by Steve | Jan 2, 1980 | Archive - 1980
How a UM woman exchanged her tepid, cultural religion for a vibrant, Christ-centered faith. She confesses …
I Was A Catatonic Christian
by Margie Jones, Amarillo, Texas
Most nominal Christians do not refer to themselves as lukewarm. I know because I was one.
Nevertheless, I had all the qualifications of an indifferent Christian. I believed in God and knew His only Son had died for my sins and was resurrected. I was a church member and attended regularly. I was busy in church activities and contributed financially, but I didn’t put Christ first in my life.
My faith was part of my culture. I knew it was there and I valued it, but I was careful not to let it flare up to convict me of the truth—that Jesus Christ should be the Lord of my life as well as my Savior.
I was reared in a Christian home, but it wasn’t a Christ-centered one. As a child I was required to go to Sunday school and church where I heard the real Gospel preached, but I was too young to understand what many of the sermons meant. Expressions such as “the blood of the Lamb,” “washed in His blood,” “filled with the Holy Ghost,” not only puzzled me, but frightened me. I couldn’t understand the relationship between blood, ghosts, lambs, and Jesus.
As I matured, I was too embarrassed to ask to have these terms explained. My pride would not allow me to show my ignorance.
During this time I pictured God as a grandfatherly type, a sort of puppeteer who pulled the strings of His people. Most of the time I felt I was one of His favorite puppets! I always seemed to be on the receiving end of the good things He handed out.
I entered college and because honors came to me I was consumed by my popularity and feeling of self-sufficiency. My ambition was to be a social worker, so I majored in sociology with a minor in psychology and began to enjoy the “social gospel” that I heard preached since leaving home.
I could understand and appreciate those sermons because they were so similar to my college lectures. But humanistic sermons offered me no spiritual fulfillment nor excitement and even though I matured in other facets of my life, the most important aspect of all, my Christianity, did not mature past adolescence. I kept a little religious compartment in my life for Christ, never allowing Him to come to the forefront.
Nevertheless, God blessed me with a wonderful husband and two precious children and I followed the pattern set by my parents. We routinely attended Sunday school and church, but its activities bored me. The main reason I continued was a vague sense of “Christian duty.”
My priorities were my husband and children, material possessions, my social life, and some place, buried with my latent faith, Christ. I honestly thought I possessed all life had to offer. I had the outward appearance of a Christian, but I was trying to fulfill His will by my own will and works. As a result, instead of being drawn closer to Him, I was a dried-up, lukewarm, catatonic Christian.
I was an adult woman, a wife and mother, but had no clear-cut idea of what I believed and why. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I needed to accept personally and appropriate the Gospel of Jesus Christ … humble myself … and pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit to know and follow God’s will.
Of course, I prayed. But my prayers were routines instead of earnest communication. I never knelt to pray, I seldom prayed intercessory prayers, and I never prayed prayers of praise. There were many times when I prayed an S.O.S. to God for what I thought was a desperate need. But when the need ended, so did my prayer life and I slipped back into my routine until the next frantic episode. I didn’t realize I needed Christ as much when I felt secure and comfortable as when I had some special need.
I would have been terrified if I’d been called on to pray in public. When I was in charge of programs that were expected to be opened and closed with prayers, I read one for the beginning of the session and asked the group to repeat the Lord’s Prayer in unison for the closing.
As a catatonic Christian, I didn’t assume any personal responsibility for learning Christ’s message through in-depth Bible study. Neither did I read the Bible; I used the excuse that I couldn’t understand it. I know, now, that there are many translations, paraphrased editions, and commentaries available for help. The Scripture could have been meaningful to me—if I had had the desire to read and study.
During the years my Christianity was lethargic, I thought that turning one’s life over to Christ meant going into professional fields of Christian ministry. I didn’t dream I could totally submit my life to Christ and be happy. The fear of having to give up something was too great within me.
My spiritual life continued like this without any feeling of satisfaction or exhilaration, until after my children were grown. I felt I had fulfilled my obligation as a Christian parent because I had reared them as responsible churchgoing citizens. I was satisfied and comfortable and I didn’t want anyone to disturb me with spiritual truth.
Although I was only on the periphery of being what God wanted me to be, I was too busy occupying a pew and doing the organizational chores in the church to realize that there was more to Christianity than being a statistic in a church record book. I had to go to the very bedrock of sorrow before realizing that God wanted to fashion my life in His pattern.
Our only son, age 25, was stricken with a massive brain hemorrhage, caused by a ruptured cerebral aneurysm, and he died.
During the weeks of my devastating sorrow, I had an intense desire to feel my son’s nearness and because I knew he was in heaven, I was driven to ask questions of my minister, read the Bible, and to study and learn more about my Lord. For the first time, I wanted to be an informed and intelligent Christian. Thus my latent faith became a faith of deep conviction. Each time I called out to God for strength and comfort, my prayers were answered almost as soon as they were uttered. Many events happened that I couldn’t call coincidental. I knew it had to be the fine hand of God working in my life. At last, my eyes and ears were beginning to open and my heart made receptive to God’s will.
For the first time in my life I realized the enormous importance of Jesus’ death for me personally. I quit thinking of God in a grandfatherly image. Now I pictured Him as a grieving Father who loved mankind enough to give His very best—His only Son. I didn’t feel any bitterness because He took my only son, whom I adored. But rather I felt a very special and loving relationship to Him and a deep desire to know Him better.
I seemed to be thinking of Jesus almost constantly and I was relinquishing parts of my life to Him. It seemed that I was trying to make up for all the years I had missed in Bible reading and prayer.
I looked back over my past and saw how God had worked to prepare me for these events. I compared my life to a jig-saw puzzle—God combining events and my responses with other events and responses to reconstruct my life more and more according to His plan. For the first time I realized that what happens to us isn’t so important as the way we respond in each situation.
One day I fell on my knees and asked Jesus to forgive me for all the years I had spent giving Him only lip service. I told Him I had always known He died for me, but now I wanted Him to take over my life completely. I totally surrendered myself and asked Him to use me in any way He wished. I was His.
The ways He answered that prayer of surrender have been amazing, exciting, and joyous. Once I made my depth commitment to Him, it wasn’t difficult to let go of my own strong will. I learned I didn’t have to give up anything, but that I gained more than I had ever possessed before! The activities I surrendered were no longer enjoyable. God replaced my desired for shallow entertainment and materialism with a peace which I thought I had but had never actually attained.
I’ve often thought of the parallel—God gave up His only Son to get man’s attention; He called my only son to be with Him and got my attention. The pain of my son’s death has never left me, but the certainty that God gave up His only Son for me astounds me every time I think of it. (To be continued)
by Steve | Jan 1, 1980 | Archive - 1980
Archive: What Francis Asbury Believed
Setting a decisive pattern for the church he launched, the first American bishop apparently took little time to write about the essentials of faith. Instead, he busily put Scriptural Christianity into action.
by Robert D. Wood
On a September Tuesday in 1781, Francis Asbury paused for a day of reflection, a respite from his rounds among the Methodists in northern Maryland along the Chesapeake. He wrote in his journal:
I have little leisure for anything but prayer; seldom more than two hours in the day, and that space I wish to spend in retired meditation and prayer: riding, preaching, class meetings leaves but little for reading or writing, and not always enough for prayer: something might be gained could I pore over a book on horseback, as Mr. Wesley does in England; but this our roads forbid.
Whether the roads, the press of duties, primitive conditions of a frontier society, his health, or lack of ability or drive, the fact is that Asbury did almost no writing. Apart from his journal and letters he left little else except abridgements of a few important works for the benefit of his preachers. In 1808 he wrote to Thomas Coke in England:
You need not wonder that I am amiss in writing, since I have to ride on horseback 5,000 miles in eight months, and to meet seven conferences that comprehend 600 preachers.
Asbury, unlike John Wesley, did not leave behind a body of writing in which his theology could be discerned. Rather the reverse. The theology of Francis Asbury must be inferred from his journal and letters. His day-by-day jottings reveal profound concern for his own relationship with God and the state of his own soul. He wrote in 1771 of his desire to spend his life “for Him who spilt His blood for me!” Four years later he deplored his “cumbersome body” but rejoiced that his “soul is united to Jesus.” “Christ abides in me,” he told his journal in 1778. That’s about the extent of his written Christology.
Of the sacraments he said little, apart from the controversy with Strawbridge and others, particularly in Virginia, over the impropriety of unordained preachers administering baptism and Communion. The early Methodists were expected to attend services and participate in Holy Communion as often as possible at Anglican churches, as Asbury himself did.
First and foremost, Asbury was an evangelist, second an administrator. Written expression of his theology came trailing along last of all. He enjoyed extraordinary success in evangelism and church development. When Wesley sent him to America in 1771, Asbury found six preachers and 600 members of the societies. Forty-five years later at his death in 1816, he left an established denomination with 700 preachers and 200,000 members with enough momentum to thrust them into the forefront of American religious life by mid-century. His stress, therefore, was on working with theology, rather than writing about it.
He accomplished all this in a wilderness society through which he moved almost constantly. “I set out on my way in great weakness of body,” he reported in August 1781, “but I could not be satisfied to be at rest while able to travel.” Keeping up with a westward- moving population’s growing needs for more preachers, more circuits, and more meeting places severely limited the scope of Asbury’s emphases.
Asbury’s journal contains outlines of about 175 sermons. They fall generally under four major classifications: repentance and justification, sanctification, good works, and judgment. In a spring 1784 report to Wesley, Asbury wrote, “I see the necessity of preaching a full and present salvation from all sin.” And to Dr. Coke, he penned, “I hope you are plain and pointed upon justification, and the witness of the Spirit, and on sanctification.”
There was no doubt that Asbury was “plain and pointed” in his own preaching. He did so with an earnestness that consumed him, even though he was often laid up with a “putrid” sore throat continually irritated by loud speaking occasioned by the urgency of sinners being warned of a coming judgment. Asbury punctuated his journal with reports of his intensity:
I preached long, and perhaps a terrible sermon. … I was very alarming … sinners, Pharisees, backsliders, hypocrites, and believers were faithfully warned … it was an awful talk, and the people were alarmed; let them look to it.
As important to Asbury as the salvation of others was his own relationship with God. “May the Lord sanctify me wholly for Himself, and every moment keep me from all appearance of evil,” he wrote in 1774. And at least twice he stated his favorite text was I Timothy 1:15, which he seemed to regard autobiographically:
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. (KJV)
Subject to frequent depression, Asbury noted in 1783,
Rose early to pour out my soul to God. I want to live to Him, and for Him; to be holy in heart, in life, in conversation: this is my mark, my prize, my all—to be, in my measure, like God.
The pioneering bishop spoke often of judgment. He recorded several instances of people who spoke evilly of preachers or the Gospel or who spurned the message and who, usually within days, died strange or violent deaths. He noted in 1774 the
melancholy account of a poor abandoned wretch, who staggered into a brothel at night, and was found dead the next morning … there was reason to suspect he was murdered. Thus we see the vengeance of God frequently overtakes impenitent sinners, even in this life. How awful the thought! that a soul, in such a condition, should be unexpectedly hurried to the judgment seat of a righteous God!
Condemnation would be the final fate of all opposers of the Gospel. He frequently noted he had preached to “stupid and unfeeling” congregations. But those who irked him most were “Calvinists on the one hand, and Universalians on the other.” Asbury believed irresistible grace leads to Antinomianism[1] (“if salvation comes by grace alone, moral laws are irrelevant”). He was no Pelagian,[2] as Wesleyans have sometimes been accused. Asbury taught good works are essential (Ephesians 2:10), and the best assurance against falling into apostasy[3] is “to go on to perfection.”
In a sermon warning against backsliding, preached in 1793 only about 30 miles from Wilmore Kentucky, the site of the present Asbury College and Asbury Theological Seminary, Asbury pointed out what he called the degrees of apostasy. On the basis of Hebrews 6:4-8, Bishop Asbury showed that recovery is impossible once one reaches “a certain degree of wickedness.” Those who are not “recoverable” have denied “the work [of the Gospel] to be of God, persecute, and say the devil was the author of it.” Those who can be reclaimed recognize God as the author of Gospel work and “have regard for [God’s] people.” “To sin against the remedy, is to be undone without it.”
On the other hand, Asbury marked the hand of Providence just as frequently as he did the hand of the Righteous Judge. When he was thrown from his carriage or when ruffians met him, or when he forded swollen streams without drowning, it was all of God. Providence ordered the weather, saw him safely through the forest, arranged his “chance” encounters.
After dinner with Philip William Otterbein in 1782, Asbury borrowed a young horse,
and as I rode along with my hands in my pockets, she blundered and fell; in the scuffle I had thoughts of throwing myself off, but did not; after some time she recovered, and I praised the Lord who had preserved me in such imminent danger … which I ought to remember with gratitude.
Bishop Asbury accepted without question the doctrines of the Trinity, original sin, and inerrancy of the Scriptures. Yet he developed none of these or other doctrines systematically in written form. He knew what he believed; what he preached in 1771 he also preached in 1815. His stress was upon doing, apparently laid on a solid foundation of what John Wesley called the plain truths of Scripture.
What about social conscience? Asbury inveighed frequently against the evils of hard liquor. And he made a number of protests, often caustic ones, against the horrors of human slavery. He noted one day that “sons of oppression” will be called to account by “the great Proprietor of all.” In eastern North Carolina in 1796, he scrawled in his journal:
My spirit was grieved at the conduct of some Methodists, that hire out slaves at public places to the highest bidder, to cut, skin, and starve them; I think such members ought to be dealt with: on the side of oppressors there are law and power, but where are justice and mercy to the poor slaves? … I will try if words can be like drawn swords, to pierce the hearts of the owners.
In 1783, after witnessing at his host’s home “such cruelty to a Negro that I could not feel free to stay,” he called for his horse, “delivered my own soul, and departed.” There is no record of his being entertained at that home again, though the family had been friends of the Methodists for some time.
Yet Asbury was anything but a social activist. He refused to become embroiled in the politics of the American Revolution, but the day came when he was the only English Methodist preacher left in the colonies except for some who slipped behind the British lines and served the Methodist societies in New York. Political activity, he felt, would divert his attention from his call to preach the Gospel. This distinction is implied in a remark he made at the close of 1795. Though slavery “is awful to me, God is able of these stones [the slaveholders] to raise up children unto Abraham.” Asbury would not jeopardize his chances to preach salvation to slaveholders, angering them by remarks about the evils of “the peculiar institution.” He would not risk their turning deaf ears to him and his Gospel message which he regarded as first priority. He saw that Methodism’s first order of business was redeeming people so that Christ might then cause them to love their neighbors.
At the same time, credit probably belongs to Asbury for the fact that in 1789, when the General Rules of Methodism were first included in the Discipline, they contained a prohibition against Methodists “buying or selling … bodies and souls of men, women, or children, with an intention to enslave them.”
What were the sources of Asbury ‘s theology? Foremost, of course, was the Bible. Ezekiel Cooper, in his oration at Asbury’s funeral, declared,
[Asbury’s] doctrines embraced all those divine truths contained in the Sacred Scriptures. … He was careful to regulate all his religious tenets and doctrines by the Book of God, and to discard everything that was incompatible with divine law and testimony.
Cooper went on to point out what the journal clearly indicates, that Asbury’s theology was expressed in Wesley’s writings, Fletcher’s Checks to Antinomianism, the Anglican/Methodist Articles of Religion, and the Apostles’ Creed.
The Rev. Nicholas Snethen traveled for years with Asbury. In his judgment,
[Asbury] was a great preacher; he was a better preacher than he was supposed to be. The extent of his pulpit resources were not generally known. He was master of the science of his profession. He knew the original languages of the Bible. His mind was stored with the opinions of the most eminent Biblical writers and commentators.
To Francis Asbury, modern United Methodism owes an enormous debt. Because he insisted upon freedom to create ever–expanding circuits and to station preachers as he determined the need, the movement kept pace with the frontier.
But the price our church has paid for this tradition of ceaseless activity is a diminished emphasis upon serious theological thought and reflection. Asbury himself was orthodox; he insisted upon orthodoxy in his preachers and churches. Yet the situation confronting us today in the denomination Asbury started is like a menu of doctrinal dishes from which one selects whatever suits the taste. The father of American Methodism would not feel at home in our “doctrinal pluralism.” What Francis Asbury believed is what historic, Biblical Christianity has always believed. Good News works and prays for the recovery of this tradition in the modern church.
[1] Antinomianism: the belief that because one is saved, he or she can safely sin without· fear of condemnation.
[2] Pelagian: one who believes the individual is freely able to choose to do right or wrong, and thus the crucial factor in salvation is one’s free choice rather than God’s saving initiative, seen in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[3] Apostasy: denial of saving truth formerly believed.
by Steve | Nov 14, 1979 | Uncategorized
Is there reality in our worship
By John R. W. Stott
November/December 1979
The Christian Church is fundamentally a worshiping community. According to I Peter 2:5,9 it is a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood whose function is to offer to God the spiritual sacrifices of our worship.
Now I venture to go even further than that. I believe that worship is the church’s priority task. Of course, it is popular to say that the church’s priority task is evangelism. I venture to disagree. I believe that the church’s priority task is worship.
Of course, this is an unnecessary dichotomy anyway, because we don’t have to choose between worship and witness. Each, properly understood, involves the other. It is impossible to worship and love God without loving my neighbor. And, it is impossible to love my neighbor without loving God. Therefore, worship and evangelism inevitably involve one another.
Worship is derived from “worth ship.” So true worship is an acknowledgment of the supreme, absolute worth of God. How can I acknowledge the unique and absolute worth of God and not be concerned that the rest of the world will recognize his worth equally? Therefore, true worship is bound to drive me and the Church out to witness. There is something essentially hypocritical about worship if it does not lead to witness.
Why do we want to evangelize? Do we want simply to win people, get them to profess faith, and be baptized – period? Why do we want them to come to Christ? Surely in order that people, having come to him themselves, will bow the knee to Jesus, give to him the glory that is due his Name, and acknowledge him as Lord – in other words, worship. Therefore, the ultimate objective of evangelism is worship.
Having worshiped, we’re driven out to evangelism in order again that there may be more worship. So, there is a continuous circle of worship leading to witness, witness leading to worship, and so on.
It is an unnecessary dichotomy – worship and witness, worship and evangelism. Each, properly understood, inevitably invokes the other.
Nevertheless, I think we must put worship first. Partly because our duty to God precedes and takes precedence over our duty to our neighbor, and partly because evangelism is only a temporary task. It will end when Christ comes again in glory and power, but we shall be worshiping God forever and ever and ever. It is the eternal function of the Church to be preoccupied with the worship of our Creator and Redeemer. That task will never come to an end.
As evangelicals we should not be ashamed to assert this. I say this because evangelicals are supposed to be interested only in evangelism, and I think it would be greatly for the health of the Church, as well as for the glory of God, if we said that we are equally or even more interested in worship.
The subject of worship has acquired a new importance in our day because of the contemporary quest – particularly in the Western World – for transcendence [something greater or higher than human wisdom and achievements]. What a remarkable thing this is! Young people, disillusioned increasingly (thank God) with the technocracy, are everywhere seeking something Beyond. They believe there is another dimension – a higher dimension – to life than scientists or technologists have ever dreamed or conceived. And today these young people are seeking this higher dimension.
Unfortunately, many seek it in mind-expanding drugs, in yoga, in the higher consciousness, in the flight to the East, in Transcendental Meditation, and in sexual adventures. Although they’re seeking in the wrong places, they are seeking transcendence. This is what they should discover in worship within the Church.
We need to remember that our Christian worship must be more than a social habit, more than a cultural convention. It must be real. It must be authentic. This means, I think, that there are three indispensable characteristics of a local church’s worship-characteristics which make worship both acceptable to God and satisfying to the worshipers.
- Worship must be informed and inspired by Scripture, the Word of God. Human beings never initiate the worship of God. For all human worship is a response to the divine initiative. Jesus says in his conversation with the Samaritan woman, “such the Father seeks to worship him” (John 4:23). He takes the initiative. He reveals himself in order to evoke our worship.
It is impossible for us to copy the Athenians, who had that foolish altar to an unknown god (Acts 17:23). You cannot worship a god you do not know! For if you do not know him, then you cannot know what kind of worship might be pleasing to him, acceptable and appropriate.
Jesus also teaches this clearly in the Sermon on the Mount. He dismisses heathen or pagan worship (Matthew 6:1-18). He says that the heathen have these repetitions.
That is pathalogia in Greek, meaning any kind of prayer whether spontaneous or liturgical, in which the mind is not fully engaged.
Jesus wants us not to worship like this.
Why not? Because the God we believe in, the living God who is revealed in Jesus Christ, is not interested in that kind of worship.
Instead, he wants us to come to him and say, “Our Father in Heaven, may your name be honored and your Kingdom come and your will be done.” In this spirit we come to him like little children, thoughtfully, intelligently, confidingly, trustingly. We know the kind of God we come to, that he’s our Father and that he desires us to bring him our worship. And so, the kind of God we believe in determines the kind of worship we will offer him. That is why the Psalms are full of references to his works of creation and redemption.
These provide God’s people with tangible ground for their praise. I was upset a bit at the International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne when we kept crooning “alleluia, alleluia.” A sort of mindless trance. I wanted to say stop! stop! stop! What are you saying “alleluia” about? It’s no good just saying, “We praise you,” “we praise You,” “we praise You.” That’s never so in the Bible.
Many psalms begin with the word “alleluia” and end with the word “alleluia.” But in between this “alleluia” sandwich there is tremendous theological content. We are told what we are alleluiaing about. We are told to praise the name of the Lord because of his mighty works, for his creation, and right on through to his redemption.
As a result, our minds are filled with an awareness of the greatness of the Lord. That is the reason for saying “alleluia.” We need to recover some content-full theological hymns and songs so that we can know what we are singing our praises about.
I long for more evangelical reverence. Why not teach our people to come to church early, not to hurry in during the first hymn or after it, but to come in time to be quiet as a prelude to worship? I wish we could teach people that instead of the bout of conversation, to be quiet at least a minute or two before the worship service begins. It’s quite a good idea for the clergy to come in and sit down and be quiet a minute or two before 11 a.m. Also, it’s a good thing to have periods of silence during public worship.
Our worship, if it’s inspired by God’s Word, will not only be reverent but warm. Worship is cold only when the preaching is cold. There is no need to stir a congregation’s emotions artificially when Christ opens the Scripture through the reading and preaching of the Word. That is what makes worship warm, joyful.
- Worship must be offered by the whole congregation. The second mark of true worship is that it is congregational.
During the Middle Ages, worship was a theatrical performance. The stage, especially the eucharistic stage [having to do with Eucharist or the sacrament of Communion], was the church chancel. The actors in the drama were the priests and the language of the play was Latin. Congregations were mere spectators in the audience, watching the drama performed by priests around what they called the altar.
One great insight that God gave to the Protestant reformers was a determination to replace this theatrical performance by congregational worship. This reform brought the action down from the chancel to the naves (people). The Protestant reformers insisted on the use of a language understood by the people.
The Church of England produced a book of common prayers, or, in the Church of Scotland, the common order. They did this because they were determined to involve and engage the people in congregational worship.
Some churches today have gone back to the Middle Ages. The pastor does everything while the people sit and doze and listen, interspersing their dreams with hymns.
The highest some churches reach in so-called congregational worship is that during the prayers a hundred, two hundred, three hundred people engage in their own individual prayers. Really, this is not much different than the medieval mass in which the congregation was just encouraged to go on with their private devotions while the priests performed up in the sanctuary.
Do we come to church in order just to enjoy our private devotions, although standing or sitting next to somebody else who is doing the same thing? Surely we should come together for public worship!
Therefore, anything that will better involve the congregation in common worship seems to me highly desirable. Take the seating of the church, which symbolizes our understanding of worship. The Roman Catholic custom was to erect a screen to segregate the chancel from the naves and the clergy from the people. Protestants have opposed this. Yet we tolerated a kind of confrontation between the clergy and the people which the traditional arrangement of pews creates. Over here you have all the people … and over there the clergy. This separation establishes a confrontation between the clergy and the people. It perpetuates and encourages that clerical domination of the laity which has been one of the most disastrous things in the history of the Church.
When Christians meet in houses we gather around in a circle. Somehow we need to secure this intimacy again in our public worship. We need a sense of the congregation being gathered around the action.
In our own church in London we have recently made all the furniture movable. The chancel furniture is movable, the pulpit is movable, the Communion table is movable, the baptismal font is movable. For a Communion service, the table is brought right forward and the people feel they are gathered around the table for the Lord’s Supper. If it’s a baptism, we bring the font forward, closer to the people. If it’s a preaching, we put the pulpit in the center and the people are gathered round. We want to overcome this appalling feeling of confrontation, of separation, between laypeople and clergy.
Related to seating is the question of lay participation; it’s good to involve laypeople also in the reading of the Scripture lessons.
God has gifted many Christians with good voices or an understanding of Scripture so that they can read well. We can also involve laypeople in giving testimonies from time to time or being interviewed about some significant aspect of their lives as Christians. These can greatly enrich our worship.
Why should the pastor always lead in prayer? It’s a very good thing for the laypeople to lead the prayers individually or as a group.
Bach once composed a fresh cantata for every Sunday. And at a Roman Catholic cathedral in Holland there is a group of young people who produce and compose a fresh folk mass every Sunday. Do you have a little worship group in the congregation to help the pastor with the composition of the worship?
There are people in your congregation with creative and innovative artistic and liturgical understandings, laypeople who need to be involved with us clergy in preparing worship that is acceptable to God.
- Worship must be related to the contemporary world. Public worship can have a very damaging effect on our Christian lives if worship is regarded as an escape from the real world. A minister in the United Church of Canada, writing about the Jesus People, has said that like the early Christians they live simply, they read Scripture, they break bread together. But he goes on, “Like drugs, a Jesus religion can be an escape from the world in which He is incarnate.”
We gather together as the Lord’s people on the Lord’s Day for worship; then we scatter into the world for our witness. This is another rhythm of the Christian life – gathering and scattering, gathering in church in order to scatter as Christians out into the world. It is vital that we keep the gathering and scattering together in our minds; that we don’t divorce them from one another. In church on the one hand, and at home and at work on the other, we are in the same world.
God’s world. We mustn’t live a double life, oscillating between two worlds, secular and religious. Instead, we must carry our business into our worship and our worship into our business.
Many worshipers, when they come to church, deliberately and consciously step out of the real world into a religious world which has nothing to do with ordinary life. They even step back three or four centuries into an Elizabethan world which no longer exists. And when they look around at the ecclesiastical architecture or the clerical dress or the liturgical language, they must sometimes wonder if they’re dreaming. Is this the real world?
I want to urge that we must worship in modern English! I believe honestly it is inappropriate to worship the living God in a dead language. Oh, we’re so used to “thee’s” and “thou’s” and other archaic words and phrases. But using such archaic words tends to separate our worship from reality.
That is why using today’s language is indispensable, if our worship is to have about it the quality of reality.
It’s very important, as we worship, to keep in our minds the modern work-a-day world to which we belong. Do our worship services encourage the congregation to shut out of their minds the world of their home and of their job and of their community life? If so, then we are promoting by our public worship an unBiblical, spiritual schizophrenia. And we are contributing to that divorce of the sacred from the secular – possibly the most disastrous thing in the whole history of the Christian Church. We need to teach our people that the God whom we worship is the living God who created the world of work and marriage and homes and leisure and community.
His Son, after all, was incarnate and lived and died in the world. So we must not shut out the world in order to retreat into God. Instead, we must worship the God who made and rules the world. We must submit to his sovereignty that bit of the world in which we are involved day by day.
In its widest sense worship is living for God. It is honoring God in the totality of our lives. The hour or an hour and a half in which we mouth our hymns, songs, prayers, and praises simply focuses and verbalizes what is (or ought to be) the direction of our whole life. The sacrifice pleasing to God, according to the Scripture, is not just the praise of our lips, but the offering of our bodies and our money and our service in the world of everyday affairs (Romans 12:1,2). That is true worship! And Scripture states with great plainness that mere words, when divorced from social righteousness, are nauseating to God, disgusting to Him (Amos 5:21-24).
So we need to help people, in public worship, not to forget the world, but to remember it. Not to escape from life into God, but to bring all our life, as it were, with us and subject it to God as an act of worship. At least some of our prayers in church should be really concrete and topical, relating directly to the contemporary concerns of the people. Not just mentioning the sick and the bereaved by name and the missionaries {although that is very good), but also to take up newspaper concerns that are local, national, and international: racial conflict in the community, war, tragedy, disaster, high-jacking.
Public worship is God’s people responding to God’s Word in God’s world. And so my final exhortation is: do let’s toke trouble over the worship. A lot of preachers, I’m afraid, come to church with a prepared sermon and an unprepared service. It seems to me we ought to take equal trouble with the worship as we do the preaching.
John R. W. Stott (1921-2011) was Rector Emeritus, All Souls Church in London. This article is appeared in the November/December 1979 issue of Good News and is condensed from an address Stott delivered to a combined meeting of leaders of Good News and the Covenant Fellowship of Presbyterians.
by Steve | Nov 11, 1979 | Archive - 1979, Uncategorized
Francis Asbury: Super Circuit Rider II
Charles Ludwig (1918-2002)
November/December 1979
Good News
“America! You go to America and, and leave Elizabeth and me alone?” exclaimed Joseph Asbury, straining across the butterfly table. “You can’t do that. … Mother and I are getting old. It won’t be long until we can’t work. Already –”
“The Lord has spoken,” interrupted Francis, firmly.
An agonizing silence followed. Loud ticking of the grandfather clock hammered through the modest English cottage. Then it boomed the hour. Boom …. Boom …. It was midnight.
“How many people are there in America?” managed Joseph.
“Ten years ago there were 1,700,000.”
“Then why should you go?” A hopeful smile crossed Joseph’s lean face. “We have almost 8,000,000 here in the United Kingdom. Besides, 300,000 of the people in America are black slaves. I read that just yesterday.”
“Because I must be obedient to God,” replied Francis.
“How much money will you make?”
“Have no idea. John Wesley and I didn’t discuss that.”
“If God has called Francis, then he should go,” broke in Elizabeth, forcing the words beyond the lump in her throat. “I’ll miss him. Oh, yes, I’ll miss him.” She began to sob. “But we must remember, Joseph, I had a vision from the Lord that one day Francis would be a great preacher. And it seems like yesterday when he was saved from that near fatal fall ….”
As his ship eased into the wide Atlantic on September 4, 1771, Francis struggled with his emotions. Would he ever see his aging parents again? He kept his eyes focused on St. Mary Redcliffe Church until the coastline disappeared. This sanctuary on the hills above Bristol had served as a landmark for centuries.
John Wesley had encouraged his preachers to keep journals. Up until August 7, the opening day of the conference in Bristol in which Francis was selected to go to America, he had neglected to do this. Now he opened his newly purchased notebook and thrust his quill into the ink. Included in his first notation are the lines: “I spoke my mind and made an offer of myself. It was accepted by Mr. Wesley and others, who judged I had a call. (It was my duty to go where the conference ordered; only one or two objected.)”
He did not touch the journal again until September 4th. This time he wrote about his embarkation: “… we set sail … and having a good wind, soon passed the channel. For three days I was very ill with seasickness; and no sickness I ever knew was equal to it. …”
His next notation was on the 12th. This time he wrote: “Whither am I going? To the New World. What to do? To gain honor? No, if I know my heart. To get money? No: I am going to live to God, and to bring others so to do. … The people God owns in England are Methodists. The doctrines they preach, and the discipline they enforce, are, I believe, the purest of any people now in the world. The Lord has greatly blessed these doctrines and this discipline in the three kingdoms: they must therefore be pleasing to Him ….”
Three days later, on the 15th, Asbury opened a window to his character by scribbling, “Our friends had forgotten our beds, or else did not know we should want such things; so I had two blankets for mine. I found it hard to lodge on little more than boards ….”
Money and personal comfort were always secondary to Francis Asbury.
When Asbury landed in Philadelphia on October 27, he was unknown. His five years of circuit riding in England had not been heralded in the New World. Indeed, he was not even asked to preach on the day of his arrival – even though it was Sunday. But always a gentleman, he took his seat in St. George’s Church and listened to Joseph Pilmoor, one of the pair John Wesley had dispatched to America two years before.
Those who listened to Asbury’s sermon the next Monday saw a slender young man, five-feet, nine inches tall, with exceedingly blue eyes and blond hair that brushed his shoulders.
After about two weeks in the Quaker city, Asbury went to New York to work with Richard Boardman. This city of 18,000 had a strong Methodist congregation and Asbury was welcomed with enthusiasm. Manhattan, then, was an interesting place. He visited spots made famous by peg-legged Peter Stuyvesant; dropping in at the former home of Peter Minuit who had purchased Manhattan for $24 worth of beads, and stopping at Wall Street where slaves were sold at auction.
He was intrigued with history, but after two weeks in New York he was restless, unhappy. Missing a saddle and the music of the constant click of a horse’s hoofs, he confided in his journal: “At present I am dissatisfied. I judge we are shut up in the cities this winter. My brethren seem unwilling to leave the cities, but I think I shall show them the way ….”
Two days later, and without requesting permission from anyone, he borrowed a horse. Together with Richard Sause he rode to Westchester, some 20 miles away.
There, he preached in the courthouse. Alone, he continued on to West Farms, New Rochelle, Rye, Mamaroneck, Philipse Manor. Soon he had formed a circuit. Each night he slept in a new bed. It was hard work, but he enjoyed being tired in the work of the Lord. Such tiredness was refreshing.
Having established a circuit, Asbury then turned it over to another preacher and set about creating a new one. To him, every mountain, every new settlement, and every home offered an invitation to preach the gospel. Sometimes he preached to thousands; on other occasions to only a handful. But to Asbury, the size of the crowd did not matter. God had called him to preach; and that is what he determined to do.
As Asbury’s circuits expanded, so did his troubles. The mood of rebellion in the American Colonies continued to deepen. This made things awkward for the Methodists.
After all, the followers of John and Charles Wesley were merely an arm of the Church of England, and the head of the Church of England was none other than His Majesty, King George III!
The political situation for Francis Asbury, and other Methodist preachers born in England, was extremely hard. All of them had to be – at least on the surface – loyal to England. And to make things worse, John Wesley had reissued Sam Johnson’s book, Taxation No Tyranny, under the title A Calm Address to Our American Colonies. This book stressed loyalty to English authority, so it was like a match lighting a fuse. Having issued it under his own name, Wesley was accused of plagiarism. And since it had a great sale in America, all Methodist preachers were suspected of being Tories – or even English spies. Indeed, the political atmosphere became so tense that many Methodists – especially preachers – were tossed into prison. Asbury himself was once forced to hide in a swamp to escape arrest. (This was an irony, for Asbury’s sympathies were secretly with the Americans.)
Following the Revolution, American Methodists were in an uncomfortable position. They were American citizens – but at the same time they were paying at least lip service to George III. Because of Methodism’s connection to the crown through the Church of England, Wesley’s church had two alternatives. Either the Methodists in America could become an arm of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the American branch of the Church of England, or they could become an independent body.
But if the Methodists became independent, how were they to receive Holy Communion? This was an urgent question, for Wesley had insisted that no Methodist should receive the sacraments unless they were served by an ordained Anglican priest.
Pondering this problem, Wesley finally decided that he would personally ordain Dr. Thomas Coke and send him to America to ordain Asbury, and eventually others.
This was clearly against English church law. In protest to his brother’s action, Charles wrote a poem:
How easy now are Bishops made
At man or woman’s whim!
Wesley his hands on Coke hath laid,
But who laid hands on him?
Learning that Coke was coming to America to ordain him, Asbury came up with an ingenious strategy. He agreed that he would accept ordination, but only after the circuit riders had voted on it. This was a daring idea, for the circuit riders were scattered throughout Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Moreover, messages spread very slowly in those days before radio, TV, and quick transportation.
How, then, were the circuit riders to be contacted in time to get to the specially-called conference at the Lovely Lane Church in Baltimore announced for Christmas Eve, 1784? The answer was Freeborn Garrettson! This preacher, who had freed his slaves before Methodists were required to free their slaves, was afraid neither of judges, devils, poverty, nor distance. With less than six weeks to fulfill his errands, he started out. But busy as he was, he preached along the way as he rode from place to place, alerting preachers to the important meeting in Baltimore.
Although Asbury and Coke never exchanged a cross word, a struggle for power simmered below the surface in their relationship. Asbury knew and understood the circuit riders. Coke did not. Nevertheless, when the circuit riders reached Baltimore, Coke would have the advantage because he was completely new to them. Asbury did not thirst for power. Still, Coke, a rich, inept doctor of laws from England, could easily make mistakes that would set American Methodism back a dozen years. Ah, but there was a way out.
While awaiting the approach of Christmas Eve, Asbury encouraged Coke and his assistants to ride some circuits and meet the people. Such work would be helpful – and also it would expose Coke’s talents to the Americans.
At the time, Asbury was 39 and Coke was 37. Both were bachelors.
Writing about this conference, Dr. Coke got to the point: “On Christmas-eve we opened our conference which has continued 10 days. I admire the body of American preachers. We had nearly 60 of them present. The whole number is 81. …” The circuit riders agreed that Asbury should be ordained superintendent. But because of the Discipline, he could not be elevated to that high position all at once. So Asbury was ordained a deacon on Saturday; an elder on Sunday; and superintendent (bishop) on Monday!
It was at this conference that the Methodist Episcopal Church was born. Among those who laid hands on Asbury at the ordination service was Rev. Philip Otterbein of the German Reformed Church. The leaders of the new American denomination still felt loyal to John Wesley; and they made a solemn pledge that “during the life of Rev. Mr. Wesley we acknowledge ourselves his sons in the Gospel, ready in matters of church government to obey his commands.”
That pledge, however, was not honored for long. Three years later the circuit riders met for another conference. This time they not only refused to make Wesley’s nominee, Richard Whatcoat, superintendent, but they also voted to drop Wesley’s name from the minutes! However, they still loved and honored John Wesley. But they were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Moreover, they were on their own as a church, declaring independence even as their new nation had freed itself from English domination.
Asbury, now recognized as bishop, continued to ride herd on the growing army of Methodist preachers. He ruled kindly, but with an iron hand. His salary was the same as that of the circuit riders. Being a bachelor, he encouraged his riders to remain bachelors also.
Like Wesley, he was highly organized and methodical. Asbury maintained stated hours for prayer, reading, writing, and relaxation. He seldom laughed. Troubled with ill health during most of his ministry, he relied on his own medicines – and prayer.
Asbury dressed like his preachers. He “wore a low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, a frock coat, which was generally buttoned up to the neck, with straight collar. He wore breeches or clothes with leggings. Sometimes he wore shoebuckles.” His one luxury was that whenever possible, he wore blue.
Always on the go, Asbury became one of the best-known men of his times. He knew President Washington, stayed with Governor Van Courtland, and sometimes vacationed in the homes of the wealthy. Being a celebrity of his age, letters addressed: Francis Asbury, U.S.A., were delivered to him on schedule.
Bishop Asbury refused to give up, to retire. When weakness settled over him, he resorted to crutches. He had hoped to preside over the General Conference which was to meet in Baltimore on May 2, 1816. He never made it. After a rain storm in Granby, South Carolina, he wrote the last entry in his Journal: “We met a storm and stopped at William Baker’s, Granby.”
After resting in Granby for a few days, Asbury boarded a carriage and headed for Baltimore. Friends begged him to rest. Instead, he preached two or three times a day en route. When he reached Richmond on March 24, 1816, he was nearly blind and unable to walk. Still, he insisted on preaching.
Sitting on a table in the old Methodist Church, he preached on the text: “For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth” (Romans 9:28). This was his last sermon, but he insisted on going to Fredricksburg to preach again. After four days of travel, he was forced to give up at Spottsylvania – a mere 20 miles from his objective.
While resting in the home of George Arnold he collapsed. On Sunday morning he summoned the family to his bedside. His text was the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, but he was too weak to read it. After a few sentences, uttered with great effort, he raised his hands above his head. Moments later, Bishop Francis Asbury stopped breathing.
The conqueror of the long trails had received his last call – and he was ready. The date was Sunday, March 31, 1816. The time was 4 p.m.
Charles Ludwig (1918-2002) was the author of more than 50 books, including Francis Asbury: God’s Circuit Rider (1984).
by Steve | Nov 9, 1979 | Magazine Articles
Is there reality in our worship
By John R. W. Stott
Good News
November/December 1979
The Christian Church is fundamentally a worshiping community. According to I Peter 2:5,9 it is a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood whose function is to offer to God the spiritual sacrifices of our worship.
Now I venture to go even further than that. I believe that worship is the church’s priority task. Of course, it is popular to say that the church’s priority task is evangelism. I venture to disagree. I believe that the church’s priority task is worship.
Of course, this is an unnecessary dichotomy anyway, because we don’t have to choose between worship and witness. Each, properly understood, involves the other. It is impossible to worship and love God without loving my neighbor. And, it is impossible to love my neighbor without loving God. Therefore, worship and evangelism inevitably involve one another.
Worship is derived from “worth ship.” So true worship is an acknowledgment of the supreme, absolute worth of God. How can I acknowledge the unique and absolute worth of God and not be concerned that the rest of the world will recognize his worth equally? Therefore, true worship is bound to drive me and the Church out to witness. There is something essentially hypocritical about worship if it does not lead to witness.
Why do we want to evangelize? Do we want simply to win people, get them to profess faith, and be baptized – period? Why do we want them to come to Christ? Surely in order that people, having come to him themselves, will bow the knee to Jesus, give to him the glory that is due his Name, and acknowledge him as Lord – in other words, worship. Therefore, the ultimate objective of evangelism is worship.
Having worshiped, we’re driven out to evangelism in order again that there may be more worship. So, there is a continuous circle of worship leading to witness, witness leading to worship, and so on.
It is an unnecessary dichotomy – worship and witness, worship and evangelism. Each, properly understood, inevitably invokes the other.
Nevertheless, I think we must put worship first. Partly because our duty to God precedes and takes precedence over our duty to our neighbor, and partly because evangelism is only a temporary task. It will end when Christ comes again in glory and power, but we shall be worshiping God forever and ever and ever. It is the eternal function of the Church to be preoccupied with the worship of our Creator and Redeemer. That task will never come to an end.
As evangelicals we should not be ashamed to assert this. I say this because evangelicals are supposed to be interested only in evangelism, and I think it would be greatly for the health of the Church, as well as for the glory of God, if we said that we are equally or even more interested in worship.
The subject of worship has acquired a new importance in our day because of the contemporary quest – particularly in the Western World – for transcendence [something greater or higher than human wisdom and achievements]. What a remarkable thing this is! Young people, disillusioned increasingly (thank God) with the technocracy, are everywhere seeking something Beyond. They believe there is another dimension – a higher dimension – to life than scientists or technologists have ever dreamed or conceived. And today these young people are seeking this higher dimension.
Unfortunately, many seek it in mind-expanding drugs, in yoga, in the higher consciousness, in the flight to the East, in Transcendental Meditation, and in sexual adventures. Although they’re seeking in the wrong places, they are seeking transcendence. This is what they should discover in worship within the Church.
We need to remember that our Christian worship must be more than a social habit, more than a cultural convention. It must be real. It must be authentic. This means, I think, that there are three indispensable characteristics of a local church’s worship-characteristics which make worship both acceptable to God and satisfying to the worshipers.
- Worship must be informed and inspired by Scripture, the Word of God. Human beings never initiate the worship of God. For all human worship is a response to the divine initiative. Jesus says in his conversation with the Samaritan woman, “such the Father seeks to worship him” (John 4:23). He takes the initiative. He reveals himself in order to evoke our worship.
It is impossible for us to copy the Athenians, who had that foolish altar to an unknown god (Acts 17:23). You cannot worship a god you do not know! For if you do not know him, then you cannot know what kind of worship might be pleasing to him, acceptable and appropriate.
Jesus also teaches this clearly in the Sermon on the Mount. He dismisses heathen or pagan worship (Matthew 6:1-18). He says that the heathen have these repetitions.
That is pathalogia in Greek, meaning any kind of prayer whether spontaneous or liturgical, in which the mind is not fully engaged.
Jesus wants us not to worship like this.
Why not? Because the God we believe in, the living God who is revealed in Jesus Christ, is not interested in that kind of worship.
Instead, he wants us to come to him and say, “Our Father in Heaven, may your name be honored and your Kingdom come and your will be done.” In this spirit we come to him like little children, thoughtfully, intelligently, confidingly, trustingly. We know the kind of God we come to, that he’s our Father and that he desires us to bring him our worship. And so, the kind of God we believe in determines the kind of worship we will offer him. That is why the Psalms are full of references to his works of creation and redemption.
These provide God’s people with tangible ground for their praise. I was upset a bit at the International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne when we kept crooning “alleluia, alleluia.” A sort of mindless trance. I wanted to say stop! stop! stop! What are you saying “alleluia” about? It’s no good just saying, “We praise you,” “we praise You,” “we praise You.” That’s never so in the Bible.
Many psalms begin with the word “alleluia” and end with the word “alleluia.” But in between this “alleluia” sandwich there is tremendous theological content. We are told what we are alleluiaing about. We are told to praise the name of the Lord because of his mighty works, for his creation, and right on through to his redemption.
As a result, our minds are filled with an awareness of the greatness of the Lord. That is the reason for saying “alleluia.” We need to recover some content-full theological hymns and songs so that we can know what we are singing our praises about.
I long for more evangelical reverence. Why not teach our people to come to church early, not to hurry in during the first hymn or after it, but to come in time to be quiet as a prelude to worship? I wish we could teach people that instead of the bout of conversation, to be quiet at least a minute or two before the worship service begins. It’s quite a good idea for the clergy to come in and sit down and be quiet a minute or two before 11 a.m. Also, it’s a good thing to have periods of silence during public worship.
Our worship, if it’s inspired by God’s Word, will not only be reverent but warm. Worship is cold only when the preaching is cold. There is no need to stir a congregation’s emotions artificially when Christ opens the Scripture through the reading and preaching of the Word. That is what makes worship warm, joyful.
- Worship must be offered by the whole congregation. The second mark of true worship is that it is congregational.
During the Middle Ages, worship was a theatrical performance. The stage, especially the eucharistic stage [having to do with Eucharist or the sacrament of Communion], was the church chancel. The actors in the drama were the priests and the language of the play was Latin. Congregations were mere spectators in the audience, watching the drama performed by priests around what they called the altar.
One great insight that God gave to the Protestant reformers was a determination to replace this theatrical performance by congregational worship. This reform brought the action down from the chancel to the naves (people). The Protestant reformers insisted on the use of a language understood by the people.
The Church of England produced a book of common prayers, or, in the Church of Scotland, the common order. They did this because they were determined to involve and engage the people in congregational worship.
Some churches today have gone back to the Middle Ages. The pastor does everything while the people sit and doze and listen, interspersing their dreams with hymns.
The highest some churches reach in so-called congregational worship is that during the prayers a hundred, two hundred, three hundred people engage in their own individual prayers. Really, this is not much different than the medieval mass in which the congregation was just encouraged to go on with their private devotions while the priests performed up in the sanctuary.
Do we come to church in order just to enjoy our private devotions, although standing or sitting next to somebody else who is doing the same thing? Surely we should come together for public worship!
Therefore, anything that will better involve the congregation in common worship seems to me highly desirable. Take the seating of the church, which symbolizes our understanding of worship. The Roman Catholic custom was to erect a screen to segregate the chancel from the naves and the clergy from the people. Protestants have opposed this. Yet we tolerated a kind of confrontation between the clergy and the people which the traditional arrangement of pews creates. Over here you have all the people … and over there the clergy. This separation establishes a confrontation between the clergy and the people. It perpetuates and encourages that clerical domination of the laity which has been one of the most disastrous things in the history of the Church.
When Christians meet in houses we gather around in a circle. Somehow we need to secure this intimacy again in our public worship. We need a sense of the congregation being gathered around the action.
In our own church in London we have recently made all the furniture movable. The chancel furniture is movable, the pulpit is movable, the Communion table is movable, the baptismal font is movable. For a Communion service, the table is brought right forward and the people feel they are gathered around the table for the Lord’s Supper. If it’s a baptism, we bring the font forward, closer to the people. If it’s a preaching, we put the pulpit in the center and the people are gathered round. We want to overcome this appalling feeling of confrontation, of separation, between laypeople and clergy.
Related to seating is the question of lay participation; it’s good to involve laypeople also in the reading of the Scripture lessons.
God has gifted many Christians with good voices or an understanding of Scripture so that they can read well. We can also involve laypeople in giving testimonies from time to time or being interviewed about some significant aspect of their lives as Christians. These can greatly enrich our worship.
Why should the pastor always lead in prayer? It’s a very good thing for the laypeople to lead the prayers individually or as a group.
Bach once composed a fresh cantata for every Sunday. And at a Roman Catholic cathedral in Holland there is a group of young people who produce and compose a fresh folk mass every Sunday. Do you have a little worship group in the congregation to help the pastor with the composition of the worship?
There are people in your congregation with creative and innovative artistic and liturgical understandings, laypeople who need to be involved with us clergy in preparing worship that is acceptable to God.
- Worship must be related to the contemporary world. Public worship can have a very damaging effect on our Christian lives if worship is regarded as an escape from the real world. A minister in the United Church of Canada, writing about the Jesus People, has said that like the early Christians they live simply, they read Scripture, they break bread together. But he goes on, “Like drugs, a Jesus religion can be an escape from the world in which He is incarnate.”
We gather together as the Lord’s people on the Lord’s Day for worship; then we scatter into the world for our witness. This is another rhythm of the Christian life – gathering and scattering, gathering in church in order to scatter as Christians out into the world. It is vital that we keep the gathering and scattering together in our minds; that we don’t divorce them from one another. In church on the one hand, and at home and at work on the other, we are in the same world.
God’s world. We mustn’t live a double life, oscillating between two worlds, secular and religious. Instead, we must carry our business into our worship and our worship into our business.
Many worshipers, when they come to church, deliberately and consciously step out of the real world into a religious world which has nothing to do with ordinary life. They even step back three or four centuries into an Elizabethan world which no longer exists. And when they look around at the ecclesiastical architecture or the clerical dress or the liturgical language, they must sometimes wonder if they’re dreaming. Is this the real world?
I want to urge that we must worship in modern English! I believe honestly it is inappropriate to worship the living God in a dead language. Oh, we’re so used to “thee’s” and “thou’s” and other archaic words and phrases. But using such archaic words tends to separate our worship from reality.
That is why using today’s language is indispensable, if our worship is to have about it the quality of reality.
It’s very important, as we worship, to keep in our minds the modern work-a-day world to which we belong. Do our worship services encourage the congregation to shut out of their minds the world of their home and of their job and of their community life? If so, then we are promoting by our public worship an unBiblical, spiritual schizophrenia. And we are contributing to that divorce of the sacred from the secular – possibly the most disastrous thing in the whole history of the Christian Church. We need to teach our people that the God whom we worship is the living God who created the world of work and marriage and homes and leisure and community.
His Son, after all, was incarnate and lived and died in the world. So we must not shut out the world in order to retreat into God. Instead, we must worship the God who made and rules the world. We must submit to his sovereignty that bit of the world in which we are involved day by day.
In its widest sense worship is living for God. It is honoring God in the totality of our lives. The hour or an hour and a half in which we mouth our hymns, songs, prayers, and praises simply focuses and verbalizes what is (or ought to be) the direction of our whole life. The sacrifice pleasing to God, according to the Scripture, is not just the praise of our lips, but the offering of our bodies and our money and our service in the world of everyday affairs (Romans 12:1,2). That is true worship! And Scripture states with great plainness that mere words, when divorced from social righteousness, are nauseating to God, disgusting to Him (Amos 5:21-24).
So we need to help people, in public worship, not to forget the world, but to remember it. Not to escape from life into God, but to bring all our life, as it were, with us and subject it to God as an act of worship. At least some of our prayers in church should be really concrete and topical, relating directly to the contemporary concerns of the people. Not just mentioning the sick and the bereaved by name and the missionaries {although that is very good), but also to take up newspaper concerns that are local, national, and international: racial conflict in the community, war, tragedy, disaster, high-jacking.
Public worship is God’s people responding to God’s Word in God’s world. And so my final exhortation is: do let’s toke trouble over the worship. A lot of preachers, I’m afraid, come to church with a prepared sermon and an unprepared service. It seems to me we ought to take equal trouble with the worship as we do the preaching.
John R. W. Stott (1921-2011) was Rector Emeritus, All Souls Church in London. This article is condensed from an address Stott delivered to a combined meeting of leaders of Good News and the Covenant Fellowship of Presbyterians.
