A growing Anglican church has a lot of evangelicals to educate in the basics of liturgy. Rev. Eric Dudley is a wonderful preacher and a fine teacher. In this presentation, he takes an hour to guide you through the basics of Anglican liturgy. Many of you in the IM audience will learn a tremendous amount about the larger, deeper tradition in the Anglican and Episcopal churches. Listen to his explanation of not being “sermon centered” and what is an “Anglican altar call.”

The Nuts and Bolts of Anglican Liturgy from St. Peter's Anglican Church on Vimeo.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
Rev. Joe Boysel is an Anglican (AMiA) priest and professor of Bible at Ohio Christian University in Circleville, Ohio. (Ask him about famous alumni.)
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction.
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.
And we have a new gangsta! Eric Landry is the editor of Modern Reformation Magazine. In addition, he is a PCA church planter in southern California. (Now all the Presbyterians can stop writing me.)

Here’s this week’s question: How does the Hymnal function in your tradition? How does it affect your version of Christianity?

Father Ernesto/Orthodox: The idea of a hymnal has never been part of Orthodox tradition. But, musical composition has been a very strong part of Orthodox worship. We have centuries of musical composition with notables such as PyotrIlyich Tchaikovsky among them.It is important to remember that for many centuries Orthodoxy did not have the capability of printing hymnals or any such equivalent. In the Muslim countries the printing of items such as Bibles, hymnbooks, and educational material has been highly restricted, regardless of what one might read in Muslim apologetic literature. In Russia, literacy was not a high priority. As a result, people tended to learn by rote memory the hymns that were sung in their particular part of Orthodox musical tradition.

Today, because of immigration into the USA and because of the ability of the Internet to disseminate information, there is a much wider availability of various musical forms than there has been in the past for Orthodoxy. So, Orthodoxy is just catching up to a musical variety that has been available to Western Christianity for many centuries. There are now new composers composing Western-style music in the USA, and other countries. Even so, individual churches do not tend to publish hymnals as there is not that much variety present in Orthodox worship. The words remain the same though the melody changes.

As well, Orthodox worship tended to develop a rotating series of eight “tones” that rotate through the Liturgy. Thus, all Orthodox worship has to obey a series of rules that govern our chanting through a procession of eight “tones” that place parameters on the composition of our music.

Thus, we place limits on our music, parameters within which our composition must function. At the same time, this still allows a lot of room for composition. Because of our various ethnic backgrounds, that room for composition has some ethnic limits, but it is diminishing more and more. Perhaps we will develop full hymnals some day. But, for now, we still function with memory and a limited repertoire.

Matthew Johnson/United Methodist: I’m sure we’ll hear from Matthew shortly, as soon as he finishes tuning his guitar.

Methodists have a hymnal that is about 1/10 the size of the hymns written by Charles Wesley alone.

Joe Boysel/Anglican: Anglicans have a hymnal, too. I own one. But now that the Anglican communion is split, we may need to appoint a committee to divide the hymnal.

Many Anglican hymns involve alcohol or are best sung after being involved with alcohol. It makes it hard to know what “this song needs a fifth” actually means. The hymnal committee in the Anglican Church has been known to exhibit very strange behavior after midnight.

We’ll hear from Joe and Matthew shortly.

Alan Creech/Roman Catholic: “The hymnal” huh – my answer will undoubtedly be the shortest of this Gangsta go-round. I speak from within the Catholic tradition, in the United States, as a 42 year old man. I am not a liturgist, or a music minister. As I have observed things from within, it doesn’t seem the Priest has much to do, most generally speaking, with what music is chosen for the Mass. That’s somebody else’s job. So, me not being a Priest isn’t likely to effect my answer here. I’ll do what I can…

So – first, which hymnal? There is a general group of songs in the back of the Missal which are a combination of old, traditional Catholic hymns/songs and newer hymns/songs, categorized by subject usually. There are hymns proper for use during the Eucharistic liturgy. There are Marian hymns for her feast days. There are lots and lots of general hymns about general Christian Truths and God’s Grace (believe it or not), etc., etc. But here’s the thing, we don’t sing them. Wait now – I’m talkin’ U.S. here and of course there will be different experiences, but there is not a lot of robust hymn singing in Masses that I’ve ever seen. You’re lucky if you look around and notice 50% of a congregation singing anything.

Singing, then, I gather, is not a huge deal in the Catholic arena. As you may know, there is a Mass every day in most parishes, sometimes (as in ours) twice a day. Very commonly at these daily Masses there is no singing at all – no hymns that is. And for most who go to Mass during the week, this is fine. We’re not going there to sing. We’re going for “the Mass” – the Word and the Eucharist. It seems the same general idea is there during the Sunday Mass, and therefore, singing hymns is not really treated as central at all.

This is very interesting when you think about how bent out of shape some people get about certain hymn writers and types of music in the Catholic world. It can get ugly. I don’t pay tons of attention to it – some, but not tons. I like traditional hymns with deep theology in them. But I don’t need to be taught theology through a hymn. I also like good, basic “worship music” – that’ll go over around here like a lead balloon, but hey, what’s new? In the Mass we attend, there is likely to be more music with a Vineyard or Maranatha, or even Chris Thomlin trademark than anything else – and I like it. It’s a good mix. It helps me in my participation.

So – all in all – “the hymnal” isn’t as big a deal in Catholic circles as it is in Protestant – doesn’t seem like to me at all. It’s there and it can be helpful or it can possibly hinder, but the central thing is the central thing. Personally, I’m pretty eclectic as far as music styles are concerned, or even song types. I can value the content and purpose of different kinds of music and hymns/songs. It causes me much less consternation than I imagine a lot of people go through in this area. OK, this is longer than I expected. And I’m not ready for the onslaught at all, so you know, I beg thee, be thou chilled.

Wyman Richardson/Southern Baptist: I daresay that Southern Baptists have learned more theology (or purported theology) from the Baptist hymnal than they have from any intentional study of God’s word. I say that because ours is a tradition tragically mired in a high degree of biblical illiteracy but a tradition that still, in most cases, uses the Baptist hymnal. So it is probably not unfair to say that most Baptists learn the Bible second-hand through the hymnal.

The hymn book itself is revered as an almost sacred object in many Baptist churches. It’s right up there with the pulpit, the communion table, and the baptistry in terms of physical objects that the church would refuse to part with. I fully understand I am speaking of the average, traditional SBC church here. Obviously, there are many Baptist churches that have moved away from hymnals, maybe especially younger churches and church plants.

The hymnal is also one of the very few components of SBC worship that ties it in with post-apostolic Christian history. Albeit, as a result, the average Baptist knows more Fanny Crosby than St. Augustine and more Charles Wesley than than Irenaeus, but this is not an insignificant contribution. In a church climate of historical amnesia and neophilia, these participations with the great cloud of historic witnesses is refreshing and encouraging.

In my church, the hymnal exerts a profound influence on worship and spirituality. On worship because it is an expected and non-negotiable presence in each worship service. If I sound unhappy about that, please know that I am not. I love the hymnal and the singing of hymns and would reject any proposal to discard them.

The hymnal exerts a profound impact on spirituality for the reasons listed above: their omnipresence in traditional Baptist life.

The hymnal is, in my estimation, a positive in Baptist life. To be sure, the theology in a few of these hymns is suspect, and faithful leaders will steer clear of these hymns. But, on the whole, the Baptist hymnal has served for years and years as an overall faithful expression of Christian piety and conviction.

I close by noting an interesting little line I noticed on the inside of one of the more recent Jars of Clay cd’s. It may have been their hymns cd, I don’t remember. It said simply, “Save The Hymnals!”

And to that I say, “Amen!”

William Cwirla/Lutheran: It warms my heart to see the word “hymnal” used rather than “hymnbook” or “songbook.” In the Lutheran tradition, the hymnal is much more than a collection of hymns. It is also a liturgical book and a prayer book. Many Lutheran hymnals also include the Small Catechism and other catechetical resources, making the hymnal a teaching book as well.

Traditionally, the Lutheran hymnal is the “third book” of Lutheran piety and devotion, next to the Holy Scriptures and the Book of Concord (the Lutheran confessions) which together comprise Lutheran tradition. The hymnal puts into practice what is believed, taught, and confessed from the Holy Scriptures. It is the worship that corresponds our doctrine, the lex orandi of our lex credendi, though not to the same extent as the Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican Church.

In Lutheran churches, hymnals have a quasi-official status and are approved for use by our body of churches. You can see this practice already in the 17th century Lutheran church orders which spelled out in considerable detail what hymns and liturgical materials were to be used in the territorial churches. Having served on the liturgy subcommittee of Lutheran Service Book (2006), I can attest that the production of a hymnal is no small undertaking with several layers of review and approval. Lutherans take their hymnal very seriously.

I must note by way of “truth in advertising” that the concept of a normative “hymnal” seems to be waning in some Lutheran congregations. The Lutheran understanding of “adiaphora” (that is, those things neither commanded nor forbidden in the Scriptures) lends to freedom in matters of worship. The influence of American Evangelicalism on Lutheran worship has also been considerable, introducing revival forms of worship not indigenous to Lutheranism. Rare is the Lutheran congregation today that does not offer some kind of non-hymnal based “contemporary service.” This is the on-going tension and struggle in the Lutheran version of the “worship wars.” To what extent are we willing to forego outward unity in worship for the sake of what we perceive to be relevant, contextual, or meaningful to the unchurched? The debate continues.

On our hymnal committee we wondered aloud whether we were writing the last Lutheran hymnal. With the push toward greater use of electronic media in the church, a bound book of hymns, prayers, and rites may well be on the fast track to obsolescence. Even LSB comes in an “electronic edition.”

In my grandparents’ generation, everyone had their own copy of the hymnal which they brought to church with them as dutifully as Baptists bring their Bibles. The hymnal resided in the home. In my parents’ generation, the hymnal moved to the pew rack in the church. Tomorrow’s hymnal will likely reside on a computer disk, if it indeed exists at all. What effect this will have on Lutheran piety and practice remains to be seen.

Eric Landry, PCA Presbyterian: Presbyterians are a conflicted lot when it comes to the use of hymns and hymnals. One on side of the question are our strict Regulative Principle of Worship brothers who only sing the Psalms. On the other side are some congregations in my own denomination (the Presbyterian Church in America) who wouldn’t even cop to having a hymnal! [I'm always amazed at how we can be such a small percentage of the Christian population at large and still be so diverse in our practice.]

Our denominational hymnal, which we share with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, is called the Trinity Hymnal. It was compiled in 1990 and certainly represents a more evangelical flavor than the original 1961 version, which is preferred by some more-traditional congregations in both denominations. Both hymnals include a number of Psalm-settings, reflecting our tradition’s history of Psalm singing. The Trinity Psalter, a companion to the hymnal, was published in 1994 and is popular among newly reforming churches because it pairs its metrical versions of the psalms to fairly well-known hymn tunes, making it a little easier for hymn-singers to start singing Psalms.

Having a hymnal and using a hymnal are two different things, of course. Among our most broadly evangelical churches (where “worship” is a noun and refers strictly to the music, as in, “sweet worship today, man”), the hymnal is left in a closet to be taken out for the odd funeral. But that doesn’t mean they don’t sing the hymns. PCA folks like Kevin Twit with Reformed University Fellowship and Matthew Smith of Indelible Grace are setting old and forgotten hymn-texts to new tunes and those hymns are now being rediscovered in churches that had nearly lost touch with their history. I would go so far as to say that among the pastors I know who are under-40 in the PCA, these newer hymns comprise the bulk of what the congregation sings in their public worship services. There is a grass-roots feel to this renewal movement as musicians in local congregation like my own are adding their own compositions to the mix. Each church is functioning as a sort of lab to test whether or not any given tune or text can stand the test of time and be added to future compilations of hymns.

So, a number of churches in my tradition are still singing or are rediscovering the hymns. But not everyone is using a physical hymnal to do it. For some of us church-planters, hauling in 50-100 hymnals every week isn’t an attractive option and so we project the hymns or reprint them in our bulletins. Among established churches, the hymnal can still be found sitting underneath the pew in front of you. And the best pastors and musicians in all situations are intentionally choosing hymns that relate to the sermon text for that morning, while also working to expand the congregation’s familiarity with the hymns through such things as hymns of the month.

Whether one cracks open a book, sings off a projected image on the wall, or prints everything in a bulletin, it seems to me that the local church should strive to find and sing songs of many different ages and eras. The modern church needs to be able to sing God’s praises with Christians throughout history. Practically this means that in my congregation we sing hymns, biblical psalms, contemporary songs, and new tunes to old songs. This balance reminds us that we stand in the stream of historic Christian worship, a stream that is still flowing with praises to God.

Welcome to IM’s popular feature, “The Liturgical Gangstas,” a panel discussion among different liturgical traditions represented in the Internet Monk audience.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
We have a new Gangsta! Rev. Joe Boysel is an Anglican (AMiA) priest and professor of Bible at Ohio Christian University in Circleville, Ohio. (Ask him about famous alumni.)
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction.
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: Would you use projection technology in worship? How, why or why not? (Limits and reasons iows) How do you approach the overall use of technology in worship in a way that’s helpful, and not either use it willy nilly or oppose it for no reason other than nostalgia?

Father Ernesto/Orthodox: None of the major Orthodox jurisdictions allow the use of projection technology in worship. Most Orthodox parishes sing/chant a capella. The overwhelming number of Russian Orthodox parishes do not even have pews. Almost all Orthodox parishes have at least one candle that is a floating wick candle that burns olive oil. We still tend to used “dipped” candles (beeswax) for our “offering” candles rather than molded paraffin candles.

At the same time, our parishes will use amplification (mikes, amplifiers, speakers). Some of our parishes will use piano and/or organ. We will use some directed lighting and will use adjustable lights.

So, why do we use amplification, but not instruments? Why do we use so many icons but do not use overhead projection?

It may surprise you that the addition of instruments to worship is much later than people realize.
AQUINAS “Our church does not use musical instruments, as harps and psalteries, to praise God withal, that she may not seem to Judaize.” (Thomas Aquinas, Bingham’s Antiquities, Vol. 3, page 137)

AUGUSTINE “musical instruments were not used. The pipe, tabret, and harp here associate so intimately with the sensual heathen cults, as well as with the wild revelries and shameless performances of the degenerate theater and circus, it is easy to understand the prejudices against their use in the worship.” (Augustine 354 A.D., describing the singing at Alexandria under Athanasius, yes THAT Athanasius.)

ERASMUS “We have brought into our churches certain operatic and theatrical music; such a confused, disorderly chattering of some words as I hardly think was ever in any of the Grecian or Roman theatres. The church rings with the noise of trumpets, pipes, and dulcimers; and human voices strive to bear their part with them. Men run to church as to a theatre, to have their ears tickled. And for this end organ makers are hired with great salaries, and a company of boys, who waste all their time learning these whining tones.” (Erasmus, Commentary on 1 Corinthians 14:19)

The Introduction Of The Organ Among The Baptist. This instrument, which from time immemorial has been associated with cathedral pomp and prelatical power, and has always been the peculiar favorite of great national churches, at length found its way into Baptist sanctuaries, and the first one ever employed by the denomination in this country, and probably in any other, might have been standing in the singing gallery of the Old Baptist meeting house in Pawtucket, about forty years ago, where I then officiated as pastor (1840) … Staunch old Baptists in former times would as soon tolerated the Pope of Rome in their pulpits as an organ in their galleries, and yet the instrument has gradually found its way among them…. How far this modern organ fever will extend among our people, and whether it will on the whole work a RE- formation or DE- formation in their singing service, time will more fully develop.” (Benedict, Baptist historian, Fifty Years Among Baptist, page 204-207).

Clement of Rome stated that God much preferred the “strings” of the tongue to the strings of the lyre. That is, the Orthodox attitude has not changed from the Fathers of the East and the West, nor from the opinion of the Calvinist Covenanters, nor from the opinion of the early American Baptists. We see instruments as detracting from the much better sound of human voices raised in praise, even if those voices do not do musically as well as instruments. Instruments all too often detract from worship and discourage the congregation from praising God.

Amplification is OK, because it helps us to better hear the various leaders of the Liturgy and helps us to better hear the choir and to follow them (though most often choirs are not miked). Directed and adjustable lighting helps us to better see the service or to adjust the lighting in the church as is appropriate during certain times–for instance, the old directions were that candles were not to be lit until a certain point in the service, adjustable lighting can give the same effect.

Overhead projection seems to us to take our concentration away from the service and put it on a projected page. We still encourage people to put any liturgy books down and go by memory, just listening to the rolling words of the Liturgy and joining in as appropriate. Mind you, we do have Liturgy books, but they do not tend to pull the attention away from worship the way that an overhead projector does.

So, what is the rule of thumb? We can use those technologies that enhance our human voice, that enhance our understanding of the words of the Liturgy, that enhance what is present without turning it into a performance. It is performance art that we wish to avoid, not technology.

Matthew Johnson/United Methodist: The church I serve started using projection technology in our worship services before I arrived here and we continue to use it in both of our services – one contemporary and one traditional. Our worship space isn’t very big so we have one screen to the right of the chancel area that receives it’s image from a projector in the back of the room. Two weeks ago, I mounted another projector on our sound booth and it shines up on a white wall behind the booth so that the praise team and choir can see what was going on when we played video or displayed images. We will be moving into a new building in September and will have roughly the same set up.

My main goal in using technology in either service is to make sure people do not notice it. Sure, they know it’s there – they read announcements, they sing the words we project – but I try to make sure they aren’t thinking about it. The reasons people usually notice and think about the images on the screen are misspellings, out of order slides, upside down images, and other mistakes. When our images and the operation of the presentation are without error, people use the screen but do not notice it.

I’m probably the odd duck among preachers in my age group (I’m 32) as I do not use our presentation software (MediaShout) to it’s full potential in my sermons. I do not do slides of my sermon points. I do not use video. I rarely use images and when I do it’s usually a map or a picture I took while in Israel to help people see the places I’m talking about in a sermon. Some one will occasionally ask me why not and I usually reply like this: “I hope I’m not subtracting from what you might learn or experience in worship because I do not use video, text, or pictures in my sermons. My main reason for not using those things is because I grew up in front of the television. I grew up playing video games. I’m on the computer all the time. I watch movies, presentations, and all kinds of media. Almost all of my seminary profs used PowerPoint and I’m numb to it. I don’t use media in my preaching because it distracts me and when I’m distracted I don’t look people in the eye, I don’t engage in non-verbal communication very well, and I become a distracted communicator. That’s not what I desire.” Even if a person would rather I use media, they have respected my position and preaching is the only time during the service in which we do not use media. (I have our computer tech leave the sermon title on the screen).

As a short aside, I do project the Bible readings because the pew Bibles are NRSV and I have found preaching from the NLT to be much more helpful. And folks really do read the words while I read them aloud. Hopefully the Word sinks in more!

Although I do not find presentation helpful in preaching, there are a number of places in which our projection technology is helpful. Before a service starts, we cycle through the weekly announcements. Judging from the communication survey our church just completed, many of our folks pay more attention to that than they do our bulletin. Instead of waiting for every one to reach for their hymnals and turn to number 880, we can put the Nicene Creed up on the screen and everyone can make their affirmation of faith together. Since there is no hymnal of the songs we do in our contemporary service, the screen is the place our folks look to when singing our worship songs.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, we use projection for both services and while there isn’t opposition to it, I do sympathize with our choir director (who is a dynamic and wonderful person) who would rather people use the hymnal. His reason? The music. Even though most people cannot read music, they can tell whether or not the notes are going up or down. He’s right as even a clown like me can figure that out. That’s extremely helpful when we’re singing a hymn that isn’t all that familiar and because our choir director is such a great teacher I often see people take out their hymnals when we sing an unfamiliar hymn. I think ours is a success story in using projection technology in an unobtrusive way.

Joe Boysel/Anglican: To use video projection or not: that is the question.

My first observation is a theological one; namely, that I can find nothing inherently good or evil with respect to video projection. The use of video images to display words and/or art is no different than iconography, printed bulletins, or hymnals. It is an electronic page as opposed to a paper, canvas, or wooden one. A second observation reflects on the role video plays in the culture. Nearly all people in the West watch TV, go to films, link to viral clips, and use computer screens on a daily (even hourly) basis. Some might even argue that video has replaced print media as the primary source of information in our culture. (Sorry, Michael, I know you’re writing a book.) Thus, the technology medium remains almost as invisible to people as the church bulletin. In other words, the use of video technology hardly comes across as novel in the contemporary culture.

Putting these two observations together, I must conclude that video projection technology offers an amoral, convenient information and inspiration medium. For that reason, I would be open to the liberal use of it in worship – particularly since Anglican liturgy depends so heavily upon the written word. Songs, prayers, and Scripture – together with graphic arts – might just as easily be projected on a screen as printed on a page. In fact, video technology provides even the poorest churches with access to great art otherwise reserved for the rich. What’s more, there is no landfill waste from discarded bulletins.

Still, a couple pastoral considerations remain. One involves the deeply held religious sensibilities of some Christians. I can completely understand why, for some people, the use of video would cut against the grain of certain liturgical scruples. Especially in old church buildings, there is something about the historic nature of the worship space that creates a sense of connection with the ancient Church. Inconsiderate tampering with such sacred spaces through the use of state-of-the-art devices could create a significant and unnecessary distraction.

A second, and more serious pastoral consideration, involves the manner with which the prevailing culture typically uses video media as a form of amusement (i.e. thoughtless entertainment). Perhaps an argument could be made that people are used to “turning off their brains” the moment the screen comes on. Thus, careful consideration should be entertained regarding whether the church should stand against the culture through its use of retro-media.

Still, in the end, these arguments (and I can imagine a couple others, too) seem to lack any significant credibility. The use of video projection in church seems to me adiaphora – and a very minor form of it at that.

Alan Creech/Roman Catholic:OK, my first Gangsta reply on the new and improved Internetmonk.com! Woo hoo! Now – on with the show – did I say “show”? Projection technology use in worship. First of all, I have no say in what’s used in our worship, or in anybody’s worship nowadays, so keep that in mind. But if I did, I would probably tend away from using too much technology in worship at all, projection or otherwise, if we lived in an ideal ecclesiastical world that is.

That “ideal world” would consist, at least in part, of all local expressions of the Church being smaller units, no more than 150 people, even less if you really want my opinion – maybe 75. There would likely, in such a scenario, be even little need for microphones and a PA system in the building. That would be nice.

Also, in a liturgical setting, where the worship is, can we say, “pre-programmed,” quite a bit, the people involved would be learning the prayers, the liturgy, teaching their children and the new people coming in, etc. The songs would be fairly familiar and everyone would learn the new ones together as they were introduced. The worship setting for God’s People wouldn’t really be used as a setting for “evangelism” so any unfamiliarity felt by those who weren’t members would simply be seen as normal and relationally explained by those who invited them perhaps.

Now, I can see advantages in projecting certain things, such as song lyrics and certain prayers/responses in a liturgical setting. There are simply people who always follow a missal and aren’t memorizers. This could be helpful for them. But I’m not sure that the added expense and technological hassle required to get it and keep it going, running, working all the time, is actually worth what little help it could be.

I say, keep it simple, as simple as possible – and “possible” needs to start meaning exactly that. What I mean is that many simply assume they “need” these kinds of technologies to do worship well. We NEED microphones and speakers, right? We NEED overhead projectors, right?? Do we NEEEED the distraction of poorly functioning microphones every single week? I can tell you from experience – no, we do not. Again, I’d much rather be in a small building where everyone was fairly close and could hear a decently projected voice without the aid of electronic amplification. Why? mostly because of the distraction it often causes to have it and practically, the cost and the extra hassle of running it. I understand how things are now in certain instances, but the question was would I and why and I’m trying to back all my “answers” up as best I can.

So, the use of technology in worship, as I see it, should be as limited as possible, therefore making the logistical side of worship as simple as possible. Of course, to me, liturgy itself makes things simpler – not having to proverbially “reinvent the wheel” every week. There’s that. And however we can not add complications to that liturgical worship experience either on the front end or on the back, is a good thing, and can be seen as helpful to the members who are actually attempting to participate in worship.

I would use it, but only as much as possible. “Projection” was the main part of the question – that I would use hardly at all for the reasons already stated. Other technology – maybe microphones, are at this point in time, and with the size of many congregations, simply “necessary” – so there you go. Nobody’s going to listen to me and break up all the giant local churches into smaller units any time soon, so you gotta have ‘em I guess. Along with that, I would probably go ahead and record the homilies/sermons/teaching sessions and save them as mp3 files for podcasting – making them more widely available for members and non-members alike for whatever reason you might want to do that (perhaps that’s about building up the wider Body of Christ or even, to some degree, a form of evangelism).

I think I’ve rambled enough. Inevitably I’m going to look back and wish I’d said something differently or something else, but that’s how it goes. Oh, and here’s a freebie: to all the Catholic churches I’ve loved before, and know of, and who’s websites I’ve seen before – HIRE ME to redesign your sites!!! They’re awful! Maybe that’s just my “simplicity” philosophy gone to seed. I don’t know. But, seriously people, if you’re going to have a website, have one that’s not ugly, that’s easy to navigate and use, and one that looks sharp – that does NOT have to be complicated. —rant, over. Pax vobiscum.

Wyman Richardson/Southern Baptist: I suppose my attitude towards technology could best be summed up in the immortal words from Kip’s wedding song to Lafawnduh in “Napoleon Dynamite”: “Yes, I love technology.” And, in a sense, who doesn’t?

The question of the role of technology in the life of the Church and particularly in the life of the Church’s worship is an interesting and important question. As a Protestant, it’s particularly interesting to me. After all, who exactly was the greatest figure in the Reformation: Luther or Gutenberg? Regardless, there can be no doubt that technology has played a large part in the life of the Church, sometimes good and sometimes not-so-good. And, like any other tool, there is a right and wrong way to use it.

The church I pastor installed projection technology in the sanctuary shortly after I came here seven years ago. It was our determination at that time that we would use it only insofar as it aided and did not hinder worship and only insofar as it assisted in the presentation of the gospel without obstructing the glory of the gospel. That, of course, is a wildly subjective criteria, but we have tried to hold to it. For instance, early on we used it primarily for announcements and prayer requests before the worship service began. But, inevitably (?), we began to use it more as the years went on. Now I project my sermon outline on the screen along with the scripture text for that message. But weekly (this week included) I find myself thinking, “I’ll put that on the screen, but I feel uncomfortable putting that up there. They need to just listen and hear this part.” etc.

Has our use of projection technology been good or bad, overall? Well, I mentioned something in a sermon a few weeks back about people bringing their Bibles to church. After the service, a man that I greatly respect said, “Pastor, the only reason I don’t bring my Bible is that you have it all on the screen. It’s much easier that way.”

So that makes me uneasy, but then I ask myself, “Are more people reading the scripture now that it is on the screen that would if we did not project it?” And, in that sense, I’d say, “Yes, more people overall now read the scripture during our services.” (As an aside, don’t ask me why it is that I’m afraid to project the words of our hymns on the screen but not the words of scripture. Is it possible that the average Baptist is more offended by the idea that we won’t need our hymn books in church than that they don’t technically have to carry their Bibles to church now? Uggghhh…)

All of this is to say that our use of technology is probably as idiosyncratic and nonsensical as everybody else’s, but nonsensical does not mean a-sensical. There are good reasons, and foolish ones, and I suppose I’ll just have to say that each person and each church must search their motives, their intentions, and their uses of technology to say whether or not they are using it well.

In closing, I am fully aware of Neil Postman’s argument that “the medium is the message,” and I suspect one can be too naive about the dangers inherent in the electronic church. On the other hand, many who write screeds about the modern church’s infatuation with technology never think about the fact that they are sitting in air conditioned sanctuaries under the glow of electric lights listening to a voice being projected through a microphone and over a set of speakers.

But perhaps all can agree on this: technology must never become the focus and it must never become the message. If the integrity of the Church’s message can remain intact, I say go for it. If, on the other hand, we are relying on cheap technological gimmicks and tricks, I say let’s tip the electric idols over and refocus on what’s most important.

William Cwirla/Lutheran: Tech in worship. Ugh. I love tech. I have a science background. I own multiple computers, two iPods, and have a fully networked home. I blog, I podcast, I have a huge iTunes library; I do digital photography. I am a PowerPoint (Keynote) wizard. I am not a Luddite when it comes to tech.

That said, tech in worship is best heard and not seen. Especially those projection screens. Is there any place we can go where we don’t have to stare at the ubiquitous screen? My favorite sushi restaurant has screens, thereby ensuring the end of any meaningful conversation with my table mates. Can’t we sit and listen to a speaker without watching video clips or looking at pictures of kittens and sunsets?

Visible tech in church is like walking along a wilderness trail and encountering a cell phone tower. I want to see the works of man extol the works of God – meticulously written icon, well crafted stained glass, fine woodworking and craft elevating material to holy symbol. What I don’t need to see is another Samsung 60-inch hanging where a crucifix ought to be.

I know all the arguments about we being a “visual, post-literate” culture. How about training our preachers to be skilled, persuasive orators. How about having preachers speak forcefully and engagingly from the Scriptures, which are the very Word of God. It seems to me that so much of this “visual” tech stems out of our lack of trust that the homely Word will return void unless we give it a boost.

I’ve heard the “heads-up” argument in favor of singing from a screen, but I don’t buy it. I’m a musician; I need to see notes to sing confidently. Corporate singing is not the same as everyone singing along with the band. And besides, what is it about the guy running the projector that he can’t seem to be on the right stanza? Distractions, distractions, distractions.

“Faith cometh by hearing.” Can’t we train ourselves to shut up and listen once and a while? Can’t we preach with conviction? The Bible is full of rich narratives, some that would make Mark Driscoll blush. Why can’t we tell those rich stories without visual aids? “A man went out to sow seed…” Do we really need a picture? “Behold the Lamb of God….” Can a video clip do it justice?

Yes, I know this is largely an aesthetic argument, and I plead guilty as charged. Throw the book at me. But aesthetics are important. They confess something about what is believed. When you believe that you are in the presence of the true and living God and gathered around the very Body and Blood of Christ, it affects how you worship and how you design and define sacred space. Tech has desacralized the modern church to nothing more than a generic auditorium with screens, stage lighting and a mixing board. Today the holy things, tomorrow a rock concert. There is no beauty, no majesty, no reverence, awe, and mystery.

The modern tower of Babel is not build out of bricks and bitumen, but silicone chips and plastic. Tech is not art. Projecting a pixelated picture of Jesus on a screen is not the same as an icon painstakingly painted on the wall. Art deals in what is real, the priestly elevation of material into the aesthetic and sublime. Sacred art consecrates material for holy purposes.

As I said, I love tech. I use it in Bible class all the time. I love Keynote (PowerPoint). It makes for dynamic presentations when done correctly. (It makes for deadly presentations when done badly.) I love showing video clips for instructive purposes. Tech is the servant, not the master of the Word. A friend of mine, who is a chemistry professor, noted that the graphics of science talks has increased dramatically since my chemistry days, but the content has decreased proportionately. It’s all bells and whistles full of sound and power points signifying nothing.

Neal Postman, in his book Technopoly, warns us to be ever on the alert when it comes to technology, lest our tech tools enslave and master us. I have a rule in church: We ought to be able to worship even if the power goes out. It happened once. We didn’t miss a beat of the Sanctus nor a Word from the Lord.

Welcome to IM’s popular feature, “The Liturgical Gangstas,” a panel discussion among different liturgical traditions represented in the Internet Monk audience.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
We have a new Gangsta! Rev. Joe Boysel is an AMiA priest and professor of Bible at Ohio Christian University in Circleville, Ohio. (Ask him about famous alumni.)
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction.
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: What is the relationship of the gathered church, especially in worship, to the work of personal evangelism? (Especially of adult unbelievers.)

Father Ernesto/Orthodox: I have written before that if one looks at the Book of Revelation, one sees a dual set of pictures. First St. John the Apostle sees a vision from a heavenly perspective. Then, the results of the actions in heaven are shown upon the earth. I have also pointed out that what one sees in heaven is a worship service. As the heavenly worship service proceeds, as the four living creatures sing, as the angels participate, as the elders throw their crowns before the Lord, as the martyrs cry out, as one like the Ancient of Days is praised, the Lord acts and the results of that action are that things change on the earth. In other words, it is the heavenly worship that is guiding earthly history.

We believe that when we enter into the Divine Liturgy, we are transported from earth to heaven and join in the ongoing heavenly worship. And, as we join in the heavenly worship, it begins the work of transforming earthly history. As the parish gathers together in worship, and offers its prayers for outreach to others to the Lord, and joins in the heavenly worship, it can expect that the Lord, the Giver of Life, the Holy Spirit will respond and do His work in their patch of Earth. One caveat, as God answered Habbakkuk, it can be just as much God’s work to bring an invasion in order to change Israel as it can be to bring blessing, as He did during the time of Hezekiah. When we pray, when we join in worship, we cannot know what God’s response will be. But in both Old Testament cases that I cited, unbelievers were changed, some by the hard road and some by the easy road. Prayer is powerful and its results are uncontrollable by us.

But, in worship we do not simply go up to heaven and join in that worship. Heaven also comes down to us and joins us in our worship. Our Lord makes Himself present in the Body and Blood to feed us and to strengthen us so that we may go out. We are not left alone, but we are given heavenly food to eat. Now, with caution I mention also the preaching of the Word. I say with caution because there is a human element involved in the preaching, which means that it may or may not be quite everything that is needed and wanted. Nevertheless, through the public reading of Scripture and through the person giving the homily, the Holy Spirit is often at work to speak into our hearts. And, so we are sent out filled with God so that we may fill others with God.

Finally, there is the ministry to each other. To be able to be together and to encourage each other is itself a ministry of the Holy Spirit. When we gather together, it is a synergy. Our Lord Jesus Christ says that when two or more are gathered together, there He is. When we come together, we are much more than simply a group of people. We are that mystical entity that is so hard to describe called the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ. Being with each other is itself a strengthening thing that assures us that we are not alone. Not for us the lonely ministry of an Elijah sitting in a cave, but even to him the Lord laughed and said that he had several hundred more that had not bowed the knee to Baal. It is a lovely thing to be able to say that we are not alone.

And so, empowered, we go out to share. And, when we bring someone back, we bring them into that same fire of the Holy Spirit, that same heavenly presence, us in heaven and heaven with us. And when they taste and see, it is confirmed in their hearts that the calling they felt was God’s calling and their repentance reaches its fulfillment and they bow before our heavenly God and Father, ready to commit themselves to the process of becoming a Christian.

All good evangelism is wrapped around and inside of worship itself.”

Matthew Johnson/United Methodist: Am I back in seminary or something? This sounds like an essay question from a worship class.

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot and not because Michael asked it but because, as a pastor, I want to help my folks participate in personal evangelism. It’s a dire need not only for my church but also for many others in my area. The most prevalent idea – which is not spoken but practiced – is that all a person needs to do to be involved in personal evangelism is to invite a friend, relative, or coworker to church and then it is up to the preacher to convert them. This idea gets expressed in bigger ways when our leadership team talks about ministries and programs that might attract unchurched people to the church and its worship services.

In this way of thinking, the relationship of the worshipping church to the work of personal evangelism is this: the gathered church in worship is where the unchurched are invited to come and hear the gospel preached.

My understanding is different than the one I just described. Worship is the gathered church, the Body of Christ, engaged in the worship of the Living God who, through Jesus Christ’s atoning death on the cross, saved those who are worshipping. The Spirit enables and empowers those who are saved to worship and serve the Triune God of the Bible.

The distinction I hope to make is that the purpose of the gathered church in worship isn’t to have a “revival service” every time we meet. Yes, the gospel must be present and, yes, people are converted in worship, but we should be leery of turning the focus of our services into something other than the worship of God by his children. We ought to praise God, receive a word from Scripture about God and his mission to this world, and then go out and live as people reconciled to this God and who are passionate about being at work wherever he is.

God is at work in hospital rooms, coffee shops, bars, and schools. He is working in the lives of cubicle workers, single moms, and city employees. They are God’s concern and they ought to be ours as well. Should we invite them to our gatherings? Yes, but more importantly we should invite them into our lives as a witness to the love of God that invited us into him.

As a summation, I think the gathered worship of God’s people and its relationship to personal evangelism is less about one stop evangelism and more about reminding the workmen of God’s glory and mission so that we can love people into Jesus.

I think Mark Dever’s book The Gospel & Personal Evangelism is one of the best resources one can find for this question. He has an appendix that is a word to pastors and in it he reminds us that it is crucial to be clear about the Gospel every time we preach; I’m thankful and mindful of that word every time I stand to proclaim God’s word. He also reminds us of our responsibility to model personal evangelism in our public praying (praying for the lost) and to take time to evangelize outside the church so that the people of God have some idea as to how that works.

Joe Boysel/Anglican: The Collect for Purity, which typically opens the Anglican liturgy, reminds Christians why we gather for worship; namely, Christians gather for the necessary spiritual transformation required to offer praise to God. The petition reads, “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name.” Thus, while it may seem enigmatic to many people, historically, worship gatherings first served the purpose of spiritual formation in order that Christians might rightfully worship. The benefits to individual Christians, then, preceded the worshipers’ offerings of praise, at least in terms of sequence. Thus, the question of an evangelistic role in Christian worship remains a tertiary concern. Believers gather for their own personal spiritual transformation, they gather to pray for the world and its transformation, and they do all this in order to bring glory to God.

Naturally, however, this does not mean that worship stands disconnected from personal evangelism. An inextricable link exists between worship and mission. Nowhere is this clearer than in the ancient designation for the liturgy: The Mass. The Church named their gatherings by an abbreviated form of the dismissal. They gathered to go. The word “Mass” comes from the Latin missa, as in “Ite, missa est” (Go, it is sent). This liturgical command provided a clear indication of what worshipers should do upon departing the “real world,” which they had just experienced, into this present evil age. They received a commission to go into the world, and as they went to carry out God’s mission of reconciliation.

So, what is the relationship between worship and personal evangelism? Worship is the essential nutrient for preparing Christians to bring God’s reconciling peace to the world. It is not unlike the need schoolchildren have for a healthy breakfast or athletes have for spending time in the weight room. A person’s commitment to preparation typically determines the success she or he will have in class or on the field.

Unfortunately, Christian worship in the last half century in the Western world has taken on an entirely different dimension. Liturgical innovations designed to appeal to non-believers frequently focus on satisfying the palate of those who are enamored with all the wrong things. Thus, in an attempt to gratify the world through its liturgy, the church has left believers bereft of the necessary sustenance for mission. Sure, children get to school quicker without breakfast, but does that necessarily make it a wise choice?

Alan Creech/Roman Catholic: I’ve actually thought and written about this before in the past – from within another Christian context. But actually, my answer is the same now as it was then. I believe that to entangle the gathering in worship of the People of God with the task of evangelism is a mistake. This, fortunately, fits well, I think, with a Catholic view of what the Mass is, or even Christian liturgical prayer for that matter. These things are for those who have already been incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ. Especially the Eucharistic table of worship – participating in this eternal Sacrifice can only really be done by those who have been placed inside it by the action of the Holy Spirit. Even the table of the Word, as we feast on it (on Him) as a gathered people who belong to one family, is not geared toward drawing unbelievers in, but rather, to the building up of those who are already “in.”

I’ve always thought – this is just me – that it was unfortunate that we have all grown to use the word “preaching” for what goes on in a homily or sermon to believers in a worship setting. My observation of preaching in the New Testament is primarily something done toward those who do not yet believe – “preaching the Gospel” – and it is done by anyone really, anyone who is “telling” this “Good News” to the world around them. What is primarily done inside the assembly of the faithful is more teaching – not preaching – either that or exhortation/encouragement. Perhaps it’s more semantics than anything, but it’s a little confusing, therefore, clarification.

In the very early Church, there were no unbelievers in the Mass, the gathering of believers – they didn’t allow it. There were several reasons for this, I know. Eventually the “seekers” may have been admitted to the liturgy of the Word, but escorted out during the liturgy of the Eucharist. The Catholic Church in some places does this, to a degree, again now. RCIA candidates and catechumens stay for the Word and go out for a class during the Eucharist, then back in at the end of Mass.

The problems I have seen when the worship service becomes a tool for evangelism is that is becomes a relatively diluted version of its former self. There is too much concern and “worry” about making this event palatable for the unbeliever, not offensive, not too theologically heavy, etc. Hence, the whole “seeker sensitive” phenomenon. The trouble is there may then be nothing deeper to dive into after an unbeliever decides to enter the community, perhaps. It just continues to be something designed to attract those from the outside and never quite becomes something designed for “the family.”

It seems best to me that when the Family of God gather to worship or pray, that it do so as a family would in their own house. If anyone comes in from the outside, they should be welcome, but as one entering another’s home, expecting to see and experience (as much as one can without being a family member) what goes on in that family. That in itself, might do a fair amount of attracting, of a sort of “passive evangelism.” Mostly, though, the community of faith should be being built up into those who then take the Life and Truth of Jesus out into their everyday lives – mostly living it, and when necessary speaking about it with those who do not believe.

In conclusion, this makes me think of the origin of the word Mass – coming from the Latin word missa – from what is said as it is ended. It is a sending forth (from within) to go into the world now, having been strengthened by the mysteries we share together as members His Body. We receive, therefore we give. So, essentially, the gathering of the saints, the faithful members of the Body, is for their own edification so that they can be more like Christ and go BE Christ to the outside world who does not yet know Him or how much He loves them

Wyman Richardson/Southern Baptist: What is the relationship of the gathered church, especially in worship, to the work of personal evangelism? (Especially of adult unbelievers.)

It’s interesting that this question comes right now. A friend of mine tells me that the leadership of the church he attends decided that, on a particular Sunday morning, the members would engage in what the pastor called “service evangelism” (i.e., carrying food to people having to work on Sundays and things like that) instead of corporate worship (for that one morning). As my friend and I have talked about this, I have felt that we were both trying to flesh out what appears to be a tension between gathered worship and personal evangelism in this particular instance. I have further felt that we both felt that there was something amiss with ceasing gathered worship in order to do evangelism.

As in so many other areas of the Christian life, there is a Scylla and Charybdis to be avoided here.

On the one hand, I want to argue that there is an inherent evangelistic appeal in the gathered church’s worship, at least more of one than proponents of a radical dichotomy between worship and evangelism seem to understand. Perhaps this is especially true in lands in which the powers are opposed to the Church. In these situations, the acts of gathering and of worship stand in such contrast to the predominant spirit of anti-Christ that it is, de facto, an evangelistic act. I seem to recall a story somewhere of Malcolm Muggeridge being overwhelmed by the genuine, joy-filled worship of the persecuted Russian believers when he was covering them as an unbelieving journalist on assignment. I further seem to recall that the joyful worship of the gathered believers played a role in his conversion.

I often feel this but have trouble articulating it when church members occasionally express reservations about some of our short-term mission trips to Honduras and Nicaragua. They will say, “We are doing great evangelistic work in Central America, but what about here?” Now, I do agree that there is something wrong with pouring resources and efforts into distant lands if you are not doing the same in your own community. Churches should have this kind of presence in their own communities. (And, because of that, we are working to have a more balanced evangelistic effort in Jerusalem as well as the ends of the earth.) I get that, but I also want to say, “Yes, that is true, and we need to do better, but let us not forget that our presence as a worshiping community within this community is itself a statement of prophetic evangelism.”

On the other hand, I want to argue that worship, in a sense, is the foundation from which we leap into evangelistic effort in the world, and that if the leaping isn’t done, the worship has been incomplete (the idea of “the holy huddle” or something like that). Jesus’ sending of the seventy must ever be kept in mind, as well, of course, as the apostolic example presented to us in scripture. But leaping into the world with the gospel is an extension of worship as well, and should not be seen as a somehow separate work.

In this sense (and I suspect this is more the focus of your question), worship is the celebration of that gospel which we carry to the world. Worship, then, should make the gospel so beautiful that the thought of not sharing it seems obscene to us. It makes the gospel beautiful by drawing us into the presence of the God who has bequeathed the gospel to us. As such, worship equips the believer for the task of personal evangelism not by giving practical tips on how to evangelize (though there may be a limited place for that kind of thing), but by magnifying God and exalting Christ. I will go further: if worship is what it ought to be, and if our hearts are broken in repentance and grounded in faith and enjoy, personal evangelism will happen whether we pass on the “how-to’s” or not. (I can imagine personal evangelism gurus having coronaries over that statement, but that’s more a reflection on the shallowness of our worship than on the truthfulness of that claim.)

And, finally, there is a sense in which evangelism (albeit not personal) is modeled in worship itself. I do not mean here a kind of forced evangelistic appeal in each service. I mean instead that, in worship, the story is told and proclaimed and sung and prayed and celebrated, and, as such, the model is displayed before the worshiping community

William Cwirla/Lutheran: Worship is the unique, sacramental meeting place where heaven and earth come together, where eternity breaks into time, where the crucified, risen, and reigning Lord Jesus is present among the “two or three gathered” in His Name, along with the “angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven.” In worship, the Triune God gives out the gifts of the Son’s once-for-all sacrifice through the spoken Word and the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood, and the baptized faithful receive these gifts, offering their sacrifices of thanksgiving, prayer, praise, and confession. We Lutherans call it “Gottesdienst,” God’s service – His service to us and our service to Him.

Worship is ever “evangelistic” in the sense that the “good news” (euangelion) of Jesus is always the center of the Church’s proclamation. Faith is created by the Gospel and sustained by the Gospel. The unbeliever who finds himself in the worshipping assembly, for whatever reason, is also the target of that evangelistic Gospel since “God desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” The unbeliever is there as welcomed guest among the household of faith, and as such, is given the honor of guest but not the full privileges of family. The chances are quite good that the guest will not fully comprehend the Church’s traditions, and this is not to be expected. This is what catechesis is for.

The unbelieving guest is not alone in the liturgy, nor should he be. Worship is not a solitary, individualistic experience, but a corporate one. Like the Ethiopian, he needs a Philip to guide him. He needs to be welcomed as a guest and guided through the rituals of worship. This act of hospitality is an important first step toward evangelical conversation as bonds of common friendship are formed. In this way, the various forms of the liturgy serve as “icons,” in the sense of teaching symbols. The symbolism of ceremony must be explained to the uninitiated.

The Church gathered is also the Church scattered in priestly vocation. Here the Church, receiving the benediction of the Triune God, goes out into the world as Christ’s royal priesthood. And there, within their various callings of service to the neighbor, the royal priests pray, bless, and bear witness to the world to what they have seen and heard, inviting all to come, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Welcome to IM’s popular feature, “The Liturgical Gangstas,” a panel discussion among different liturgical traditions represented in the Internet Monk audience.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
Rev. Peter Vance Matthews is an Anglican priest and founding pastor of an AMIA congregation.
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction. (Alan’s not a priest. If he is, his wife and kids need to know.)
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: How do you interpret Matthew 5:48 within a larger picture of the Gospel and the Christian life? (48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.)

Father Ernesto/Orthodox: Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?”‘ then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”

Abba Abraham told of a man of Scetis who was a scribe and did not eat bread. A brother came to beg him to copy a book. The old man whose spirit was engaged in contemplation, wrote, omitting some phrases and with no punctuation. The brother, taking the book and wishing to punctuate it, noticed that words were missing. So he said to the old man, “Abba, there are some phrases missing.” The old man said to him, “Go, and practise first that which is written, then come back and I will write the rest.”

Amma Theodora also said that neither asceticism, nor vigils nor any kind of suffering are able to save, only true humility can do that. There was an anchorite who was able to banish the demons; and he asked them, “What makes you go away?” “Is it fasting?” They replied, “We do not eat or drink.” “Is it vigils?” They replied, “We do not sleep.” “Is it separation from the world?” “We live in the deserts.” “What power sends you away then?” They said, “Nothing can overcome us, but only humility.” “Do you see how humility is victorious over the demons?”

Abba Joseph said, “If you will, you can become all flame.” The command to be perfect is one that Our Lord expected we would obey and follow. That is why St. Paul said, “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” And again, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, . . . I myself should become disqualified.”

Notice that St. Peter echoes Jesus’ call to perfection and gives an outline of how to get there. “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

But, the best understanding of the call to Christian perfection is found in the various collections of the sayings of the Desert Fathers. Like Jesus, and many Middle Eastern teachers, they tended to speak in stories and sayings and demonstrations rather than in logical theological language. Go to the Greeks for theological writings, but go to the Desert Fathers for wisdom. And, to grow towards perfection, one must go to the Desert Fathers. In the Desert Fathers, one finds a group of people, men and women, who had an uncanny appreciation of just how sinful we are and how deep that sin goes. They were unremitting and scathing in their analysis of the depths of our sin, even when we think that we are behaving correctly. Not one of them is ever recorded as saying that they have become perfect. As you can see from the quote from Amma Theodora, they were also unswervingly clear that none of their ascetical practices would get them one step closer to God, in and of themselves. To be accepted by God is a total free gift that is merely received in humility. And, as Amma Theodora says, it is that humility and obedience that the demons most fear, because, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus . . . He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

At the same time, like St. Peter and St. Paul, the Desert Fathers were overwhelmingly clear that the person who is not striving to grow in Christ, and is not practicing self-denial, as a voluntary choice in obedience to the commandments of God, is in as much danger of losing what they have as the man who was given only one talent in the Parable of the Talents. Self-control, self-disciplining of your body and mind, is one of the steps in the process that both St. Peter and St. Paul outline if we wish to grow towards perfection. When we do this, we imitate Christ, of whom the Book of Hebrews says, “though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. . . .” In part this is why Abba Abraham only copied parts of the book that the scribe requested. You see, there are many truths of the Christian life which will not be understandable nor will they open for us unless we are willing to add virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, etc., to our faith. Do you wish to know our Lord better and to understand His Word better? Learn to discipline your body and bring it under subjection. As St. James says, even the demons have intellectual knowledge. But, wisdom and true knowledge only come to those who discipline themselves.

Finally, an overwhelming theme throughout both Scripture and the Desert Fathers, and one that I have not had time to cover, is the help of the Holy Spirit. And, not only the help of the Holy Spirit, but also the help of the angels of God, and of your fellow saints. It is clear that the Helper is the only possible way in which we can grow correctly into the image of Christ. Without the Holy Spirit, there is no hope of growth. To quote Luther, “. . . the Spirit and the gifts are ours, thru him who with us sideth. Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still;
his kingdom is forever.”

And, so I counsel you. Many of you have plenty of intellectual knowledge already. It is time to seek wisdom and, yes, perfection. As Abba Joseph said, “If you will, you can become all flame.”

Matthew Johnson/United Methodist: This question was an opportunity to pull out my old seminary files to find the assignment I wrote for a class in Matthew’s Gospel in 1999. The question was “What is the meaning of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 5:48?” My initial thought was not to spend a whole lot of time on the exegesis part – except to set up my understanding of what Jesus is saying – but instead spend a little more space on how that plays out in the Gospel and in Christian life. That didn’t really happen, though. I’m one of those annoying people who often tells too much of the back story of what could be a very brief narrative so I apologize in advance.

I am an heir of John Wesley and this passage is one of the central texts in our theological heritage of Christian Perfection which I’ve written about in a previous Liturgical Gangsta’s post. The best way I can describe this doctrine is with a post I wrote last year called Humanity as Sanctification (hey, it’s either this or several more paragraphs of explanation). I’m not the best writer in the world but if I could sum up what I was trying to say in that post is that sanctification (and ultimately Christian Perfection) is bound up in the saving work of Jesus Christ which not only secures an imperishable, undefiled, and unfading inheritance kept in heaven for us (1 Pet 1:3ff) but it also undoes the effects of the fall by transforming us by the Holy Spirit into people who are images of Jesus Christ, the God-Man. This is the Gospel I preach: that Jesus Christ died on the cross to atone for our sins so that by his blood we are free from the guilt and punishment of sin (justification) and the power of sin (sanctification) and that through the resurrection Jesus is making all things new and will make us new (glorification). All of this is by grace through faith in the one who loved us and gave himself up for us.

With that lengthy introduction in mind, Matthew 5:48 is before us. I spent a few hours on that assignment about ten years ago and the fruit of that study was that perfection and it’s other meanings (completeness and maturity) are what God is. God is perfect. God is complete. God is mature. Why does this sentence of Jesus arise where it does? It seems a little out of place in the context of this passage. It comes out of nowhere. Earlier in Chapter 5, Jesus tells his audience that unless their righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and scribes, none of them will enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus then begins to reinterpret the laws and rules of the Jews in a such a way that the Pharisees themselves cannot even fulfill them, thereby rendering the scribes and Pharisees unrighteous. “You have heard that it was said,” begins the smaller passages and Jesus tells them, “But I say to you,” as a follow up. A person is faithful to God’s covenant if they don’t murder someone, but Jesus says that you are unfaithful to that covenant if you are angry with someone! Who can live under such an interpretation? What? I can’t even ogle an attractive woman without being guilty of adultery? Lord have mercy!

Finally, Jesus tells the audience that they must love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?” He then says, “Therefore, you must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is the Gospel! The heavenly Father loved his enemies and sent the Son for those who persecuted him with their sinful acts. Paul writes in Romans 5 “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” How can this be anything but good news? Jesus would preach the Sermon on the Mount and then demonstrate it completely in his death and resurrection.

I think that’s where this passage falls in the larger picture of the Gospel, but what about Christian life? If we want to follow Jesus we must deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Jesus. God is remaking people who trust Jesus with the Holy Spirit. I have no natural inclination to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me. I want to see them get what they deserve but that is not the cross-saturated, self-denying life Jesus is calling me to live. So where in life can I possibly love my enemies? By remembering that Jesus loved me when I was his enemy, by earnestly praying that God will give me love and compassion for my enemies, that God will help me mean the prayer, “Not my will but yours be done,” and that God would bring that person to full salvation and bless the socks off of him.

This is one of those real world Gospel passages that my flesh resists at every turn but the man that Jesus saved is aware deep inside that this is how I want to live in the face of adversity and persecution. May the completeness and perfection of God’s salvation bring me to a maturity of Christian life in which Jesus is magnified above all else. I am thankful to Jesus every day that there seems to be a little less of me and a whole lot more of him present in my heart through the completing and perfecting work of the Holy Spirit.

Peter Vance Matthews/Anglican: Peter is a holy man.

Peter is working on being the perfect Anglican.

Which probably means things we don’t want to talk about.

I’ll bail him out, but I may need contributions from the audience.

Alan Creech/Roman Catholic:
Opening one’s self to God in order to be fully transformed – really and truly – into the Image of Christ – in some sense, “seeking perfection,” is NOT the same as “perfectionISM.” Not even close. The term perfectionism is probably not even one that should be used in a Christian context. It could be, I suppose, but that’s not what we’re really talking about when we say something about people who want to seek perfection through their own efforts. That’s not perfectionism. Perfectionism is a neurotic disorder toward having to have everything around one and about one BE “perfect” or you can’t handle it mentally or emotionally. It has nothing to do with trying to be a good person for the sake of God rewarding us for being “perfect.” The the Scripture in question, I’m thinkin’, has nothing to do with either.

And to say that someone who is trying to explain that the whole business of God in Jesus is about us actually becoming different kinds of beings – becoming like Jesus – is not talking about “the good news” – i.e., The Gospel, is a bit high on the horse. I might be tempted to say that a version of the Gospel that says what God wants to do for us in Jesus is merely to apply a fond feeling toward us through thinking of His Son and not of us, leaving us unchanged, yet forgiven and filthy, certainly might seem “good” to some, but – and then I would stop myself and realize that yes, that sort of is PART of the good news, the Gospel of Christ, but not the whole. Our Salvation is more than being forgiven little dirty, broken children of disobedient Adam. Of course that’s how it starts. We’re all broken. We’re all dirty. We’re all unworthy, etc., etc., etc. But God – But God wants more for us than that.

God wants us to be like Him. He wants to be like our Brother, Jesus – the FIRSTborn of many siblings, not the ONLY born. He wants to be transformed from glory to glory into the Image of Whom we gaze upon – the Lord of Glory (2 Cor. 3:18). And Who does the transforming? Us? Nonsense and foolishness. And if any Catholic says that, they are foolish. We cannot transform ourselves into the image of anything better than what we are when He found us wallowing in the muck. Even any action tending toward the good, toward God, that “we” do, is only a response to Grace empowering us to act. Even as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, it is always Him who acts in us to do anything good (Phil. 2:12-13) – drawing us toward Him, closer inward – and the deeper we go, the more we are made new.

Here’s a great quote that helps to flesh out what I’m trying to say…

“Jesus not only teaches us the Christian life, He creates it in our souls by the action of the Holy Spirit. Our life in Him is not a matter of mere ethical goodwill. It is not a mere moral perfection. It is an entirely new spiritual reality, an inner transformation.”

“The Divine Spirit purifies the image of God in my soul by faith. He cures my spiritual blindness, opens my eyes to the things of God. He takes possession of my will so that I no longer remain the captive of my own passions and compulsions, but am able to act in the fruitful tranquility of spiritual freedom. In gradually teaching me charity He perfects the likeness of God in my soul by conforming me to Christ. For my union with Christ is much more than an imitation of His virtues as they are described in the Gospel: it must be a union created in me by the transforming action of His own Spirit.”
–Thomas Merton

See, this is what I’m talking about. When Matthew records this phrase, “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” I believe he’s talking about our being like God, not just acting in a morally perfect way. Not just practicing virtues, but having the “stuff” that makes up our personhood transformed into different kinds of “stuff” – the God kind of stuff that it originally was. Now, people who are made of “God-stuff” will naturally act like God. So, no need for excessive moralism or any kind of over scrupulous perfectionism. Being like God is something He has to accomplish in us. Of course we have response-ability, the ability to respond to the Grace He gives us, but even that is a gift. We can choose to put ourselves in the way of God’s Life, in the stream of His transforming Presence, and as much as we do this, is as much as we will be transformed into His Image.

The Matthew 5 Scripture is much like another familiar Scripture – Ephesians 5:1 – “So be imitators of God, as beloved children.” Imitate God? What the? How are we supposed to do that? I have always thought that the second little piece of that verse was key – “as beloved children.” We are His children. We are not simply being called on as strangers to look upon some impersonal God figure Who is all good and imitate that goodness. We are being called on to imitate our Father, as His children. He has given us His Life. We are once again of His kind, a part of His family. He has enabled us, by His very Presence within us, to “imitate” Him – to be like Him, to be “perfect as He is perfect.” None of this, again, has anything to do with God requiring some kind of mistakeless perfections out of us before He will accept us as His children, or love us, or anything like that. It is Him, loving us, re-making us into the children He created us to be in the first place.

Wyman Richardson/Southern Baptist: Man I wish I was a Dispensationalist, then I wouldn’t have to answer this question. (ok, just funnin’!)

Probably no other sentence in Scripture (with the possible exception of “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”) has been subjected to the intense and ruthless acts of butchery that this verse has been subjected to. It has been used to bolster a stifling perfectionist legalism on the one hand and, on the other hand, has “died the death of a thousand qualifications” at the hands of preachers and laypeople who wittle it down to mean almost nothing. To be sure, it is a hard word and a difficult word.

I believe it means what it says. “We must be perfect” as God is perfect. We must. As if the preceding words of Jesus’ sermon (in which he shows that all of us are culpable of the most heinous sins not because we’ve necessarily done them with our hands but because we’ve done them with our hearts) weren’t devestating enough, He moves onto this amazing statement: “You must be perfect.”

I think the verse is God-exalting. It is only secondarily about man. It is about God, first. Barth’s warnings that one day anthropology would eclipse theology in the churches has proven true, and so it’s easy to reduce this verse to being mainly about moral betterment. But it’s not. It’s about the nature of God: that God is absolutely holy and, as such, true communion with Him likewise entails perfection.

And then it is a statement about man. I do agree with those who say it creates despair, though I loath the reductionist approaches to the Sermon on the Mount that make it say that God was only trying to create a crisis moment here and not that the teachings have a specific content and application to life. Nonetheless, they do create despair.

It’s interesting to me how many people, myself included, love that wonderful little soundbite from Augustine’s Confessions about our hearts being restless until they find their rest in Thee. That’s beautiful, but that’s terrifying. How am I to rest in the presence of a Holy and perfect God?

So this much seems to me to be true from Scripture: (1) God is holy. (2) Man must be holy to stand before Him. (3) But no man, including God’s people, are perfect before God in the living of their lives. (see 1 John for instance)

I stand by those three assertions, so they lead me to a fourth: (4) Outside of an alien righteousness being imputed to me, I am condemned.

So the question is, does God impute an alien righteousness to me? Does the word of God teach this?

This morning I preached on Lot. Frankly, his behavior through most of Genesis 19 is absurd and pitiful. And yet Peter in 2 Peter calls him “righteous.” The same, of course, with Abraham who’s faith was counted to him as righteousness.

So I ask, “What’s going on here? How are the unholy called holy and the unrighteous called righteous?” And then I see 2 Corinthians 5:21 where Christ becomes sin for me so that I might become the righteousness of God.

This is breathtaking to me. If anybody says I’m playing games with words or creating a legal fiction here, I’ll say balderdash! (Try it.)

The heart of the gospel is that the perfect Son of God dies in my stead, for my sins, so that, through faith, by grace, I can be clothed in His righteousness and perfection. And this clothing is a living clothing that every day through the ministry of the Holy Spirit fits me a bit better as I grow in grace towards the reality that has already been proclaimed over me.

So what does Matthew 5:48 mean? It means just what it says. It means that I must be perfect just as God is perfect. And am I? I am proclaimed so by and through the blood of the perfect Lamb who intercedes for me. I am growing towards this positional declaration in the reality of my life, though I am far from home. But I know that if I sin I have a perfect advocate with the Father and that when I come home, the reality will match the proclamation, and I’ll give glory to the Perfect one who saved me.

So the statement creates a crisis, but it’s a crisis that drives me to glorious hope and awe at the amazing grace of a loving God.

William Cwirla/Lutheran: First a few notes about Mt 5:28 itself. The verb is a future indicative, not an imperative, though the future indicative can have imperative force. It can be heard descriptively (“You will be perfect…”) or prescriptively (“You shall be perfect….”). The same is true of the Ten Commandments, by the way, in both Hebrew and Greek (LXX)! The adjective translated “perfect” “teleios” means whole, complete, undivided, unblemished (TDNT) (eg, see the LXX 1 Kings 8:61;11:4 of the undivided heart). Jesus says to the rich young ruler, “If you would be teleios….” (Mt 19:21). Finally, this passage has its parallel in the Torah at Lev 19:2 “You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.”

Mt 5:48 is part of a greater literary unit called the “Sermon on the Mount” (ch 5-7) in which Jesus appears as the giver of the new Torah, hearkening back to Moses on his mountain. Yet Jesus is a completely different covenant mediator than was Moses. Where Moses began with commandments, Jesus begins with beatitudes, blessings (5:1-12). Moses went up to God, but Jesus, as the Son of God incarnate, comes down to the people. No one could come up to Moses’ mountain, lest he die, but with Jesus, even the crowds are invited to listen in.

Mt. 5:48 is the last verse of a section that begins at 5:17. Jesus has not come to abolish the Torah and the Prophets (ie the Tanach, the written Scriptures), but to fulfill them. In this section (5:17-48), Jesus challenges the rabbinic tradition (Talmud) of the scribes and Pharisees who had codified the Torah into 613 positive and negative commandments in an attempt to establish a righteousness by works. The apostle Paul would later expand on this in his letter to the Romans wherein he argues that the Torah is properly interpreted as a Torah of faith in the promise and not a Torah of works, that a man is justified before God by faith apart from the works of the Torah. The foundation of Paul’s teaching of forensic justification lies here in the Sermon on the Mount.

The rabbinic tradition, in its attempt to establish a righteousness of works, failed to deliver the goods. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (5:20). The Pharisees played with the Law of God as though it were a toy poodle; Jesus unleashes a Doberman with fangs. He expounds the Law on his own authority over and against the tradition (“You have heard it said…but I say to you”), much to the delight of the crowds who were accustomed to their teachers credentialing themselves by their rabbinic succession to Moses. Jesus speaks out of His own authority.

Jesus delivers the proper understanding of the Law contained in the Torah. Not only does the Law judge the action, as the rabbinic tradition held, it also judges the attitude and orientation of the heart. Therefore, hatred of one’s brother in the heart is the same as murder (5:21-22); a lustful look the same as adultery (5:28). No one is left unscathed; no one can be justified by the Law. Anyone who would justify himself by his works under the Law, will be found wanting, as was the rich young ruler (Mt. 19:21). You might say that Jesus uses the Law to beat the religion out of the religious, or more gently, as a pedagogue to lead His hearers to Himself (Gal 3:23-25). If you think you can ascend the ladder of holiness to God by your commandment-keeping, think again. If anyone nearly did it, it was the scribes and the Pharisees, and they fell far short.

The righteousness God seeks is whole, complete, unblemished, teleios. This is not possible in ourselves, born as we are in sin. It is only possible in Jesus Christ, who came to fulfill the Torah by His active obedience, keeping every iota and dot (5:18) and His passive obedience, becoming sin for us and suffering the consequences of our sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). In the sweet swap of our sin for Jesus’ righteousness, received through faith (that is, trust in the promise of Jesus’ blood), we have a righteousness that does indeed exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, a righteousness that comes through faith and not through the works of the Torah.

So back to our verse. “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” As commandment, this is fulfilled in Christ who loved God and loved His neighbor wholly and completely as the unblemished Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is teleios for us all. As gift and promise, Christ’s perfection is granted us as we are found in Him through baptismal faith. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ” (Gal 3:27). We are indeed perfect (in Christ), even as our Father in heaven is perfect.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
Rev. Peter Vance Matthews is an Anglican priest and founding pastor of an AMIA congregation.
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction. (Alan’s not a priest. If he is, his wife and kids need to know.)
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: One of the hardest things for evangelicals to understand is liturgy. It is equated with dead, ritualized, rote, repetitive religious observance. It’s assumed to be irrelevant and terminally boring. Many evangelicals glory in being “anti-liturgical.”

Make a brief argument or outline for the value of liturgy, not just in your tradition, but for all Christians. Especially, what would be your response to the typical evangelical complaints that liturgy is a prescription for a lethargic personal experience of faith.

Father Ernesto/Orthodox: So, what is the value of liturgy? There is no brief argument for the value of liturgy, but I will try to cut my writing down. Among Christians, those things have the highest value which also have value with God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). That is, if we are true to our calling to be a God-centered people, then what God likes, we are supposed to like also. Moreover, even if we do not initially like it, we are then supposed to learn to like it because as we learn to like it, we will grow more and more into the image of God. Is that not the argument we use when we tell people to learn to read the Bible, to pray, and to fast? We will cheerfully tell people that part of the process of growing in Christ is learning to do things which at first may not necessarily appeal to us, such as a quiet time, or fasting, or serving others, or loving the unlovable. The value of a practice is not necessarily whether we like it, but whether it is something God desires of us.

So, it is just as insufficient and inappropriate to argue that I need not participate in a liturgical worship because I do not “like” it, as it is insufficient and inappropriate to argue that I need not read the Bible, pray, and fast because I find it boring. The question, of course, is whether liturgical worship is part of what God desires of us. I would make two arguments in favor, one Biblical and one natural. But, the natural one will have to wait for another writing because I have too much to write from Scripture.

The Greek word for tradition, paradosis, or a variant patroparadotus, is used in 8 sets of verses in the New Testament. Five times it is used in a negative fashion and three in a positive fashion. The three positive ones are:

1 Corinthians 11:2 — Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the traditions, as I delivered them to you. [Please note that it is this chapter in which St. Paul goes on to state that he will NOT praise them in the matter of the Lord's Supper because they are not keeping the tradition that he delivered to them, ending up by saying that some of them are dead because they so failed to correctly follow the traditions he delivered. Keeping the traditions can be a very serious matter to God.]

2 Thessalonians 2:15 — Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.
2 Thessalonians 3:6 — Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. [Hmm, failure to keep the tradition can lead to shunning or excommunication.]

I have heard too many sermons that speak as though any tradition is automatically suspect. I have also read about how “human” traditions are automatically wrong. But, that is not what the verses say. The verses that are against tradition do, indeed, speak about the tradition of the elders and “your” tradition. But, the verses in favor of tradition only say that Christians ought to faithfully keep the traditions which the apostles have taught. There is obviously an assumption that those traditions are acceptable to God, but notice that there is no claim that each and every tradition was taught to them directly by Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In fact, the apostles do not even bother to spell out every tradition! They simply ask the recipients of their epistles to remember to keep every tradition as it was taught them whether in writing or verbally. There is no claim in the New Testament that every tradition has been written down within the pages of the New Testament. There is no claim in the New Testament that only what is found within the pages of the epistles may be used in worship or even enforced. There is no claim in the New Testament that we are free to worship as we will, rather the opposite is stated. In fact, the only claim in the New Testament is that you ought not to be taken captive by the wrong tradition but that you must keep the right tradition. And, all the writings of the Early Church Fathers and of writings such as the Didache make it clear that our worship, our baptisms, our ordinations are all done in a liturgical fashion following the principles and words taught to us by the apostles.

But to me the strongest argument is the Book of Revelation. I know that I could point out that incense is used, as well as pre-planned liturgical actions, as well as special vestments, etc. But, sometimes we miss the forest for the trees. Look at the structure of Revelation. The “camera” moves back and forth from heaven to earth to heaven to earth. In the heavens, a liturgy is taking place, with incense, etc. On the earth, the results of that liturgy are seen in human history. That is, according to Revelation, the liturgy of heaven dictates the history of the earth! Each time the liturgy of heaven “takes a step” something happens on earth, so that even the evil on earth ends up bowing the knee to God, sound familiar? By the way, the liturgy that is being celebrated is a marriage liturgy, “Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.”

Which brings me to a final point. All the Early Church Fathers insisted that we were not merely “doing” liturgy as though ritual actions, by themselves, somehow pleased God. After all, from Cain to the people in Corinth, incorrect ritual actions could draw a curse from God. No, rather, they all insisted that when we worship (liturgically) on earth, we are actually mystically joining in the great liturgy of heaven, the liturgy which is guiding the history of the earth. It is not liturgical worship, in and of itself, which is the crux, though liturgical worship does please God, as is well pointed out in the Old Testament and in the Book of Revelation. What pleases God is liturgical worship that is in accord with the traditions delivered to us; is liturgical worship celebrated in the power of the Holy Spirit; is liturgical worship which makes present here on earth the Lord’s death until He comes again; is liturgical worship that can “see” past our earthly expression of worship to “see” the heavenly worship that we are joining (yes, our human worship is an icon of the heavenly worship); is liturgical worship celebrated by a people who do justice, who love mercy, and who walk humbly with their God.

Matthew Johnson/United Methodist:My brief argument for the value of liturgy for all Christians is simple: it’s participatory in ways that other orders of worship aren’t. I’ve spent most of my adult life worshiping in semi-contemporary settings and if you hold high the occasional recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, that’s the limit of congregational participation. A lot of folks don’t even sing the words on the screen but instead listen to the band. We want people to be involved in missions, small groups, Vacation Bible School, and the youth program but we don’t act like we want them involved in worship. Sometimes they don’t act like they want to be involved. Maybe I don’t understand clearly from the church member’s point of view and maybe I’m being unfairly critical of the typical way of avoiding liturgy, but worship is participatory and active, not passive. Jesus told the woman at the well that she would one day worship in spirit and in truth, “The day is coming and is now here when true worshipers will passively engage by listening to others sing in the worship of the Creator God who sent his only unique Son into the world to die for humanity’s sins and be raised from the dead three days later.”

In our more liturgical services the whole church joins in a responsive call to worship, they are praying the Lord’s Prayer together, they are praying out loud a prayer for illumination before the Scripture reading, and they are thanking God for his word at the conclusion of that reading. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we publicly confess our sin and receive pardon, and we participate together in the Great Thanksgiving. I know there are fewer people who like and attend a service like this, but at least it is what it claims to be: a work of the people.

Peter Vance Matthews/Anglican: Peter’s Anglican Church is so busy having great Liturgy this Tridium, that we’ll have to catch him on the other side of the Ressurection.

Seriously, it’s amazing any of these guys got this post in here before Easter. I’ll let you know when Peter finds out what Liturgy is and tries some.

Alan Creech/Roman Catholic: I think this is a great one for the “liturgical” gangstas. I’ve been involved in, “into” liturgy since I was grafted into Christ. I have always found/seen deep meaning inside it. To a certain extent, I can hear and “get” what some Christians from non-liturgical traditions say about it being “rote, religious observance.” It can certainly be that – dead and without life, but I would argue that this is not inherent to liturgy itself. I’ve heard a lot of people argue for a more “organic” church experience. I’ve been known to say in reply, “liturgy IS organic!” To reverse the analogy, natural life is, of course, organic, but it is also very rhythmic, very “regular” – very liturgical.

This is causing me to look into my vault of writing/teaching/thinking about such things, both as a Catholic Christian and as a member of the whole Church in general. When I was an “emerging church” guy, and had some voice within that arena, I was often called “the liturgy guy.” I was known as someone who saw the deep value of not only liturgical worship but of a liturgical lifestyle. As a part of my answer, therefore, I’m digging up the archives and re-publishing some things I’ve said/written in the past about this very question.

The first is the outline of probably the last homily I taught in a larger group setting – at the Easter Vigil service of 2007, with our little community worshiping with St. Patrick’s Anglican church here in Lexington. I taught about the value of liturgy as a rhythm of life, as a formational tool used by God for and in us. This is, as I said, an outline form, hopefully it makes sense…

- This work we are doing is doing a work in us.

- Whatever Teaching or Preaching I do tonight is only a very small part of a larger whole.

- The liturgy itself does something in us. It forms us. It is a tool God uses to mold us into the image of Him Who’s resurrection we celebrate tonight. (I then talked a bit about the analogy of the Potter working with clay – that there are a specific set of tools used in ceramics and the way they go about molding a piece of clay into a “pot” is a “liturgy” in itself – there is a repeated definite pattern to the process.)

- When you, when we count on Teaching or Preaching to do too much work on their own, we throw our life as a Body out of balance. We put too heavy a burden on this pulpit. (I talked about how the small lectern I was behind wouldn’t hold my weight, and pushed down on it – music stand). It was not designed to bear such a weight. (I spoke a little about how some parts of the Church have done this, put too much weight on one piece).

- We must, rather, put ourselves into the whole life of the Church. We are now in Him, a part of his Household. And, so, we’re a part of the “family business,” as it were. (I talked about how it’s as if we’ve been adopted into a family who has a farm – farm life is very rhythmic and seasonal – it is very much like a “liturgical lifestyle”).

- This spiritual life’s work we’re doing is not only the liturgy we’re involved in from week to week, that of the Mass. It is this, tonight, that fire, that great candle, the light of God dispelling the darkness in all of us. It is the constant, joyful din of Alleluia through the whole Easter season – and then, and then, and then… It never ends. The cycle keeps on going – the great Rhythm of our life in God.

- Not always exciting or spectacular (not like tonight’s liturgy, not always a big deal). But always real and True and always forming us, whether we feel like it is or not – over a long period of time – day by day, week by week, month, years. (we don’t like talking about the “years” part but this liturgical lifestyle lends itself to a long-haul perspective of the Christian life, of this life of transformation).

So, let us not give up even after Easter, on into Ordinary time. Let us keep breathing, keep doing our work, keep living. Amen.

_________________

Here are some excerpts from a little roundtable discussion I did at my good friends’ Vineyard church in Cincinnati two years earlier probably (2005?)…
Here’s a link to a PDF of the whole thing if anyone’s interested in reading it.

What do you mean “ancient-future”? The term has been thrown around for several years, probably “coined” by Robert Webber of the institute for worship studies (author of ancient-future faith). Basically, it refers to christians in the now rediscovering the ancient roots of their faith – looking again at and using the tools which have been used for centuries to help draw us into a full-orbed worship experience with God. The “-future” would imply that its not merely a matter of doing old things for the sake of doing old things, but of weaving these ancient stable things in with what’s going on now. …

It is about recapturing forgotten things, things which have been stripped out of some of our christian traditions. During the protestant reformation some unfortunate things happened. The churches were stripped of all art, all representation, all symbols – everything except a bible and a pulpit. Some of us have been raised in this atmosphere, where everything is about words – it was all in the mind, never in the guts. God created all our senses. He reveals Himself to us through them all if we pay attention. …

We’re talking about things which engage the whole person in worship – not just the mind or the hearing of words in preaching or teaching. Those things are a part of the whole but not the whole itself. we’re talking about visual things such as icons, candles, the use of film, art in its various forms. We’re talking about getting your body into the experience in ways such as crossing yourself, using your hands in other symbolic gestures, kneeling, laying on the floor, etc. It may mean we even get the sense of smell into this thing by using incense to symbolize the sweet smell of the sacrifice of our lives rising up to God, or the smoke with the smell as out prayers rising up to him as we see in the scriptures. Using these things in tandem with each other in the midst of free-flowing elements, in planned installations, and as a regular part of our gathering times can go far in re-introducing our whole selves into the lifetime worship event.

_________________

Here are some excerpts from an article I wrote a while back (while we were still doing church in our home) for the online version of Relevant Magazine…
Here’s a link to that whole article, again, if anyone’s interested in the whole context.

…Liturgy (the work of the people) and monasticism have been a part of the life of the Church for many centuries, but in wider evangelicalism, both these expressions, these ways of being Christian, have been, for the most part, left behind. And this leaving behind has been intentional, the thought being that these things were either illegitimate or useless. It was and is considered rigid, legalistic and unspiritual. It is (gasp!) “religious.” Today, in many of the simple, organic faith communities that are emerging out of the ashes of that movement, we see that philosophy being re-thought. It’s drawing many in who have once discarded all structure in the church whatsoever. Interesting world.

It’s like our skeletons have been ripped out. We have been, many of us for a while, like piles of boneless flesh and organs laying on the ground – no stability, no structure to hold us up, to allow us to walk or sit upright. This is not good. This is how the liturgy can be a helpful thing. It gives us a skeletal structure to stand with, and it’s not just some new made-up thing that hasn’t been tested. It is tried and tested and still standing. It has helped in this way since the beginning. It is an ancient Oak. This, I think, is what we’re catching hold of. Our eyes are open. Our noses are alert. We see and smell something that will give us what we do not have.

As we re-examine the mode of our active Christian lives, we are discovering, it seems, the real value of a liturgical lifestyle, not only the trappings of liturgical worship. We are finding, once again, the real spiritual formation that happens in the context of close Christian community, and we are finding ways of living that out in the midst of “real life.” The monastic life is not merely a life of quiet and solitude, although there are elements of that within it. It is a liturgical lifestyle – a life of “spiritual work” that is done by a community together. …

Sorry for the length, but this is one of my things, so I had to throw it out there. Michael asked us to write about liturgy in general, for all Christians, not just an apologetic from the particular liturgy of our own traditions. I think there’s a good bit of that there. Of course, I deeply value the ancient liturgy of my own Catholic Tradition, but liturgy belongs to us all. I believe it’s one of the amazing tools that God has given us to help us in the journey of our common transformation into His Image.

Oh, and here are a couple of links to two blog posts I wrote a few years ago called “Why Liturgy Helps”, Part One, and Part Two. Hope that… helps too. Peace.

Wyman Richardson/Southern Baptist: Me talking about liturgy is about like Elizabeth Taylor talking about marital commitment: it technically can (or “could”) be done, but it’s not very believable. And yet even those who are least in the kingdom can aspire, so I’ll dive in.

The word “liturgy” refers generally to a prescribed approach to worship and encompasses any number of facets that are usually germaine to that particular tradition, though many forms and aspects transcend particular communions and are embraced by many fellowships (e.g., the Apostles’ Creed).

I think I’d want to start with the inevitability of liturgy. Here is something I’ve learned after a lifetime spent in churches that pride themselves in being free of liturgy and dead ceremony (terms used interchangeably in some places): the premise is absurd. There is no liturgy-free worship, and the monikor “non-liturgical” makes about as much sense as “government intelligence.”

The same churches that will ostensibly operate beneath the feigned guise of “free” worship or “Spirit-led” worship will inevitably, predictably, and without fail fall into a liturgy that is so set it makes the Greek Orthodox look like wild-eyed Pentecostals on speed. I’ve heard Baptist deacons anathematize written prayers only to turn around and say the same prayer over the offering plates that they were regurgitating back when Herbert Hoover was in office (i.e., “Father we just…”, “bring into the storehouse…”, “our tithes and your offerings…”, “bless the gift and the giver…”, with about 10 more “just’s” and “umm’s” thrown in). I’ve seen the same Baptist people who mock the formulaic worship of the liturgical churches respond to small changes in the customary bulletin layout with a venom that makes Genghis Khan seem like Stuart Smalley. I’ve known pastors in churches which chide the physicality and symbolism of liturgical churches almost get martyred in the center aisle for suggesting that the flag be moved from the sanctuary, or for putting their Bibles on the communion table, or for projecting a song instead of singing from the hymn book. The same Baptist who will condemn the Catholics for their relics will threaten to murder you in your sleep if you move the black-and-white picture of Miss Bussie from the display cabinet in the foyer. I’ve met more Tetzels in Baptist land than outside it.

The only difference between the “non-liturgical” churches and the “liturgical” churches is that the former’s liturgy is (1) present but denied, (2) inherited instead of intentional, (3) culturally defined instead of ecclesiologically mandated, and (4) largely pragmatic instead of theological.

Now, this inevitability creates an irony but not a dilemma, and that’s where I’ve been trying to lead the church I pastor in appropriate and careful ways. Should not these inevitable structures, ceremonies, and services be intentionally infused with the wisdom of the church triumphant and ancient instead of subterfuged by the implicit assumptions of whatever culture we happen to reside in? Should we not see the siren song of neophilia (”love of the new”) as less desireable than the ancient liturgical practices? Will we not have more genuine “freedom” in worship operating in the context of a living, embraced, meaningful, God-exalting, deliberate liturgy of substance than we currently do in the context of our own assumed freedom which inevitably ends up being simple enslavement to the cultural mores of that odd little patch of earth we happen to live on?

So liturgy is inevitable and it ought to be embraced. To be sure, the old warnings against “dead ceremony” are legitimate and should be heeded. I do indeed relish the Baptist emphasis on the movement of the Spirit in worship and the place for passionate preaching and extemporaneous prayer and testimony. I mean that sincerely. But it would seem that one could not only embrace the best of both realities, but that the liturgical forms of the church can actually aid us in seeking God’s power and movement in our midst. In other words, liturgy could just be the Baptist’s best friend!

The value of liturgy is that it gives parameters to our naturally nomadic hearts, ties us in through concrete means with the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us, is oftentimes multi-sensory and not merely auditory (as Baptist worship can, at times, become) and, as such, ministers to the whole person. It strikes at our sense of isolation by reminding us in vivid and powerful ways that we are part of a two-millennia-old movement. It humbles us, guards us from our ego-driven and naive obsession with the new, and keeps us from our “reinvent-the-wheel” conceit that makes us see worship as merely our creation without regard to the worldwide Church of today or yesterday. And, above all else, liturgy can be Spirit-filled, Christ-exalting, and living. It is the churches cry of “Hallelujah!” to the living and holy God of Heaven and Earth.

William Cwirla/Lutheran: Why liturgical worship?

First a definition and a disclaimer. By “liturgy” I mean the western catholic mass form as it has been handed down by way of the Lutheran Reformation consisting of the five fixed canticles (Kyrie, Gloria in Excelsis, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei) pardon the Latin, but it sounds cool and we still use ‘em. “Liturgy” also includes the assigned Scripture texts for the Sundays, feast days, and seasons. I recognize that other Christians (and even some Lutherans) use the word “liturgy” to refer to any order of service, but that’s not how I’m using it here. Most of what I will say about the liturgy of the Divine Service will pertain to “liturgical worship” in general.

OK. Good. Now, why the liturgy?

1. Historic roots. Some parts of the liturgy go back to the apostolic period. Even the apostolic church did not start with a blank liturgical slate but adapted and reformed the liturgies of the synagogue and the Sabbath. The western mass shows our western catholic roots, of which we as Lutherans are not ashamed. We’re not the first Christians to walk the face of the planet, nor, should Jesus tarry, will we be the last. The race of faith is a relay, one generation handing on (“traditioning”) to the next the faith once delivered to the saints. The historic liturgy underscores and highlights this fact. It is “traditionable,” that is, it can be handed on.

2. A distinguishing mark. The liturgy distinguishes us from those who do not believe, teach, and confess the same as we do. What we believe determines how we worship, and how we worship confesses what we believe.

3. Theocentric and Christocentric. From the invocation of the Triune Name in remembrance of Baptism to the three-fold benediction at the end, the liturgy is focused on the activity of the Triune God centered in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. Worship is not primarily about “me” or “we” but about God in Christ reconciling the world to HImself and my baptismal inclusion in His saving work.

4. Teaching. The liturgy teaches the whole counsel of God – creation, redemption, sanctification, Christ’s incarnation, passion, resurrection, and reign, the Spirit’s outpouring and the new life of faith. Every liturgical year cycles through these themes so that the hearer receives the “whole counsel of God” on a regular basis.

5. Trans-cultural. One of the greatest experiences of my worship life was to be in the Divine Service in Siberia with the Siberian Lutheran Church. Though I spoke only a smattering of Russian, I knew enough to recognize the liturgy, know what was being said (except for the sermon, which was translated for us), and be able to participate knowledgeably across language and cultural barriers. I have the same experience with our Chinese mission congregation.

6. Repetition. It is, after all, the mother of learning. Fixed texts and annual cycles of readings lend to deep learning. Obviously, mindless repetition does not accomplish anything; nor does endless variety.

7. Corporate. Worship is a corporate activity. “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” The liturgy draws us out of ourselves into Christ by faith and the neighbor by love. We are all in this together. Worship is not simply about what “I get out of it,” but I am there also for my fellow worshippers to receive the gifts of Christ that bind us together and to encourage each other to love and good works (Heb 10:25). We are drawn into the dialogue of confession and absolution, hearing and confessing, corporate song and prayer. To borrow a phrase from a favored teacher of mine, in church we are “worded, bodied, and bloodied” all together as one.

8. The tyranny of the “here and now.” When the Roman world was going to hell in a hand basket, the church was debating the two natures of Christ. In the liturgy, the Word sets the agenda, defining our needs and shaping our questions. The temptation is for us to turn stones into bread to satisfy an immediate hunger and scratch a nagging spiritual itch, but the liturgy teaches us to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

9. External and objective. The liturgical goal is not that everyone feel as certain way or have an identical “spiritual” experience. Feelings vary even as they come and go. The liturgy supplies a concrete, external, objective anchor in the death and resurrection of Jesus through Word, bread, and wine. Faith comes by hearing the objective, external Word of Christ.

10. The Word of God. This is often overlooked by critics of liturgical worship. Most of the sentences and songs of the liturgy are direct quotations or allusions from Scripture or summaries, such as the Creed. In other words, the liturgy is itself the Word of God, not simply a packaging for the Word. Many times the liturgy will rescue a bad sermon and deliver what the preacher has failed to deliver. I know; I’ve been there.

There’s ten reasons off the top of my head in Holy Week. Ten being a number of completeness, I’ll leave it there.

Welcome to IM’s popular feature, “The Liturgical Gangstas,” a panel discussion among different liturgical traditions represented in the Internet Monk audience.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
Rev. Peter Vance Matthews is an Anglican priest and founding pastor of an AMIA congregation.
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction. (Alan’s not a priest. If he is, his wife and kids need to know.)
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: What is the status of church planting in your tradition/denomination? What’s your view of the place of church planting in Christianity as a whole and the future of your own tradition/denomination?

Father Ernesto/Orthodox: Church planting is alive and well within the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, as well as within other Orthodox jurisdictions. Since 1988, we have grown significantly. We have more than doubled in size.

Having said that, I cite 1988 because that was a year of change among the Antiochians. Frankly, before that the Antiochians were all too focused within themselves and their ethnicity. This despite the fact that Orthodox missions began in North America in 1794 in Alaska when the first Orthodox missionaries arrived. But, that early missionary spirit was lost into ethnicity by the mid-1950’s. At that point, it could have safely been said that the Antiochians were Orthodox Christians from the Levant area of the Middle East.

The change came from outside. In the 1980’s, a group of evangelical churches came to Metropolitan Philip and asked to become part of Orthodoxy. The process of discernment became the crucible of the Holy Spirit to call Orthodoxy back to its missionary history. That group was accepted in, and the Antiochians became mission minded Orthodox again. Right now, if you were to ask any of us, we would answer that the Church has no choice but to plant churches. But, we would also emphasize that mere evangelism is insufficient. Unless the evangelism is aimed at the planting of parishes or aimed at bringing people into the Church, we would be in danger of leaving orphaned believers around. That is, we do not believe in evangelism as separate from church planting. We cannot even imagine the possibility of teaching someone adequately about Christ without, at the same time, teaching them about the Body of Christ.

I would argue that this is one of the biggest mental changes that needs to take place within American Christianity. The emphasis on purely individual conversion, the lack of a catechetical process, and the failure to give importance to the “wineskin” within which a new believer is to be placed have led to a Christianity that has behavior patterns that are little different from society at large. It is little wonder that Christianity is seen as a “sweet by and by” religion by American critics, and they have a point.

So, to answer iMonk’s question, I have mixed feelings about the place of church planting in Christianity. If by church planting one means a continuation of the modern methodology, then I see little place for that. It would simply be a continuation of what has not produced lasting change and what has led us to be labeled a “sweet by and by” religion. Church planting that does not lead to any discernible change in behavior is the warehousing of individuals who are simply participating in a cultural exercise. If by church planting one means evangelizing people, catechizing them (we take a year before someone is admitted as a member) so that they have a sound doctrinal and practical basis for their Christianity, and making sure that they are placed into a wineskin that will provide a sound structure to their relationship with Christ and a connection to the Holy Spirit, then I would say that, yes, America desperately needs that type of church planting. Let us remember that those who wrote against Christianity in the Roman Empire were nevertheless impressed by the changed behavior that they witnessed, not simply a result of an “encounter” with Christ but also a result of the catechetical process through which all Christians had to pass and of being placed into a wineskin that provided the structure and support that a Christian needed in order for change to take place. We need more of that in America.

Matthew Johnson/United Methodist:I can’t talk with much authority on a denominational level but I can tell you that several years ago our Conference made a commitment to plant churches in the state of Arkansas. I am fully behind this because I think we need to plant new churches. We’ve probably seen more failures than successes at this point but I’m glad that we are trying. Could we do it better? Sure, and I hope we’ll look at other denominations or movements to help us see church plants grow and thrive.

I am a United Methodist and I’ll confess, I’m smitten with the Acts 29 church planting network. I’ve read their material, listened to their podcasts, and tried to pay attention to what they are doing which seems to be a lot. In the scope of catholic Christianity, these guys are doing what I wish we would/could do because it is in our DNA. There was a time in our history when circuit riding preachers were establishing churches in communities up and down the frontier of the nascent United States. That’s a piece of our history that is badly missing today. I’m not that aware of what other traditions or movements are doing in my area right now, but I encourage and pray for church plants. I pastor in a town of 4,000. I’d guess that we’ve got 1,000 people in church on any given Sunday within the city limits. That means we have around 3,000 not going anywhere. I’d love for them to come worship with us and maybe some of them will but if a church plant came in here and reached some people that the other churches weren’t I would celebrate that.

As far as my view of the place of church planting in my denomination, I’d like to see more priority given to church plants but we’re going to have to get over our sense of territorial entitlement. There are times when a good church plant might encroach on the territory of another UM church. Established churches see it as a threat which makes no sense to me. If the existing church had made evangelism and church planting a priority no one would be having a conversation about territorial boundaries. This from a denomination whose founder snubbed the religious authorities of the Church of England and said “The world is my parish.” As you can see from the Wesley Report, we don’t always play nicely when it comes to church plants. (http://www.wesleyreport.com/2009/03/gracepoint-what-really-happened.html). I accept that I don’t know all the details and I might be unfairly characterizing those involved, but it cannot be denied that it was a mess and that territory had a place in the conflict no matter whose side you were on. That kind of stuff is not going to expand the Kingdom of God into the hearts of unbelievers.

Peter Vance Matthews/Anglican: I am a member of the Anglican Mission in the Americas which is an outreach to North America from the Anglican Church of Rwanda. The reason our denomination exists is to plant churches. I am a church planter. The church I pastor now is the third church plant I have worked with. Part of my role in the AMiAs is to recruit, resource and place new church planters. I believe in church planting.

Anglicanism is a parochial tradition. When the Church of England separated from Rome, the nation was thoroughly churched. Reformation did not involve church planting; it involved reforming the existing life of the church – its structures, its doctrine, its clergy and its liturgy. However, in the 19th century, as Anglicanism spread around the globe, the missionary impulse entered the Anglican fold. To some degree in the United States (there is a robust history of church planting by the Episcopal Church in the 19th century) but mostly in Africa and Asia, Anglicanism has taken on a missionary DNA that has led to church planting and church planting movements. One of the classic texts on church planting was penned by Anglican cleric and missionary Roland Allen entitled The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And the Causes Which Hinder It. In the 20th century the church planting impulse has become part of global Anglicanism. In Rwanda, the Anglican Church has all the classic structures – diocese, bishop, parish – one finds in the Church of England, but the aim of these structures is to facilitate evangelism, discipleship and church planting.

I believe the church is a missionary movement. I believe this missionary reality touches all aspects of life, but I believe church planting is at the heart of its purpose. While I do not believe church planting is a sufficient means to foster a renewal of classical Christianity in North America, I do believe it is a necessary and central part of this work.

Sometimes people argue that there are already enough churches in North America. This can seem right if one drives down the streets of a city and sees what looks like a lot of churches. But looks can be deceiving. I live in Lexington, Kentucky. There are roughly 300 churches in the city. The population of the city is roughly 300,000. If one is generous and assumes the average attendance of all the churches combined is 200 per church, then 60,000 people attend church in Lexington. That means 80% of the city is unchurched – and Lexington is Bible belt country! Again, one might argue that these churches need to grow. But that won’t happen. Most churches are under 100 in attendance. This is not because they are all dead. It is because natural human groupings are small. The mega-church model is a large exception to the rule. Thus, I suggest, the best way to evangelize a city is to plant more and more churches.

I am looking for church planters. If you are Anglican, or have an interest in being Anglican, and sense a call to plant a church, let me know. I want to talk to you! Heck, I don’t even care if you aren’t Anglican, I still want to talk!

Alan Creech/Roman Catholic: Church planting in the Catholic Church – hmmm. To begin with, I’ll say that I can only answer this question based upon my own personal knowledge and experience. I am not any sort of official representative of the Roman Catholic Church. Yeah, I tried to get hold of the office in charge of all this in Rome, but alas, no return.

As I was saying, hmmhmm, church planting in the Catholic Church (and I can also only speak for America) – uuhmm, say what? church what?? Planting? Are you talking about a garden or something? Sorry. Honestly – very honestly, the most I’ve heard about anything close to this concept is the effort to close as many churches as possible in recent years. Not that we want to close them, but that’s just how it’s shaking down. It’s about viable numbers and paying bills and facilities and yes, a lack of Priests. Parishes are being consolidated all over – you know, shut down two and move both their numbers into another one nearby. It’s a painful situation.

Now, there have certainly been some church plantin’ missionary wild folk in the Catholic Tradition. The Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits (among many others) have set the world on fire with missionary zeal in their day. Have you seen the movie “The Mission”? That’s Jesuit hard-core stuff right there. And the Blackrobes were martyred a many in the early Native American and Canadian wilderness. They went among the native peoples, taught them the Gospel, baptized them, and started churches. I was amazed at the number of Franciscan enclaves there are in Ireland when I was there, and the age of some of them – not long after Francis kicked the earthly bucket – those boys were travlin’.

There are “missions” today too, in outlying areas. In Eastern Kentucky there are very tiny Catholic “missions” set up in trailers or rooms here and there, run by more established churches in towns not far away. That’s a kind of church planting. There are small groups of Ordered Religious Priests, Brothers and Sisters who live in areas you just don’t move to, ministering to the people there, many times in the inner-city where no one sees them except those who live there. Is that “church planting”? Not per se, but it is “the presence of the Church” among the people of the world. These things are coming to mind as I think about this.

These things are great. What I don’t see, though, is an attempt to do what my good friend Peter up there mentioned – trying to reach people in a city the size of Lexington through planting multiple churches instead of trying to grow the ones we have bigger. Bigger, as I see it, is not always better. Could there possibly be some kind of effort to develop new ways of establishing Catholic faith communities in a place like this, or any place for that matter, which might possibly tap into the missionary Christ living inside the great masses of the un-ordained? Maybe? One huge disadvantage I see (my perspective is perhaps a bit unique due to my mixed background) is the lack of simplicity where it comes to what constitutes “a church.”

There is also an, as I see it, unfortunate idea that when we build church buildings, somehow we need to spend waaay too much money on a facility that is “worthy” enough to house the real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist — as if God is overly concerned with the grandeur of houses built by the hands of men. His Sacramental Presence in the Eucharist is indeed beautiful and deeply nourishes us, helping to transform us into His Own Image, but God is not a man that he needs a 9 million dollar edifice to live in. I would imagine that if His earthly tabernacle had to be a hollowed out space in a tree in the forest in order for His Life to enter a softened human heart, then so be it and He would be glorified.

How about a ton of small, quasi-monastic, base ecclesial communities scattered around a city or a rural area for that matter, who build relationships with one another, pray together on a regular, systematic basis, have some sort of leadership to help with spiritual direction, and who are connected to a larger local parish church. That’s a thought that I could flesh out a lot more, but for such a thing, there wouldn’t be need for highly educated clergy, not at that level. I’m not saying anything like “do away with clergy” so don’t even try it. I’m talking about new ways of being church together in a Catholic context without having to build a bunch of buildings or have a bunch of Priests that we don’t have. There’s a lot that could be done and no real need to dismantle anything in the process. OK, that’s all I’ve got. Peace to all in this house.

Wyman Richardson/Southern Baptist: The planting of new churches is a huge emphasis in the Southern Baptist Convention. The statement on the SBC North American Mission Board website provides a pretty accurate reflection of the rationale for this emphasis: “Believing that anything healthy reproduces, the Church Planting Group works with our partners to plant healthy, reproducing churches with evangelistic passion as part of the New Testament church planting movement among all people groups in the United States, U.S. territories, and Canada.” To this end, the “Church Planting Village” was created for the purpose of providing (caution: cringe alert!) “Your One Stop Shop For Church Planting” (http://www.churchplantingvillage.net).

This is but one example of what is, again, a massive push for the creation of new churches in the SBC, an push that is at least verbally present in virtually every area of SBC life.

There are quibbles: I’ve heard many pastors complain about what they perceive to be the non-strategic planting of churches in saturated areas without appropriate communication with the existing churches. This comes across to these pastors as pompous, myopic, divisive, and harmful. Furthermore, some question the motives and the rationale of the emphasis.

That being said, I am in general agreement with the NAMB assumption “that anything healthy reproduces.” Perhaps I would phrase it a bit differently, given that there have been many a “healthy” disciple or ministry that has faithfully tried to see the gospel spread and “reproduce” but has met with very little or no signs of outward “success,” for lack of a better word. In other words, is the faithful believer who is genuinely seeking to be salt and light but who has not seen the conversion of people to Christ “unhealthy”? I think not.

But, with that caveat, I agree. The planting of new churches is, in my opinion, biblical, right, and good. It is also logically necessary as the gospel even now continues to spread into unreached groups and locales. I have some questions, again, about the planting of new churches in so-called “saturated” areas, and yet the state of many of our churches as well as an absurd and ever-encroaching tribalism that keeps too many churches from genuinely trying to reach their community renders the creation of new churches unfortunately necessary even in these areas.

I agree with Michael’s assessments in his “Collapse of Evangelicalism” article and think that new church starts will become increasingly important (crucial, even) in the ruins of this collapse. But the creation of these new churches will need to mean much more than the creation of new gathering places, and the motivation will have to be much more than denominational expansion, the replenishing of dwindling denominational coffers, the sustaining of denominational church-growth bureaucracies, etc. The motivation will have to be a renewed commitment to the gospel, a renewed understanding of its power to transform human hearts, and a renewed conviction that the stewards and propagators of this gospel are the people of God. As such, the creation of new churches will likely come less from denominational entities and more from conviction-driven local congregations. This would be, I think, a welcome development.

William Cwirla/Lutheran: he language of “church planting” is not native to my Lutheran confessional tradition. The Lutheran Reformation was a reformation of existing, established churches in regions where Christianity was the dominant, if not exclusive, religion. Since the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that ended the Thirty Years’ War, Lutherans have operated quite comfortably with a regional or state church institutional model.

On the other hand, my own denomination, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), has church planting at its foundation. The LCMS grew by gathering scattered German immigrants living on the western frontier of 19th c. America. Language barriers limited much of these efforts (a fact often misunderstood or ridiculed by others). CFW Walther, the first president of the LCMS and pastor of the “mother church” in St. Louis, intentionally divided his large congregation into four distinct but related congregations and seeded these new church plants with members from the mother church. Many LCMS congregations followed the same pattern. The LCMS sent seminary trained traveling preachers (Reisepredigern) all over the western frontier to gather new congregations. Congregations also freed their pastors to travel during the week to plant new congregations.

This church planting activity continued through the mid-20th century during the post-war boom years of the LCMS. Often a church plant resulted inadvertently out of a congregation division, for wherever two or three Lutherans are gathered there will be a split. Sometimes congregations relocated when they had lost touch with their surrounding community. I grew up in such a church plant on the southwest side of Chicago; I was baptized in the local elementary school’s gymnasium, since our congregation did not yet have a building.

Things seemed to have changed in the 1960’s and 70’s as urban congregations declined and suburban congregations were smitten with the “church growth” bug and the temptation to become a “mega-church.” I believe that our synodical fascination with the church growth movement did more to hurt the formation of new congregations than any other single factor. Instead of looking outward to generate daughter congregations, congregations looked inward to grow ever larger in numbers, property, and programs.

Church planting seems to be on the front burner once again in the LCMS. Our synodical missions department has set a goal of 2000 new church plants by the year 2017 and currently reports 498 new church plants since 2002. My own district, which encompasses southern CA, Arizona, and southern Nevada planted 7 new congregations last year and 20 in the last five years serving a wide variety of languages in an ethnically complex region.

Certain aspects of Lutheranism are challenged by recent trends in church planting. As a sacramental confession, we hold to a sacramental view of the pastoral office as a unique, divinely established office that functions within the Church with the authority of Christ. No one is to preach and preside in our churches apart from call and ordination (Augsburg Confession XIV). No one can set himself up to be a pastor or church planter simply because he has the itch. In our circles, church planting tends to be pastor-driven and top-down in our circles. I will be curious how this compares with my Roman Catholic and Easter Orthodox gangstas.

Lutherans in general, and the LCMS in particular, place a high value on the local congregation, respecting existing congregational boundaries and treating each congregation as though it were a little regional church, much like a diocese or geographic parish. Church planting activity within the vicinity of an established congregation tends to be frowned upon if not discouraged. This is especially problematic when the local congregation is weak or dying or has lost meaningful contact with its community. The increased mobility of people and their willingness to travel to find a church that suits their needs, makes geographic boundaries largely irrelevant.

Lutheran congregations tend to institutionalize rapidly, turning them inward and closing them off to newcomers, who are seen as threats to the status quo and the power structure. I recall my field work days when I served in a church plant in semi-rural Missouri. The character of the congregation completely changed when they built their first building and rapidly began to take on institutional concerns. Ironically, they were a much more vibrant, outreach-oriented congregation when they gathered in a borrowed music room at the local middle school.

Another factor that is potentially limits our church planting today, in my estimation, is our increasing diversity in doctrine and practice. Whereas LCMS church plants of the 1950’s resembled congregational “franchises” with everyone more or less on the same doctrinal and liturgical page, today’s church plants reflect a broad diversity that makes many Lutherans uncomfortable. Today, an “LCMS” branded church may look and sound Evangelical, Emergent, semi-Baptist, quasi-Orthodox, or darn near-Catholic depending on who’s paying the bills. I suspect that our concept of unity in doctrine and practice is going to be seriously tested by those 2000 church plants by 2017. It already is.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
Rev. Peter Vance Matthews is an Anglican priest and founding pastor of an AMIA congregation.
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction. (Alan’s not a priest. If he is, his wife and kids need to know.)
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: What foods would be served at a potluck meal that most represented your church tradition?

Father Ernesto/Orthodox: Hmm, church potlucks, yum! On the other hand, lime green jello with tiny marshmellows and some mayonnaise mixed in, not quite so appealing. But, what would you find at a potluck during Lent in a church that comes out of an Arab background but has a significant number of converts?

Well, first you need to know what the Orthodox fasting rules are. The simplest way to explain it is that during fasting periods the Orthodox become vegans. We are expected to not eat any animal products: no meat, no milk, no eggs, no cheese, and one additional product, no olive oil. So what would we eat at a potluck?

There is no such thing as an Arab potluck without hummus, a Levantine Arab dip/spread made from chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, salt, garlic, olive oil (the olive oil is replaced during Lent), and lavash, a flat Syrian bread. And, how can we ever forget rice with lentils, or lentil soup?

I am in a beach area, so there would be boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce. In a mixture of cultures, how about some spaghetti with clam sauce?

We have people of Russian descent, so, bortsch! Someone will inevitably bring in cabbage rolls. Hmm, and a delicious pirog, filled with onions and finely chopped cabbage maybe with some mushrooms. We might even see a good potato soup.

There would be desserts made with honey. And, since this is the USA, a good old-fashioned fruit cup. But, I must stop now. Sorry, iMonk, but after all that I think I am headed out towards a nice Middle Eastern restaurant with my mouth watering.

Matthew Johnson/United Methodist:Talk about a question I could be an expert on! Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never eaten in a United Methodist Church outside the state of Arkansas. I have no clue what yankee Methodists eat but what I’m going to describe is pretty accurate for the Methodist churches in Arkansas that have had the pleasure of feeding me.

One other caveat – my experience has been that the United Methodist Men do breakfast and the United Methodist Women organize and cook for the potlucks. In my current church you can’t beat either. Seriously. The scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy are top notch. I need to organize one of these soon.

O.K., let’s get started with a good old United Methodist potluck. If you’ve seen me, you’ll know that my starting place is going to be out of character, but I’m serious: salads. There are all kinds and they are all pretty good, but the broccoli salad is by far the best and I hate broccoli. It’s got craisins (cranberry & raisin), sunflower seeds, and some type of mayo dressing to it. It’s wonderful and I eat a lot of it when given the chance. The next thing on my plate is going to be the weird looking jello salad with fruit (probably cherries), mini-marshmallows, and pecan pieces in it. That will go on the opposite side of the plate from the broccoli salad so the juices stay where they are supposed to. Next, I’ll pile on some version of a potato/hashbrown casserole with cornflakes as a topping. I’ll probably take two spoon fulls so it will serve as a buffer in the middle to separate my two salads and the next two perfect ingredients. Green beans with a huge piece of ham hock in it, and some barbeque beans with bacon. The main part is a chicken casserole with cheese and some kind of breaded topping, although that might be cornflakes as well. That goes wherever there is room and will probably be on the side with the green beans or broccoli salad because I don’t mind all that mixing together early on. On top will be two yummy yeast rolls. I’ll go put my plate down and come back for a glass of tea and, if I’m lucky, a piece of chocolate pie – homemade crust and everything.

Boom. I’m so hungry right now.

Peter Vance Matthews/Anglican: First, proper Anglicans do not have potlucks. We have catered dinners (or at the very least common meals.) Potlucks are for the other religions. Ahem.

The catered dinner is served on fine china with matching silver. We want to be green AND stylish.

No salads. We have fresh greens with an array of balsamic and vinaigrette dressings. There is absolutely no ranch dressing allowed! Oh, we might have bok choy as an alternative, but only on special occasions.

Steamed asparagus is a favorite for a vegetable. When asparagus is not available we will often substitute Rapini.

Sliced bread is never found at an Anglican dinner. It must be unsliced and chewy. Easily chewed bread is simply to bourgeois.

If there is a meat dish it is small and light – lemon chicken or smoked salmon. Meat loaf, party sized wieners and tuna fish are not allowed. There are other churches for those things.

Anglicans find casseroles unseemly.

For drink there is mineral water and herbal teas. After dinner, the wet bar is open and offers a fine assortment of import beers, scotch, gin, wine and the traditional Anglican drink – sherry.

At Easter we add cake and champagne. One can’t be too joyous when celebrating our Lord’s resurrection, can one? (There is always large amounts of champagne because of the corollary between the amount of champagne and the level of joy. I.e., the more champagne the more joy!)

Oh, and by the way, reservations are required.

Alan Creech/Roman Catholic: Whheeeww, a potluck – awesome! OK, this ought to be interesting, a Catholic potluck – it all depends where this is happening, and we are in America – I’ve never lived anywhere else – so we’ll stick with that.

Let us begin with the drink, shall we?
- Beer, of course! What the heck is any Catholic picnic or potluck of reception after the Chrism Mass or anything without some beer. Nobody’s worried if they Pastor sees you, he’s got one in his hand! What kind of beer you say? Well, depends on what part of the country you’re in – could even be PBR baby – Louisiana’s got them some serious redneck Cajun Catlicks down’neya.

- Wine: someone was carrying around carafes of wine at the reception after our parish Lenten Mission last night. Surely at a potluck, there would be the Vino. If it’s more suburban, probably more wine than beer, but you never know.

And on to the food…
We do love to call ourselves the ecclesiastical land of the great both/and, so food is all over the place. Could be anywhere from good old fried chicken to… yes… wait for it… fried FISH! ha! It is Lent after all.

Of course, if we travel, again, to the deep South, in the land of our Acadian siblings, I guaraawntee they be some good food dooown in dem place! You might git a table full o’ boiled crawfish or a giant pot a Gumbo. My old TV cooking guru, Justin Wilson, used to say “Is yo Mama Catlick and can she make a roux?” ha! Classic.

And the ethnic enclave nature of early Catholicism in this country will pull in that international flavor to the old potluck – talk about luck! Wait, is this apologetics or what? You can look forward to the likes of Lasagna brought by the DiGiacomo family (her Grandmother was from Sicily you know), Champ courtesy of the Murphys, Pierogis and Kielbasa thanks to the Kowalskis and maybe some seriously good Mole sauce with Turkey breast and homemade Enchiladas from the Gonzales clan. Awesome! Oh, and the fried chicken and macaroni and cheese is always carried in by the Smith family – Smith? – yeah, I know, they’re converts. ha! A man could get right hefty at a potluck like that.

Soooo, when do we eat?

Wyman Richardson/Southern Baptist: When we enter the final eschaton, and the great cloud of witnesses is assembled before the throne, and crowns are given for the contributions of the various and sundry traditions that comprise the Church, I know not what other reward we Baptists will receive, but we will definitely be rewarded for contributing the Baptist potluck to Christian experience.

I tell you there is no greater act of Christian hedonism (apologies to Piper), of pure, unmitigated, unadulterated, undiluted, culinary pleasure than the Baptist potluck. It is as bacchanalian a display of orgiastic food consumption as you’ll ever see this side of Heaven.

The sine qua non is, of course, fried chicken. There simply can be no potluck without it. Oh, somebody will put a plate of ham on the table, to be sure. And that’s ok (John the Baptist had his role to play too), but the centerpiece, the apex of the potluck is a large, glorious, beautiful, cholesterol-filled, platter of fried chicken. It is essential. It is, in a word, beautiful.

Somebody will normally bring barbecue as well, which will send you into the stratosphere. Now, Yankees think barbecue is a verb (bless their hearts), and Texans commit the ultimate blasphemy of thinking it’s beef, but we all know that when God says “barbecue” He’s thinking of pulled (or chopped) pork drenched in sauce. I’m from South Carolina, originally, so I know that it should be mustard-based sauce, but after eleven years in Georgia, I’ve come to appreciate what they do down here as well. (Though I will never forgive this state its absence of rice and hash from the barbecue spread.)

Then to the lesser but also important offerings: rice, brown gravy, gibblet gravy, blackeyed peas, collards, garden peas, string beans, butter beans, squash casserole, broccoli casserole, [fill-in-the-blank] casserole, potato salad, mixed salads in casserole dishes, macaroni and cheese with a toplayer of cheese an inch thick, potato salad, chicken bog, brown rice with mushrooms. Sombebody usually throws in a plate of small, rectangular pimento cheese sandwiches, for some reason. And there’s usually a battalion of crockpots including things like chili, Brunswick stew, and little sausages floating in barbecue sauce. And, of course, the rolls, biscuits, and breads.

Then there are those wonderful in-between grey-area foods: foods that everybody knows should be on the dessert table but that are, for some God-ordained reason, left on the food table so as to assuage the guilt of anybody who want 2 or 3 desserts. This involves, among other things: watermelon, congeal salad, lime fluff, and, thank you Lord, pineapple casserole (a dish deserving its own post, might I add).

Then to the desserts: chocolate cake, caramel cake, red velvet cake, carrot cake, cheesecake, apple cobbler, cherry cobbler, peach cobbler, blackberry cobbler, divinity, chocolate delight with graham crust, vanilla delight, cherry crunch, keylime cake (if you haven’t tasted keylime cake, you may not be saved), homemade cookies, cupcakes, brownies of ten different kinds, lemon meringue pie, cherry pie, apple pie, chocolate pie, keylime pie, and, of course, banana pudding.

As for drinks, there usually aren’t that many at a potluck: sweet tea, unsweet tea, and coffee. Why, I ask you, would there be a need for more drinks than these?

Thus, the Baptist potluck. I’ve barely scratched the surface, but this will have to suffice.

William Cwirla/Lutheran: The Lutheran potluck is legendary if not infamous, thanks to Garrison Keillor and his “News from Lake Wobegon.” Potlucks among Lutherans vary widely based on region. City congregations will be somewhat more sophisticated than rural; congregations outside the midwest will have a greater diversity of foods. The gold standard for the Lutheran potluck is rural midwest. Here are the basic elements.

1. Coffee. Gallons of it. Coffee is the 4th sacrament of the Lutheran church. It must be percolated in one of those huge barrel percolators, never brewed. Use the cheap stuff, too. None of that fancy Starbucks or Peets French Roast. (Besides, who would want to do that to good coffee, anyway?)

2. The “Hot Dish.” This is the Hemi engine that drives the Lutheran potluck. Here is a generic recipe:

1 cup chopped or ground meat of your choice or 1 can of tuna
1 cup elbow macaroni (bow ties if you want to be fancy)
1 can cream of (mushroom, chicken, or celery) soup
1/2 cup onions, chopped
1/2 cup celery, chopped
1 chunk of Velveeta or a jar of Cheese Whiz
salt
pepper

Mix ingredients. Pour into a casserole dish. Sprinkle with bread crumbs. (Wisconsin variant: Skip the Velveeta; cover with 2 cups Colby or mild Cheddar.) Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Serve lukewarm.

3. The “Vegetable Side Dish.” String beans with cream of mushroom soup and sliced almonds. Warm potato salad (with onions, bacon and vinegar). Sauerkraut. Wisconsin: Potatoes au gratin topped with cheese.

4. Salad. Green salad generally means Iceberg lettuce (no arugula!) with tomatoes and cucumbers topped with ranch dressing. Jello salad with some combination of orange or lime jello, marshmallows, shredded carrots, and possibly canned pineapple. Mayonnaise or Cool Whip may also be involved. Broccoli salad tossed with mayonnaise, bacon and golden raisins.

5. Dessert. Brownies and Bundt cakes. Toll-House chocolate chip cookies. And the notorious “Jello Cake” (can’t eat enough jello, we say): Yellow sheet cake infused with molten jello (cherry or some berry flavor) and chilled. Cool-Whip. Wisconsin option: Apple pie topped with melted cheddar cheese.

6. Beverage: Coffee (see above). At Reformation bratwurst/sauerkraut suppers, beer may be served, depending on the congregational level of pietism. Wine is generally frowned upon, though may be served in urban settings. (White wine tends to be viewed as an infallible sign of liberalism.) For the kids, lemonade or fruit punch mix, made either too concentrated or too week. Did I mention coffee?

Having painted that dire culinary picture, let me add that my congregation, with its multi-ethnic diversity, has transcended the average Lutheran potluck creatively incorporating Mexican, Italian, French, Chinese, and various middle eastern cuisines into a mix that is sure to give you a case of heartburn that would make John Wesley envious. Our renowned Easter Agape Feast is a lavish banquet of roasted leg of lamb, smoked beef tenderloin, dolmathes, spanakopetes, olives, humus, skordalia, (my wife makes a mean pastitsio), topped off with pascha (a kind of spreadable cheesecake) and kulich (Russian Easter bread), baklava, and much fine wine, mostly red.

But I boast.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest, who as a result of this IM feature, now has a fan club of several million .
Rev. Peter Vance Matthews is an Anglican priest and founding pastor of an AMIA congregation.
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction. Alan Creech Rosaries is an IM sponsor.
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: I (Michael) recently published two posts on “A New Covenant Lent.” The responses have been animated, and several have asked me to “gangsta-ize” one of the issues. So…

To what extent can a church (and this context will vary from gangsta to gangsta) mandate personal spiritual practices? For example, what is your perspective on mandated fasts at particular times of the Christian year or for other causes? More importantly, what theology of Christian spirituality lies behind your reasoning?

Readers: This was an outstanding response, and please don’t miss the Baptist response. Wyman is in rare form.

Father Ernesto/Orthodox: I fear you asked no short question this time. Let’s first look at a couple of key Scriptures:

Our Lord Jesus Christ received his authority from the Father: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Note that the Mark 16 parallel late addendum clearly speaks of the Church as having been given clear authority over demons, authority to heal, etc. That is, the authority received by Jesus is passed on to the Church

Christ’s authority is exercised in the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit. “And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” Notice that the parallel Scriptures are even broader and say that what the Church binds on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what is unbound on earth shall be unbound in heaven. Authoritative teaching, miracles, the driving out of impure spirits, forgiveness of sins, the incorporation of people into the Body of Christ by evangelism and sacrament, the feeding of the people of God with word and sacrament, and, yes, authoritative guidance in the living of the Christian life is delegated to the Church in a way parallel, but not equal to, the way in which the Father delegated authority to the Son.

But, but, but, the purpose of the authority of the Church is to gather all of humanity into Jesus Christ, “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” No, I do not believe that all shall be saved, but I do believe that the Church’s job is to desire what God desires. “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” Authority in the Church is not for the sake of authority, it is to bring humanity to union with God. And it is to be exercised as servant authority.

Nevertheless, it is real authority, and there are several clear warnings in the New Testament that point to that real authority. Let me allude to several Scriptures that are often conveniently overlooked when we talk about the subject of Church authority. I will simply list them for the sake of keeping this post a little shorter.

Ananias and Saphhira in Acts 5 — there was no requirement that they give all the money from the sale. But, when they lied, St. Peter pronounced a judgment on both of them and they died.

The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 — proclaims several rules of behavior to be obeyed. As late as the Apostolic Constitutions, one can read how it is forbidden to eat meat sacrificed to idols, in spite of the fact that St. Paul had already argued in an earlier writing that ultimately it did not matter whether one ate meat sacrificed to idols or not. Nevertheless, St. Paul was present at that Council and agreed and promulgated a disciplinary restriction agreed upon by the Holy Spirit and the Church in order to more faithfully order the life of the Body and to preserve peace, in spite of his earlier arguments about meat sacrificed to idols.

St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 pronounces a judgment on someone committing sexual immorality and clearly expects that the Church judgment will be reflected in the heavenlies as they, “hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.” That is, not only are they throwing the person out of the community here on earth, St. Paul fully expects that, as a result of that decision, God will withdraw His hand from that person and allow Satan to destroy him for the sake of his salvation. It would be an understatement to say that this is tough love, as well as Church authority binding things in the heavens.

St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11 makes it clear that, in several ways, they are violating traditions, both natural and Church. But, having said that, he clearly points out that he has received certain Traditions, regarding the Lord’s Supper, that they are to follow. Moreover, he makes the startling statement that their failure to handle the Lord’s Supper correctly, that is to follow what they have received in the manner in which they have received it has resulted in some people being sick and some having died.

Having said all that, God will not back the Church in anything contrary to His will. There are ample evidences from Church history to demonstrate that. But, to argue that the authority of the Church is purely persuasive, and that people may, in good conscience, disobey the Church without any spiritual repercussions, is the other, equally incorrect, pole of the discussion.

Hmm, I need to stop now, but with a mild frustration. This is not a simple subject with simple answers. And, one of my personal frustrations is that it took me a long time to learn that there is a major difference between the East and the West with regards to their approach to Church regulations. A canon (means something closer to principle, precept, regulation) is not a nomos (nomos means law). There is a reason why a person who does not obey the law is called an antinomian and not an anti-canonian. There is a different approach between East and West to Church precepts.

So, iMonk, color me somewhat frustrated. Hmm, by the way, ALL the Early Church Fathers unanimously spoke of fasting as something that the Church requested of all Christians, during certain events and certain seasons. I would take that seriously..

Matthew Johnson/United Methodist: Matthew is quite the spiritual fellow, and I expect that he is probably fasting from the internet and email, and hasn’t gotten the question. Or perhaps his church won’t allow him to answer. He does have a nice new picture though.

Peter Vance Matthews/Anglican: Anglicans do not require anyone to believe or do anything that is not explicitly required in scripture. So then, there are no canons that tell communicants when or when not to fast.

At the same time, Anglicans follow the liturgical calendar and in the calendar there are Holy Days and traditional days of fasting. Thus, it is allowable to encourage people to practice fasting and other spiritual practices on these days, but an Anglican clergyman must be sure to clearly communicate these are not required practices. For example, I usually encourage everyone in our parish to join me in fasting on Good Friday, but I never inspect whether or not anyone has followed me in that and I would never condemn nor criticize anyone for not doing so.

This is where Anglicanism gets fuzzy. We really do think highly of the traditions of the Church and in most cases seek to follow them. (For example a lot of Anglicans will pray through the Stations of the Cross during Lent.) But an Anglican clergyman would be clearly out of line to teach that these things are required or that they earn some sort of merit for the one who practices them.

Here are some relevant statements from the Articles of Religion, one of the doctrinal formularies for Anglican Churches.

VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.

XIV. Of Works of Supererogation.
Voluntary Works besides, over and above, God’s Commandments, which they call Works of Supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety: for by them men do declare, that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty is required: whereas Christ saith plainly When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants.

XX. Of the Authority of the Church.
The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.

Alan Creech/Roman Catholic: OK, now who else does this, honestly? Fr. Ernesto, are we in the cross-hairs? I particularly sense a little red laser target on the back of my head on this one – hmmmm. I promise, I won’t mention purga… NOOO – this time.

To answer, from my perspective, the first part of the question – “to what extent CAN a church mandate personal spiritual practices?” Well, Any church that feels froggy enough can leap into mandating all manner of things for it’s members I reckon. Perhaps you mean “should” instead of “can.” Churches can do whatever they think is right and good. They even can do a lot of things they may even know aren’t that good. Now, whether they should or not, that might be a better question.

Also, is there a difference here in what we’re calling “personal spiritual practices” and “communal spiritual practices?” Is any practice that a Christian undergoes ever really solely “personal?” If WE are the Body of Christ, I am always a part of WE. OK, OK, sure, I am an individual person, we’re not the Borg here – BUT, the spirituality behind what I’m beginning to talk about does not see all aspects of “Borg-ian” life negatively. God speaks to us in Scripture about one, unified Body with many parts and one head (yes, I’m talking about Jesus, settle down). Our Christian life as the Church, therefore, is a communal life, not merely an individual life of relationship with God. So, even our so-called “personal spiritual practices” are ultimately communal. They not only effect me, but also the whole Body of which I am a part.

What does that have to do with any of this? Just a bit of philosophical underpinning. It speaks to how we think about spiritual practices. Generally speaking, philosophically, Catholics would think of spiritual practices, even if personally undertaken, as a part of a whole, as communal practices as well. We are all interrelated as a family of God. We are all members of the family, equally loved by God, but there is an order put in place to help the family function because of our differing levels of union with the Head. I’m boiling down here. The “parental” figures in the Church can, and sometimes should, say to the whole family something like, “hey family, we need to do some things together as a family, for the health of the family, for our common good, so let’s all do this…” Generally speaking, I think this is good – that a church would call a “community fast” say, for the season of Lent, say – lay down some general things we will all do together, over top of that, do whatever you feel led to do, but at least do the minimum with all the rest of us.

Fine and good. There is a definite good there, as I see it, within the context I’ve laid out. Even these general minimums given to us as members of the “family” can be very personally spiritually fulfilling and formational. There is something about obedience to something like this which is “will breaking.” I mean our often-times very selfish wills are molded, in part, through obedience, even to human rules – to a degree and within a certain mental and spiritual framework. I won’t get totally into how that might be a very bad thing for one’s spiritual development.

And certainly, there are very good, formational things which can happen on your spiritual insides via personally chosen practices and disciplines, perhaps to an even greater degree than by doing certain things because, for instance, a fast was called from on high. That is not to negate, though, what I’ve already said. There will be degrees of how effective something can or will be inside a person depending on the person, there state in life, “where” they are spiritually in their relationship with God, etc., etc. But again, even when we choose to do this or that by way of a spiritual practice or discipline, it is not only “our thing.” It belongs to the whole Body of Christ, because we belong to the whole Body of Christ. We are not a whole within ourselves.

Where things get problematic for me is when penalties are attached to these mandated practices and disciplines. Sure, keeping with the familial analogy I wrote about before, the “parents” can discipline their children for not taking out the proverbial trash, I suppose. How, though? To what extent? You decide not to take the trash out, so I (the Dad) kick you out of the house and refuse to feed you dinner any more? Say what? We need a whole Council to discuss what “grave matter” is – perhaps. Analogies, alas, do break down after a bit, even the good ones, even those that God gives us to explain our relationship with Him. They can never be perfect in how they explain things. St. Augustine said something once about how if you “do good for fear of punnishment, then you are a slave and not a son.” He went on to speak about how the more perfect way was to be a son to God and not a slave. We should be doing good for love of God, not for fear of punishment. The funniest part of his little statement, though, which is probably very wise, is that he said at the end, “if you can only do good for fear of punishment, then at least do that – eventually Love will come in and teach you the better way” – that’s from memory so likely not a perfect quote. Good stuff. I would like to see mandates like this aim toward leading all “the children” into a deeper Love and not work, if even passively, to perpetuate fear.

Wyman Richardson/Southern Baptist: Any attempt to “mandate personal spiritual practices” in a Baptist church is likely to go over like a pregnant high jumper. In fact, most Baptists view the word “mandate” in about the same way they view the word “heroin”: we know some people do it, but we think they shouldn’t.

I may be exaggerating a bit…well…no I’m not.

Now, certain civic practices are essentially mandated by the congregation. Ask any Baptist preacher who has forgotten to recognize the veterans on Veteran’s Day or any preacher who has, even worse, forgotten to recognize mothers on Mother’s Day. I tremble as I type. So there is an implicit mandate from the congregation based on its own idiosyncratic and, largely, civic traditions. But that’s not even liturgy. That’s syncretism.

Now, what many Baptist pastors do in an attempt to see their people “buy into” a particular devotional practice is either (a) guilt the people into it, which works in more sado-masochistic churches or (b) buy it in an over-priced, glossy, packaged, pre-fabricated format and then hope to dress it up with enough carnival atmosphere that the people will think it’s possibly more entertaining than the new episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County…which none of us watch, of course, we just stop “for a few minutes” while channel surfing.

You must understand: worldwide, intergenerational, transcontinental liturgical consensus and tradition cannot accomplish in over a thousand years what the latest Christian marketing gimmick can accomplish in a fortnight in a denomination that has learned to buy into almost anything so long as the workbook eventually has a final page and its presented in 150 font.

You can get Baptists folk to do just about anything (except fast) so long as you slap “40 Days Of…” before it.

Some of this is due to our penchant for what Tom Oden called neophilia (love of the new) and some is due to our truncated historiography which pretty much thinks Christian history started with Billy Graham. But whatever the reason, the average enculturated SBC church doesn’t get goosebumps over the thought of joining with the great cloud of witnesses in the rhythms of the Christian calendar, certainly not to the point of tolerating any kind of mandate! Oh, maybe on occasion, but only then in order to placate, at least for a year or two, a perceived tangent that some seminary-educated pastor seems to want everybody to follow him on. We get goosebumps over potlucks and church fights.

But I’m not bitter.

On the other hand, there are a growing number of Southern Baptist churches that are beginning to think that that “new church smell” we all pant over really makes us a bit nauseous, and that there is something strangely aromatic in the wonderful and strange world of ancient Christian customs like Lent, to take one example.

But let me say this: as a committed congregationalist, I myself am weary of “mandating.” But I will, despite my ranting, conclude by putting the blame on my own shoulders. Perhaps if we Baptist pastors began to intentionally educate our congregations in the logic, and beauty, and wonder of the classic Christian disciplines and in their wonderful liturgical manifestations, and, better yet, perhaps if we modeled them in our own lives and personal practices, then we wouldn’t be so frustrated.

As for fasting, one would think that a people who call themselves “People of the Book” would be compelled by the Biblical examples of and teachings concerning fasting to embrace that particular discipline. But, ironically, one recent study judged SBC folks to be the fattest Protestants in the United States, and one trip to your local SBC gathering will likely confirm that.

But, then again, I’ve just lost 30 lbs. and am only about halfway there, so who am I to talk?

William Cwirla/Lutheran: This is a timely question as some of us embark on the season of Lent, our “40 days of purple.” It’s also a great opportunity for the Lutheran to sound like a good old sola Scriptura Protestant for a change, though I’m quite aware of fellow Lutherans who have developed a hankering for corporate fasting and want everyone else to fall in line (always “in the Gospel,” of course).

Here’s the Lutheran take in a nutshell: Personal spiritual practices such as fasting are just fine and dandy, only keep them between you and God, don’t judge others, and they earn you no divine merit badges. Corporately mandated spiritual practices (excluding those specifically mandated by Christ, of course, like “Do this in remembrance of me”), are beyond the bounds of church authority. Of course, the churches need to have some agreed upon rules for the sake of order (for example, having set gathering times, rites, readings, seasons, etc), but even these are viewed as human arrangements not divine mandates. (That would include even Sunday, Christmas, and Easter, by the way.)

Lutherans officially consider fasting to be a “fine outward, bodily discipline” (Small Catechism). Jesus anticipated that His disciples would fast just as they would give alms and pray, but that these things would be done en crypto “in secret” away from the eyes of men (Mt 6:16-18). He warned His disciples to be careful lest their hearts become weighed down by dissipation and drunkenness (Luke 21:34). The apostle Paul speaks of subduing his body (1 Cor 9:27), though he himself recognized that outward discipline does little to restrain the sinful flesh (1 Tim 4:8; Col 2:23). (Origen learned the hard way that castration did nothing to curtail sexual lust. Ouch!)

This sentence from our confessional writings says it well: “Thus fasting in itself is not rejected, but what is rejected is making a necessary service of fasts on prescribed days and with specified foods, for this confuses consciences” (Apology to the Augsberg Confession, XXVI.39) So much for fish on Fridays or giving up chocolates for Lent. Prescribed fasts, with all the weight of church authority behind them, tend to bind consciences and lead people to believe that they sin if they do not go with the prescribed program.

The underlying theological principle is our blood-bought liberty in Christ. “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). This is a strong and consistent theme with the apostle Paul both against the Judaizers, who wanted to establish practices of the Mosaic covenant among Christians, but also the various proto-gnostic “spirituals,” who were quite enamored of rigorous fasts and days. Paul would not allow anyone to be judged regarding food or drink or festival, recognizing that the reality of these things had come in Christ (Col 2:16-17). Moreover, these exercises of physical rigor and self-imposed worship may have the “appearance of wisdom,” but they “lack any value in restraining the sinful flesh (Col 2:20-23).

Romans chapter 14 is an excellent treatment of this topic. The apostle leaves matters of food and drink and days entirely to the individual under the umbrella of Christian liberty. “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). One person fasts, another eats whatever he wants. One person keeps various days and seasons, another treats all days alike. It’s all done with thanks to God, and it’s all good. As long as it proceeds from faith, knock yourself out. But don’t judge another or look down on another for doing more, less, or not at all. “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17). The only boundary to Christian liberty is the law of love that does nothing to cause a brother or sister to stumble in the faith. The rest remains en crypto. “So whatever you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God” (Rom 14:22).

So how does it go with me and my own? Someone is sure to ask. As a pastor, I commend fasting as a fine personal discipline but make no rule about it. Personally, I fast non-religiously. My constitution prefers the discipline of intentional moderation to the see-saw cycles of fasting and feasting. I will intentionally forego things for a while that might be grabbing an unhealthy hold on me, just to get things under control. Lent can be a good season to take inventory of one’s addictions.

Would I ever impose a fast on my congregation? No. Would I participate in a fast imposed on me? No. Beyond that, it’s none of anyone’s business but God’s.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
Rev. Peter Vance Matthews is an Anglican priest and founding pastor of an AMIA congregation.
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction. (Alan’s not a priest. If he is, his wife and kids need to know.)
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: What is the most misunderstood positive thing about your tradition, and the most ignored weakness of your tradition? Of the five traditions represented, from whom do you believe your tradition could learn the most?

Father Ernesto/Orthodox: The Internet Monk’s question was quite a thought provoker for me. In fact, I ended up throwing the questions out to a few friends, who included a layman who is a professor at an university, a nun, and a couple of priests. That was a first for me. What surprised me was the unanimity of thought expressed in the three responses I received. I was expecting more variety and expecting that I would then distill their thought down into an answer. But, instead, I received unanimity. So, here is our thought.

All agreed that the Baptists are the tradition from whom we could learn the most, but in only one area. The area? The dynamic preaching that is often embodied in the best of the Baptist tradition. It not only encompasses a serious desire to communicate God’s Word to the hearer, but also a serious desire to have people respond to God in a life-changing way. That is, the Baptists, when at their best, often offer a winsome balance between teaching and a dynamic call to change. No serious Baptist preacher can stand in the pulpit without ending a sermon by asking the hearer to reflect on what this means for their life, and to reflect on what they must change in order to bring their life into accord with the teaching that they have just received. Not all Baptists live up to this high standard, but, when they do, God’s Word truly comes to earth in the spoken word. It is at those times when it almost seems as though preaching has become the eighth sacrament.

You might think, then, that I would say that the most ignored weakness (by us) is our lacks in the area of preaching. But, actually, all our seminaries are working to improve the levels of preaching within our tradition. We are not ignoring it; we are cognizant of it. No, I would say that our most ignored weakness is the way in which Western thinking has, inevitably, worked itself in on our people. No, I do not mean outward things like watching TV, or using iPods, etc. Those are merely external. No, I mean the creeping agnosticism which is so prevalent in modern First-World Western cultures. It is that thinking which causes your mind to “switch gears” once you “leave church” and to adopt a practical agnosticism. What do I mean? Watch a professional baseball game some time. Whenever a Latino player comes up, he crosses himself before taking the plate. There is a consciousness that God is present in all aspects of life, even sports. But, in the USA, we denigrate that by asking whether it is appropriate to pray during sports. After all, why would God answer a prayer in favor of one team and not another? But, in asking those questions we feed an agnosticism that, little by little, removes God from this bit or that bob of our life, until all that is left is Sunday morning, maybe Wednesdays, and maybe some little volunteer work here or there. We Orthodox have also been infected by that disease. We make fun of pious practices as though they were mere superstitions rather than the outworking of a consciousness that God is present everywhere and in every aspect of our lives. Not every “tradition” can or should be defended, for instance, I really do not believe that Jesus has imprinted his face on many tacos. But, when we take down our “home altars,” when we lose the prayers before meals, when we forget the night prayer before sleeping, and, yes, when we fail to cross ourselves at important times in our lives, we show the result of the creeping agnosticism which has so thoroughly infected the USA.

Finally, the most misunderstood positive thing about the Orthodox is our worship. I am now not talking about misunderstood just by us, but misunderstood, even more, by those who are not Orthodox. A creeping agnosticism leads to creeping doubt that God is present. Our worship is mystical. It is the place where we encounter God, not simply in symbol, or in liturgy, or in litanies, etc., but rather, it is the place where we truly encounter God, where we are present with Him in the heavenly worship. But, a creeping agnosticism leads to a lack of faith that there is such an encounter occurring. A creeping agnosticism leads to a concentration on the details rather than a simple acceptance of the whole of it. This does not mean that we ignore the details. We have scholars aplenty who can intimately describe every detail of our Divine Liturgy, and where they wish it would be somewhat different. We have bishops who meet to discuss appropriate wording, appropriate inculturation, etc. But, when we step into the Divine Liturgy, we put the scholarly world aside and simply enter in. The details no longer matter. They will be worked out in the proper place and at the proper time. Now is not that time. Now is the time to enter in and simply be with the Father, who is from everlasting, His Only-Begotten Son, together with his all-holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Matthew Johnson/United Methodist: I think for United Methodists and Wesleyans in general the most misunderstood positive thing has to be the doctrine of Christian perfection. I used to be like most everyone else in that I thought the whole thing was about sinless perfection which seemed to be Biblically untenable. But then I heard people teach it and I saw what belief in Christian perfection looked like in the lives of those who believed in its place within the via salutis.

I’ll readily admit my own misunderstandings and hope that I do not misrepresent it in my answer but let me start with an assignment from a class on the Gospel according to Matthew I took my first semester of seminary. We had to interpret the tail end of the 5th chapter with particular focus given to Jesus’ words “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” I’m still not entirely convinced by arguments based upon the multivalent meanings of words, but in completing this assignment I was struck by the number of times “perfect” is translated in the New Testament as “mature”. It’s easier for me to live with this kind of language because what I see in those who have lived what we call Christian perfection are mature Christians in the fullest sense – they love without question and they forgive like it is going out of style. When I think of the fullness, the completeness of Christian perfection, it always plays out as one who loves God and loves neighbor not only more than self but even at the expense of self – Philippians 2 in action. I read last week in my New Living Translation Study Bible, “Real love is always sacrificial.” I think that about covers it for me.

I’d be surprised if any of our weaknesses are ignored – those are the ones that always make the news! We allegedly believe in holiness, both personal and social. In fact, we believe you can’t have one without the other. In my experience, this doesn’t happen very often in our missions outside the church. By this I mean that we’re good at building houses, digging wells, feeding the hungry, and education but we’re too timid or embarrassed, or unwilling to present the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ to go along with our labor on behalf of others. It’s so bad that many years ago a group of people started a mission called The Mission Society so that United Methodists would have an evangelistic presence in world missions to go along with the social presence. I still don’t see why there has to be a split between the two (although, as a disclaimer, I know the Mission Society does both together pretty well and I’m pretty certain there are some General Board missionaries who are evangelistic).

I believe our denomination could learn the most from the tradition that has learned that it’s possible to be faithful to our call and mission without a bureaucracy. Which one is that?

If that’s not possible, I’m going to say that we need a fuller sacramental life. Out of the four groups that I consider to be more sacramental than Methodists, I’m probably going to go back to the Lutherans mostly because we sometimes have a hard time remembering exactly what the Gospel is which is what Wesley heard and preached from his time with a group of Lutherans, even if they were pietists

Peter Vance Matthews/Anglican: The most misunderstood positive thing about Anglicanism is what I call
essentialism. There is an old saying attributed to different people that says: In the essentials unity; the non-essentials liberty; in all things charity. Of the different traditions I have been part of Anglicanism has best exhibited this. Anglicanism sees itself as nothing more than an expression of ancient historic orthodoxy manifested in an English context. This means we do not have one particular theologian or theology that guides us. We have formularies found in our liturgies, ordinals and the Articles of Religion, but nothing like Calvin’s Institutes or Luther’s Catechism. As long as one adheres to creedal orthodoxy and one is part of an Anglican worshiping community, one is faithful to Anglicanism. I often express this when we host introduction to Anglicanism classes at Saint Patrick’s Church by telling folks that if you are wondering if Anglicans are Arminian or Calvinist or Thomist or Augustinian or etc., the answer is yes. In fact, there are folks from those different persuasions in the pews at our parish. And all are Anglican.

The reason I love this is that I love the security of being grounded in historic orthodoxy with the freedom to explore and benefit from different theologies. I like being able to free range in Schmemann, Calvin, Wesley and Augustine. I can draw from all these and use them in my life or ministry.

Of course, one of our great weaknesses is this very same reality. As you were reading you probably found yourself asking, “Yes, but what are the essentials and who gets to decide what they are?” Good question. This is especially germane now that the Anglican Communion is in turmoil over the
question of human sexuality. The battle is over whether this issue is essential or secondary. If it is essential than it is dividing. If it is secondary than everyone ought to be able to get along and agree to disagree. As you might guess the more conservative side of the debate thinks the issue is essential and cannot be compromised while the more liberal side of the debate sees it as a secondary issue that Anglicans can disagree about.

Anglicans need some sort of magisterium, like our Roman sisters and brothers have. It would look different, and would be more purely conciliar than the Roman system, but having a conciliar doctrinal body would help us stay more clear about what is essential and what is secondary.

Alan Creech/Roman Catholic: OK, this could get interesting. The most misunderstood, POSITIVE thing about my tradition, the Roman Catholic tradition – hmmm. This, of course, is only from my perspective and can only come from my own experience. I really think the most misunderstood, positive thing in Catholicism is the whole notion of the Communion of Saints, including our continued interaction with one another as One whole Body of Christ. In general terminology, I mean the whole “praying to the Saints” thing. I find myself having a good many conversations about that concept with Christians of other traditions and what I hear when this happens is always very interesting and quite a bit off what we hold and practice as Catholics.

Well, let me make sure and be totally fair here – “we” may “practice” a bunch of things as Catholics which also might cause some confusion among those peering through the window from the outside. I’m saying “we” may have a bit of misunderstanding going on ourselves in this category as well, which puts a double-whammy kind of spin on this. It’s positive and misunderstood both from within and from without.

We don’t (or shouldn’t at all, in any way) “worship” Saints – who are human beings like us, gone on into the fullness of the Kingdom of God in heaven. Also, these Saints can’t really “do” anything directly for us. Often you see or hear things that might sound as if Catholics are directly asking St. Whozitz to “give them this” or “do this” for them. MMMmmm not so much. What we are encouraged to do and what we have been doing for a long, long time, is understanding that our brothers and sisters in Christ who are now enveloped in the full Life of God are in a “state” now where they are able to see us, know as they are known, where they have, as it could be said, “the big clue.” So, still being a part of the Communion of Saints who make up the Body of Christ, they can offer intercessions for us just as they did on earth, but in a greater and fuller way. They can still pray for us, and pray for us in a deeper and more effective way because of “where” and “what” they are now (by “what” I mean their fully transformed state as fully Human Beings). Fully comprehending all that is a bit out of the picture for us, so a lot of scare quotes must enter anything written.

There is a continuity in this concept of Communion which is very positive indeed. We are not so separated from those who are now “gone” to us. We are still one with them – still an active part of the same Body, the Church. And not only in that they can pray for us, but that we can also still pray for them. Yes, the purgatory thing. Itself, purgatory is a very misunderstood idea, again, both in and out of the Catholic Church I believe. I don’t want to get sidetracked by that, but it’s connected in that we, as much as we can know about how those things work in the realm of eternity, can pray for the completion of the transformation of those we love after they have died to us and gone “over there.” Could it be that our prayers work in some mysterious way outside of time and they are instantaneously transformed into the fullness of His Image? Maybe so. Again, very hard to say. One way or another, the continued interaction is there, our praying for them, them praying for us.

The most ignored weakness of my tradition, I would say, is probably the deep institutionalization of every aspect of Catholic life. It seems to me just rampant and almost incurable. I’m being very honest in saying how discouraging it can be. It seems it kind of goes without being questioned at all, as if to have things so bound in all manner of red tape is just normal, everyday stuff in the Church. Everything takes a long time. New things? – oh man – pray for MUCH patience in order to get that happening. In the midst of the unbelievable beauty and spiritual depth in the Catholic tradition, is so much built up “plaque” – the residue of years and years of doing things a certain way that it seems very difficult that anyone would see any other way. It would seem a return to some of the monastic simplicity that is still alive within our own tradition is in order on the parish level – seminary level – diocesan level, etc.

The other end of of the question makes me think of the Orthodox tradition. I believe the Western Catholic tradition could learn a great deal from our Orthodox siblings. A couple of things that come to mind are — Using less legally restrictive and analytical language when talking about salvation instead of a more fluid, relational understanding. You’ll notice my use of the word “transformation” above. I believe the ideas are basically the same in our two traditions, but the way we think about things can be quite different. I think it would be extremely helpful for Catholics to move toward a less legal understanding of the process of salvation.

I also think about the collegiality of how the Orthodox hierarchy works. It’s a bit more “flat” in how they work things out. We have developed a bit more of a rigid system in Catholicism, which can cause it’s share of problems. For us to be open to and learn/adopt (re-adopt?) a more collegial way of working things out might be a very good thing.

Again, these are my own observations and thoughts on the question. As Michael might say, 5 or 6 other Catholics might give you 5 or 6 different answers – but they’re not… Liturgical Gangstas! Peace to all in this house.

Wyman Richardson/Southern Baptist: Wow, this is a great question. Southern Baptists are frequent targets of derision, much of which comes as a result of our own foolishness. When I hear criticisms and even caricatures of Southern Baptists, I oftentimes find myself saying, “Yeah, I can’t really deny the truthfulness of what you’re saying, and yet…” It’s the “And yet…” that keeps me a Southern Baptist.

I actually believe that SB’s have a number of positive traits that could be mentioned. Our historic contribution to the idea of religious liberty is a major one. As for “the most misunderstood positive thing about your tradition,” I think I would have to say our evangelistic impulse. In many ways, this is the aspect of Southern Baptist life that some find most off-putting. Or, rather, it’s the oftentimes boorish, arrogant, or non-strategic approach to evangelism that people see in Southern Baptists that they find off-putting. And yet, beneath all of the myriad examples of how not to do evangelism that one can find among Southern Baptists, I am increasingly impressed by the Baptist commitment to take the gospel to the world.

At the very least, this missionary prerogative is a safeguard against an insular form of Christianity. I have a friend who is an Orthodox Presbyterian. He is no fan of Southern Baptists, to put it mildly, and yet he recently pointed out to me that the lack of such a missionary heart is a major weakness of his own tradition. I have spent the major part of my life among Southern Baptists. I am, as it were, “in the camp.” I often grieve at our foolishness and at my own foolishness. But, through it all, I see time and time again that the average Southern Baptist (1) believes Jesus is the world’s only hope and (2) believes that it is the job of His people to take Him to the world.

As for “the most ignored weakness,” I’m not sure how “ignored” this is, but the elevation of the individual and the erosion of community is a huge problem. I personally think that the tradition of E.Y. Mullins is somewhat responsible for this, and, probably more so, the syncretism of Southern Baptists churches with American hyper-individualism. In other words, the autonomous individual has been elevated above the church and, as such, we have, I believe, a very weak ecclesiology. To be sure, this weakness hurts our strength: our lack of ecclesiology actually undermines our missions efforts. But there are signs of hope that many Southern Baptists are thinking and praying deeply about the renewal of the church.

As for which tradition we could learn the most from, Rev. Matthews will perhaps be amused to find out that I think Southern Baptists could learn a lot from Anglicans. I could say more, but I’ll stop for now.

William Cwirla/Lutheran: I appreciate this opportunity for a bit of critical self-reflection in the company of my fellow gangstas.

One of the more misunderstood of the positive aspects of my Lutheran tradition is pastoral care. In the Lutheran tradition, the pastor as Seelsorger, a physician of the soul, is a venerable image. Think of the old-fashioned family physician with his little black bag making house calls on his people. For a good descriptive narrative of what that looks like, I commend the book The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz, who was a Lutheran bishop in Sweden. This little book nicely captures the essence of the pastor as Seelsorger, who brings the Word of Law and Gospel to bear in the lives of his people through preaching and the sacraments.

Unfortunately, this aspect of the pastoral ministry seems to be declining in importance in our growth-driven mega-church era. It is often spoken of derisively as “maintenance ministry” by church bureaucrats and ecclesiastical entrepreneurs. Pastors are under ever increasing pressure to be the visionaries and CEOs of growing enterprises, leaving the humble and often messy work of pastoral care to volunteers and “pastoral staff.” I believe that a commitment to Seelsorge will naturally limit the size of a congregation. I recall Eugene Peterson’s statement that he never wanted to pastor a church with more members than whose names he could remember.

Another positive aspect of my Lutheran tradition is the proper distinction of the Law and the Gospel. This is often misunderstood as a categorical division in which Scripture verses can be dropped into a Law bucket or a Gospel bucket. Rather, it is a dynamic polarity within the Word of God that both kills and makes alive. Practically speaking, it distinguishes Christ’s work from our works and maintains the Christ-centeredness of our teaching and preaching. Though other Christians often make this distinction better than Lutherans (we certainly have no monopoly on this biblical distinction), we have this distinction as a fundamental component of our theological tradition.

This distinction of the Law and the Gospel also profoundly influences Lutheran sacramentology. We view Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper as primarily God’s work acting on us, applying the gifts of salvation to the individual objectively and forensically to create and sustain saving faith.

In my opinion, the most neglected weakness of our tradition is personal evangelism. We are simply not very good at it. Historically, Lutherans have been most comfortable with the regional or territorial church model in which people associated with the local church and dealt with it through its official channels. Growth was largely by reproduction as children were baptized and nurtured in the faith. Reaching out to the unbeliever was not a top priority, our Lord’s mandate to “disciple the nations” notwithstanding. The language of apologetics and evangelism are not native to our traditional vocabulary; our Lutheran confessions have little to say on the subject.

From our vantage point as evangelical catholic Christians in the western tradition. we Lutherans can learn from all the traditions around us. From the Orthodox we can learn the virtue of liturgical stability and a reverence for the early church. From the Evangelicals we can learn about how to speak comfortably of the faith in personal terms. One thing I’ve always admired of Evangelicals is their ability to speak of their faith in Christ to friend, family, and stranger, as well as their confidence in doing so. I’m sorry to admit that two Lutherans can work side by side for ten years and not know that they are Christians let alone Lutheran. From our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, we can learn our common heritage in the greater western tradition and be reminded that we share a greater historic context and are not simply another Protestant denomination.

If I may go slightly beyond the scope of the question, I think that my Lutheran tradition can serve as a continual witness to all Christians that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the hermeneutical center of the Holy Scriptures and the article of justification by grace through faith in Christ is the doctrinal center of Christian theology.