*Written for my church’s Facebook Page*
Hello fellow Gracers,
Last week, Jordan Reick posted a question on the wall that inquired “How does Grace make the Gospel visible?” Contained in his question was a request for other brothers and sisters to put forth their ideas of how our church can better manifest the Gospel to the surrounding community. Among the responses, Pastor Jonathon contributed his insights in confessing “that we need to be balanced between proclaiming the gospel in word and deed. Most PCA churches tend to be unbalanced, with the mercy side coming up short, and we’re probably not an exception there.”
With Jordan’s initial question in mind in conjunction with Pastor Jonathon’s thoughts, I have been pondering this issue as of late and feel that there may be some missing elements from this conversation.
Pastor Jonathon was indeed correct in his statement that many PCA and other Reformed churches are notoriously unbalanced as to the respective emphases placed upon preaching/doctrine and the church’s material ministry to its community. However, something that I have long held is the importance, in fact, the necessity of liturgical community as the locus and impetus of a local church’s ministry. We Reformed can often compartmentalize the various elements of church life into isolated and independent spheres such that we have our doctrine in one area, our liturgy in another, and our social ministry in yet another. Unfortunately, so often focused are we on our doctrine that we inevitably relegate the equally important spheres of liturgy and community service into realms of secondary and tertiary importance. I am submitting to you all that without a vibrant and comprehensive liturgical community, neither our doctrine nor our outward ministry to the community will be things that organically and necessarily arise as our corporate fruit of the Spirit.
Allow me to begin with some background. Every church has a center and a foundation on which its community rests. Therefore, in our church’s situation, we need only to be concerned with what unites us all into community. Ideally, as I hope to show later, this proper foundation is the liturgical life of our church but in the absence thereof, we as people will inevitably find something on which to build our community; we’ll look for our demographic. And since liturgy is not something that is actively perceived as something of grand importance, we see this all around us. Whether it’s the urban house church where all the congregants are 20 and 30-somethings who just so happen to all enjoy foreign films and vote Democrat or the upper middle class, white, surburban church where every family is conversative and just so happens to homeschool, we are surrounded by churches who found their community on things other than the liturgical life of the church. On what is our community centered? It is a fair question to ask.
Now, Pastor Jonathan recently preached on the transcedent quality of the Gospel that ascends beyond all of our demographic preferences and prejudices and unites humanity on the very thing for which we were created: the worship of God. The Church is humanity as it was created to be, a community in which the peace of Christ forever flows and its praise continuely arises to God as incense. Therefore, when we assemble on Lord’s Day, we are actively displaying to the world the chief end of man. The Church is not fundamentally an association of like-minded individuals who collectively assent to a series of theological propositions, although we do believe things. Neither is the Church primarily an organization committed to social justice like a non-profit, though we do indeed minister to the world. No, the identity and purpose of the Church is none other than the identity and purpose of every human being, the worship of God. This includes belief and ministry, but the Church’s worship, its liturgy, is the comprehensive expression of the Church’s identity.
Within the liturgical life of the local church, what is the animating force, the enlivening impetus for both belief and practical ministry? It is none other than the Eucharist, the Lord’s Table on which we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ every Sunday. For it is in the Eucharist that we as a congregation are reconstituted and sustained as the Body of Christ. The Eucharist is the center of the Church’s identity as the Body of Christ for it is in its partaking that, as Paul said, that we participate in Christ’s Body and Blood. Think about that, every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, Christ is actually manifesting Himself through us as His Mystical Body to the world!
Hopefully, it is now easy to see the necessary outcome of this in regards to our church’s ministry to our community. As each of us are increasingly woven into the liturgical rhythms of our church’s life by our corporate worship and participation in the Sacraments, our corporate understanding of ourselves as the Body of Christ becomes more concentrated and realized. Consequently, our service to our community comes to be seen as merely as a church being what it really is, since Christ Himself was a servant and we are Christ’s Mystical Body. Ministry to the world is an organically produced fruit from a church that understands its sacramental character based upon its Eucharistic celebration and manifested through its liturgy. Perhaps a better of way of putting this would be the words of one of my favorite theologians, the late Eastern Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann who, in his book For the Life of the World, defines the Church as “the sacrament of Christ’s presence and action in the world.”
Without this understanding, we’ll continue on as those infamous Reformed who, at best, see social ministry as “a good thing to do” while believing the essence of the Church to be based on adherence to sound doctrine. Of course, there is an equally unfortunate ditch that is gaining momentum in our day, and that is the tendency to react to the previous scenario and understand the Church as essentially a mechanism for social justice. Therefore, we should not view the sectors of doctrine, liturgy, and social ministry as isolated and separate aspects of Church, but as one tapestry that is woven together by the liturgy and the Sacraments that define and animate the Church as the Body of Christ.
So, in conclusion, my encouragement to you all is to cherish our liturgy, learn it, love it, and conform your personal and family life into the corporate life of liturgy at Grace. Each time you approach the Lord’s Table, be mindful of the fact that in your partaking, you are being sustained as a member of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, His Body. As I’ve heard it said before, we have been adopted as members of a family and this family has a business: the proclamation of the Gospel to the world and the clothing of the naked and feeding of the hungry. However, when it comes to social ministry, the Church is not just one more non-profit organization doing social service like everyone else does. Rather, our service to the world is invoked because our Lord in whom we as the Church are mystically united through the Sacraments, “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:6-7). It is because our Lord Jesus Christ became faithfully present in his Incarnation to us, the dark and sinful Other, that we, having been united to Christ, continue His mission of service to the world and submission and praise to the Father to the glory of His name over all the earth.
May this encourage you, my brothers and sisters in the Lord.
The Peace of Christ be with you all,
Caleb
Excellent post and very encouraging indeed!