DTK Chapter 5, Part 5: Beyond Sunday Morning

We have finally reached the conclusion to chapter 5 and its fascinating discussion of how the practices of Christian worship can change us.   I particularly liked Smith’s conclusion to this chapter: considering how to take these practices along into our day-to-day lives.  Ah, finally!  The rubber meets the road!

 

Attending Sunday worship is a crucial counter-formational practice.  Earlier in chapter 5 in the section entitled “Call to Worship”, Smith had noted that it is rather telling that we bother to go to church at all.  He drew a rather vivid picture of someone, perhaps a college student, getting up early to go to church on a Sunday morning when everyone else is sleeping in.  This image resonated with me since it reminded me of going to church on Sunday mornings the year we lived in France.    Even though France is a very secular country (I know there were only 3 very small Protestant churches in the city of 100,000 where we lived, and perhaps that many Catholic ones), everyone there likes to take a rest on Sunday.  Most businesses are closed, and those that open do so with reduced hours.  The busses run on a very reduced schedule.  We had to walk about 30 minutes to the church we attended and there were very, very few people out and about.  Getting up and going to church on Sunday really did mark us as ‘peculiar people’ in that society.   And once we get to church, the act of participating in corporate worship is very concentrated, charged with meaning and formational power.  Nevertheless attending church on Sunday morning is not enough.  We must carry our counter-formational practices into the rest of the week as well.  So how do we do that?   Smith offers us some practical suggestions:

 

1. Recognize secular “liturgies” for what they are – this lessens their formative power:  “If we can start to see cultural practices for what they are, it’s as if we can then say to them, ‘I see what you’re up to…’  So this recognition, coupled with intentional participation in Christian worship, can decrease (but not eliminate) the formative power of secular liturgies.”

 

2. Choose to abstain from certain ‘normal’ cultural practices.  Smith didn’t say this, but I would also add that when one chooses to abstain from a certain practice, it is important to replace it with something that will have a better formative influence.  Charlotte Mason talks about breaking bad habits by replacing them with good ones, and I think the same principle can apply here too.  A couple of examples of ways we have done this is our home:

- Christ-centered family holiday traditions to replace commercialized ones.

- Intentionally choosing not to be involved in tons of outside activities so we can place a priority on our family relationships, be available for hospitality, and other such things.  (Admittedly, this is much easier to do in Africa where there is far fewer activities to choose from, but even if we lived on the States I think we would still be very careful about how many and what kinds of activities we would spend our time on.)

- Limited TV.  We don’t own one, actually (and still wouldn’t if we lived in the States), so what we do watch is on DVD on our computer.   This limits the amount of advertising we are exposed to (especially our children) and eliminates mindless channel surfing.  We make intentional choices about what we choose to watch or not to watch, and it is not constantly on in the background.

 

3. Cultivate habits of daily worship.  Prayer and Devotional reading – both privately and in community – are important daily practices not to be limited to Sunday morning.  This is something that is important for everyone, but we’ve found extremely important to our family since we live overseas and have to deal with language and cultural differences in our church environment.  (It’s still important to be there, but it doesn’t have quite the same ‘power’ as worshipping in your mother tongue!) 

 

Ways that I try to do this in my private devotional time:

- Opening and closing my day with Bible and devotional reading (check the sidebar for my current choices) and journaling.

- Prayer – often using Psalms or the topically arranged Scripture passages in Daily Light as a template – sometimes just praying, sometimes doodling or writing as I pray.

- Listening to sermons, podcasts, and uplifting music as I go throughout my day.

 

Ways that we do this as a whole family:

- Our Breakfast Devotional Time: Scripture and Catechism memory (new and review), reading from Psalms and Proverbs, Hymn Singing, and Prayer focused on Adoration, Confessing our Need for Him and asking for His help, Thanks, and Requests for others.

- Our Evening Devotional Time: Prayer time based on a Psalm, Bible story with narration and discussion (working towards a ‘habit’ of imagination and wonder here)

- Special Devotions and activities during the seasons of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter

- Sunday Reading

 

4. Live ‘communally’, recognizing that friendships and family relationships are important.   I struggle with this one a bit because we are rather transient (it’s difficult to build deep-rooted relationships when either your family or your friends’ families move internationally every year or two…), and I am also an introvert.  A shy introvert.  A shy introvert who has said good-bye too many times.  (Ahem.)  But at the same time, I see the importance of recognizing that we aren’t meant to go through life alone.  I do desire to have these kinds of deep relationships.  And in my own way, I do have them.  We place a lot of emphasis in our home on developing our immediate family relationships (at least when we move, we move all together!)  I am still best friends with my best friend from high school, despite the fact that our lives have moved in vastly different directions and we really only see each other once every few years now.  We’re still the ones that we turn to first in joys and trials.  We really know each other – sometimes better than we know ourselves I think – 20 years is a lot of water under the bridge!  I treasure that.  When I was a single missionary in Papua New Guinea, I had a family that took me in to theirs – right down to having Christmas morning and vacations with them.  They were the ones that talked, prayed, and encouraged me through my long-distance courtship with my husband.   And now we have a young, single missionary lady who is part of our family.   She lived with us for almost a month last fall when she was recovering from illness, and recently stayed with our children while we went away for our tenth anniversary weekend.   She loves and is loved by our children, is always up for a cup of tea and a chat, and has been a source of joy and encouragement to me as well.

 

In all of these things, the goal is to be living out the Kingdom NOW as a testimony to the world around us.  It is easy to get caught up in the notion of ‘changing’ or ‘transforming’ the world – doing something Big for the Kingdom, especially in missionary circles.   But more and more I am coming to realize that perhaps in order to do this we must first live out the truth.   This idea was confirmed by our conference speaker (sorry – you’ll be hearing a lot about him in the next couple of weeks I’m afraid) in the message he brought to us about Ezra.  He made the point that Ezra was qualified to be used by God in ministry because he had first been shaped by God’s Word.  The phrase “you haven’t learned it until you’ve lived it” keeps popping to my mind here too.

 

So, let’s live out His Truth.  Let’s choose practices that will form us into people who reflect His glory and image to the world – on Sunday and Every Day.

 

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DTK Chapter 5, Part 2: The Power of Music

One of the worship practices that Smith describes in this section is song.  I agree with him wholeheartedly  when he describes the power of music to leave an impression on and shape us: “A song gets absorbed into our imagination in a way that mere texts rarely do.  Indeed a song can come back to haunt us almost, catching us off guard or welling up within our memories because of situations or contexts that we find ourselves in, then perhaps spilling over into our mouths till we find ourselves humming a tune or quietly singing.  The song can evoke a time and a place, even the smells and tastes of a moment.”

 

Biola University Chorale Chicago Tour, Spring 2001

 

Have you ever had that experience that he describes?  I do all the time.  Just about anytime I hear a familiar song I immediately associate it with the place where I first heard it.  I have songs that I associate with the year 1996 (the “Macarena” and “Shine Jesus Shine” if you really want to know…), songs that take me back to the summer of 2002 when I had my first new car, songs that will forever be associated with the Ukarumpa Meeting House.   I still occasionally get songs I sang in junior high choir stuck in my head for no apparent reason at all.  Yes: music has a way of staying with us.

 

I think music has an incredible power to bond together those who make it as well.  I sang in choir and did musical theatre for many, many years and had a brief stint as a voice major my first year of college (little known secrets!) – even after changing my major, I continued to sing in our college choir.  99% of the high school and college friends I am still in contact with are people that I sang with.  There’s something about those experiences that bound us together in unique ways.

 

Some of the most powerful worship experiences I have had have been musically related too.  Singing beautiful Christmas music by candlelight in a dim chapel.  Hearing the harmonies of “And Can it Be” sung by a men’s ensemble in an echoing tunnel. Singing excerpts of The Messiah with a full orchestra.  The sung benediction of “God Be in My Head” at the end of every choir concert for 4 years and then again at my college graduation, and then again a few years later at my wedding.   More recently, joining together in a mish-mash of French and English to sing a hymn like “How Great Thou Art” or “To God Be the Glory” with our African brothers and sisters.  A little foretaste of heaven, all of these things.

 

Music does have a tremendous sticking power, and with that comes tremendous shaping power.  Which begs the question: what do we want to stick?   A lot of the music that has stuck with me is good.  I don’t mind it coming to mind at random moments.   But there’s also a fair amount of music in there that I rather wish wasn’t.   The bad sticks just as much as the good.  There is a reason that Paul admonishes us “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything is worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” (Philippians 4:8, NASB)  There is a reason why Edith Schaeffer, in her book The Hidden Art of Homemaking, tells us that “Christian homes should not be places where nothing but a bit of sentimental or romantic music is heard, but places where there is the greatest variety of good music…” (p. 40).  (As an aside, I love how Ambleside encourages this by the inclusion of Hymns, Folk Songs, and Classical Composer studies in the curriculum.)  This is why we pursue Truth, Beauty, and Goodness – these are the things that we want to stick because it is the Good, True, and Beautiful that will direct our hearts towards God and His Kingdom.

 

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DTK Chapter 4, Part 2: Worship, Doctrine, and Imagination

In the first part of this section, Smith continues in his disparagement of propositions, doctrines, and belief.  Worship practices are superior, he says, because they “catch hold of our imagination.”   They are “aesthetic and not didactic”.    He accuses the “doctrine police” of “lacking imagination” and “thinking truth only adheres in propositions and doctrines.”

 

[Jen cringes and very seriously considers dropping this and reading another book instead.  I have lots of others on my to-read list already, ya know?  Cindy warned us that Smith has a tendency to get kind of sneery.  I’ve just about had enough of it.]

 

As I stated last time, I believe that right belief goes hand-in-hand with right practices (for life or for worship), and the standard to determine both is the Word of God.   Our practices are certainly a good indication of what we really believe to be true, but cannot be the determining factor for Truth.  

 

Despite the fact that I don’t agree with Smith's approach, I think I do understand what he is reacting against.  I have seen far too often people and churches who may say that they ascribe to a certain set of beliefs, but don’t back that up with practices that mark us as set-apart from the rest of the world or worship that is meaningful and authentic.  Or Christian people who are ‘stuck in a rut’ and just going through the motions of Christian faith (I have been guilty of this myself at times).   Or that tendency to emphasize and debate various interpretations of the minutiae of doctrine, analyzing and tearing apart Scripture to prove a certain point of view.  These things have concerned me too.

 

And maybe I'm weird, but I would disagree that doctrine can't capture our imagination.  A couple of years ago, I realized that I wanted to more fully explore the theme of grace in my life and so I turned to a slow, meditative study of the book of Romans.  It's been a slow transformation, but I do very much believe that that study has made a difference in the way I live out my faith (my practices, in other words).   And I find that the language in the Heidelberg Catechism is just beautiful, almost like poetry in parts.  If the book of Romans and a catechism aren't "doctrinal", I don't know what is?!

 

Smith seems to have a bit of a tendency to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’.    His approach seems to be ‘cognitive assent to a set of beliefs isn’t enough to change us, so let’s not use didactic sermons as our starting place, let’s focus on our practices instead’, and thereby apparently dismissing the power of the Word preached.   I wonder if rather than throwing out belief, doctrines, and God’s Word as the centerpiece of our worship from which our other practices flow, perhaps we should reconsider the way that we interact with God’s Word.   Perhaps instead of glossing over doctrine or using it as a tool for debate, we need to approach God’s Word as a thing of wonder, as something that really does have the power to change us.  I would contend that the Word – our source for belief, doctrine, theology – also has the power to “catch hold of our imaginations”.  This is actually something that I’ve been thinking about a lot in recent months – I wrote about this before here, and this fairly recent article from Circe addresses the same thing.  Dr Perrin seemed to be heading in this direction in his answers to the questions that Smith raised in the first chapters of the book.  Carolyn Weber describes the Bible as "the most compelling piece of creative non-fiction" she has ever read.  It came up again in the comments to last week’s Wednesday with Words post, and in a conversation with my husband on how we could make our family devotional time more living and robust.   This idea is popping up in a lot of different places, so I think maybe I’m not crazy. J

 

To his credit, towards the end of this chapter, Smith finally does acknowledge the role of the Spirit in all of this talk about belief, worship, and formation:

            “..the Spirit meets, nourishes, transforms, and empowers us just through and in such material practices.”

 

            “The point of worship is not formation, rather, formation is an overflow effect of our encounters with the Redeemer in praise and prayer, adoration and communion.”

 

To both of these statements, I would also add that we encounter Him through His Word.   We mustn’t leave that out of the equation.

 

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