, where the truths of the gospel are maintained there remain commonalities of worship structure that transcend culture. Despite having great architectural variety, Christian churches still have common denominators: a place to proclaim the Word; a place to gather for prayer, praise, and receiving the Word; a place to administer and receive the sacraments; and others. No one has imposed these architectural features on all churches; rather, the way we dispense, receive, and respond to the gospel in a corporate setting has necessitated these familiar structures. For similar reasons, there are common liturgical structures that transcend individual contexts and traditions.

Gospel Continuity

Liturgy tells a story. We tell the gospel by the way we worship. Where a church maintains the truths of the gospel, it inevitably discovers aspects of worship that are in harmony with other faithful churches. In fact, worshiping with these aspects is one important way a church maintains fidelity with the gospel.

Because they understood the importance of our worship, early church fathers designed an architecture for worship that is still reflected in most churches today. As early as the second century,7 records indicate that the church divided its worship into two major segments: the Liturgy of the Word (see chart 1.1 on page 23) and the Liturgy of the Upper Room (see chart 1.2 on page 24).8 Today we think of the Liturgy of the Word as the portion of the worship service that culminates in preaching. We think of the Liturgy of the Upper Room as the part of the worship service that includes the Lord’s Supper, or Communion. Even if our churches do not practice Communion every week, they still typically break the service into these two major segments on the occasions the ordinance is observed. By moving from Proclamation to Communion in the order of worship, churches through the ages retell the story that those who truly hear God’s Word will share his love.9

My hope in writing this book is that readers who just had an “aha” moment in the preceding paragraph—discovering that their worship pattern unites them with multiple centuries of fellow Christians who have worshiped similarly—will also be delighted to find how their worship can unite them in mission with those fellow believers. In every age, we worship God to further the cause of his gospel. We know the “good news” of that gospel as we recognize the holiness of our Creator, confess our sin, seek his grace, are assured of his mercy, give him thanks, petition his aid, seek his instruction, and, in loving response to all his mercies, live for him. Charts 1.1 and 1.2 (see pages 23–24) show how different church traditions have tried to express these ...