Some reflections on worship and church today

Over the last few days I have been observing the extravaganza that is the World Youth Day in Sydney, been reflecting on a potential move into ministry within the context of a cluster, been reflecting on the parable of the sower from both Markan studies and last week’s lectionary reading, attended the funeral of a key member of our congregation, and have attended a lecture by Rev. Dr. Michael Wheelan on Christian Spirituality in the Australian context.

It is apparent to me that inside many congregations the church is seen as those who attend worship services and those who attend related groups (with or without a profession of faith) are seen as associates, rather than core members. As such, participation in worship services is seen as the pinnacle of contribution and (by corollary) participation or leadership within the related groups is seen as a good thing, but not necessarily core business.

As I have watched WYD, I have reflected on the habit of festivals in the traditional European religious context, or even events such as “White Sunday” which I have seen within the Samoan Australian context. These are events which simply would not work without the participation of the whole community. If we are serious about the whole of our community being equipped by the Spirit for the growth of the whole church, I am finding myself wondering why we have structured ourselves so that our most public expressions of faith are so reliant on an elite few (those selected for public participation in worship, plus musicians and clergy).

At the funeral, I had the privilege of having a short discussion with the brother of the deceased, who is a member in a neighbouring congregation. As we shared, he informed me the peak of his faith life is on a Wednesday morning. At that time a group of about 15 gather to work at the church doing cleaning and other associate maintenance, and then share in morning tea afterwards. This is a group with a definite purpose for existence and, while we may bemoan the focus on property that is a key part of our life as a community, this man went on to describe how this group supports each other when times get tough. The little radical within me asked then how this group would be effected if they were challenged once in a while to create something for the worship life of the congregation and also found ways to recruit new members. He was from another congregation, so I kept silent.

At the lecture last night, we were asked by Michael to consider how we can live an authentic life as a spiritual organisation within the Australian context. He argued that the church, when it loses its spirituality, is soulless. He also argued that spirituality is not just about an individualistic relationship with God, but is also about relationships with others and the planet. Wheelan’s argument against individualistic styles of spirituality is that they are deficient in that they do not involve relationships with others and the sacrifices these entail. He also argued that organisation is an essential part of the human condition.

After the lecture we had a bit more discussion, and for me two key and apparently contradictory descriptors seem to have arisen: a yearning for safety (leading to the cult of self-sufficiency), and a yearning for belonging (as seen in the tribalism at times such as ANZAC Day or other common events such as WYD). This has lead me to consider the dinner-table level of polite discussion that seems be our predominant way of communication within the church. If we are to consider ourselves a community that is called to proclaim the gospel within our time, how are we to find ways to communicate the gospel within our current cultural situation.

Postmodernism has been criticised for the way in which it challenges the human mind’s ability to determine ultimate truths. If we consider God, and our salvation through Christ, to be our ultimate truths, this poses an extreme challenge to claims of a provable faith (please note, the words rational faith have been deliberately avoided as the irrational/rational has been set up as a evil/good dichotomy within the modern imagination) and a severe challenge to a faith based on axioms rather than relationships. Is this the next great leap for the church? Just as Israel needed to reform during the exile, and the church (in its different self-understandings) to the “Enlightenment”, Renaissance and the Industrial revolution, do we need to re-interpret what faith has to mean in the “post-truth” world? I believe that we have to realise that postmodernism does not deny truth, but actually embraces a whole variety of things that were dismissed during the Enlightenment and subsequent periods.

Firstly, this involves a different set of appreciations. Instead of asking questions of why people find things beautiful (for example), it appreciates that beauty is something in the eyes of its community at its time and values beauty as a truth in itself (albeit one that is not measurable or provable). This leads to a second and more radical set of questions. Continuing on from the prior example, money is seen by the post-enlightenment (or “modern”) mind as a rational truth in that it can be measured and its behaviour explained while beauty is eminently unmeasurable and thus should be excluded from calculations.

In other words, the world needs to get on with making money as its primary business, and the pursuit of beauty is seen as a luxury (almost a frivolous pursuit, to be limited to that which can be achieved by excess production). In the post-modern mind, this is an aberration as the assumption of measurability is under threat. As soon as people are involved, there are effects that are beyond simple explanation. Money can be critiqued as being a social construct that needs to be in dialogue with other values, and thus needs to be lowered from the exalted status it received in economic rationalism. (Money was made for humanity, and not humanity for money, to blatantly steal a phrase) It is obvious to me that both worldviews exist (and the postmodernist in me says that very few people would fall into either of the caricatures I have presented), but this is a profound cultural change that is changing the mode of the next generation’s thinking from propositional to dialogical, from assumptions of human intellectualism’s certainty to a distrust of ideologies and concretism.

Wheelan’s proposal for the future direction of the church is for us to become more dialogical in the way in which we relate to the broader community, being willing to be converted by Christ, who has preceded us into the world, in our conversations with the other. However, it is my fear that the urge to be accepted (and conversely, and more powerfully, the fear of rejection that often even stops us looking on ourselves truly) is the greatest enemy of such genuine conversations and before this stage we must first create spaces where such conversations may be held. It is only through an understanding of love and the unconditional acceptance due to other children of God that such spaces may be made – and I hope my fear that the church needs to be convinced of this first is not justified by reality.

So, how does this relate to my vision of worship in a postmodern church in clustered congregations? How would it be if a bible study group larger than the group of those preaching was used to generate ideas for the sermons from various preachers (lay and ordained)? How would it be if groups also gathered to create liturgy, settings, music and other aspects of worship? How would the worship life of the congregation look if ways were deliberately sought to use the abilities of the various associated groups in a visible manner on a regular basis? For example, what would it mean to those who bring morning tea if the food was brought forward with the offering or even the communion elements on occasion? In this world, the higher skill may be to creatively seek to see how others may contribute, than to emphasise one’s own contribution. Can we really learn to reach out and include the world without considering how we reach out to each other? Is it possible for us to recreate the sense of community that comes with a festival that incorporates all aspects of the congregation? These are things to consider as we head out into the future.