Evangelical Worship

My church has started a new congregation, Trinity Church, in Huntington on Long Island's north shore. What distinguishes it from many Orthodox Presbyterian Churches is the slightly more formal, more responsive liturgy that we employ. In Reformed circles, it goes by the name "covenant renewal worship." Today, in Sunday school, Pastor Ben Miller began teaching us why we are worshipping God this way, how it is biblical, how it is covenantal in particular, and how it is anything but novel.

First, he described what Christian worship is NOT. Evangelicals and specifically reformed people (at their worst) tend to see worship as essentially or primarily one of these four Es, though worship is in part all of these things.

Evangelism - Worship is not directed chiefly to the unbeliever in the pew. The worship should testify to such people, and we pray that the Lord would use the worship to impart grace to such people and bring them to conversion. But that is not the focus of the service.

Education - Some treat the worship service as though it is pre-game plus a sermon. If you come in late, but have not missed the sermon, then you haven't missed anything important. In this view, the sermon is not just central; it is all there really is or all there needs to be. Worse, it is an interesting and informative lecture. This is a terrible distortion.

Experience - This is the charismatic error. They distinguish between "preaching" and "praise and worship." Notice that receiving the ministry of the word is not worship. People who see worship as primarily an experience are often looking for a sort of ecstasy, a substantial anticipation of the beatific vision. And if they don't feel something strongly, they don't think (feel?) they have truly worshipped. This is an over-realized eschatology.

Exaltation - This is an overreaction to the "experience" error. People who hold this view claim that you should no consideration to what you "get out of" worship. It is all for God who should be your exclusive focus. But this makes light of worship as a means of grace to the worshipper. We glorify God by receiving what only God can give. We glorify God by enjoying him now and forever.

In covenant renewal worship, God's people re-enact the story of God's covenant. This is the pattern of the worship in the temple and it is the pattern of redemptive history. It has five stages.

1. God calls - The call to worship. Cf. God called Abraham, calls believers at baptism or at conversion.

2. God cleanses - Confession of sin & assurance of pardon. Cf. passover, the Red Sea, the cross, baptism.

3. God consecrates - The ministry of the Word. Cf. God speaking to Israel at Sinai, giving the covenant.

4. God communes - The Lord's Supper. Cf. the communion meal on Sinai.

5. God commissions - The benediction, the blessing for action. Cf. the Aaronic blessing.

This brought to mind what my co-author in Left, Right and Christ, Lisa Sharon Harper, said this week in summarizing what an Evangelical is. She drew upon David Bebbington's well known four marks of Evangelicalism from his book Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, viz. biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism, known as Bebbington's quadrilateral.

I noticed that the four marks correspond with four of these five features of covenant renewal worship.

In the call, you can see the Evangelical emphasis on the need for conversion, God's call to turn away from sin back to him. A covenantal view of God excludes conversionism, however, as it recognizes God's initiative in salvation, conversion as an act of God's free grace, and even the call of the covenant child in his or her baptism. Conversionism, as opposed to the necessity for conversion or spiritual rebirth, is essentially Baptist. It rejects the covenantal status of the children of believers and thus the special relationship they have with God simply by virtue of their place within his gracious covenant.

In the cleansing, you can see the Evangelical crucicentrism. Evangelical Christians are cross-centred, and there is no worship of God in spirit and in truth without the cross. It is the crux of everything Christian. Although in Evangelical worship, the cleansing is generally understood to take place at the Lord's Supper. Here we have introspection, silent confession of sin, and contemplation of the cost that Christ endured for our sins. This is fine, but it generally makes for something more akin to a funeral than a wedding feast and divine fellowship. Also, Evangelicals generally celebrate the Lord's Supper infrequently, at best monthly and perhaps even quarterly. So as far as cleansing in the weekly worship is concerned, it is generally not reaffirmed but taken for granted.

In the consecration, you can see the Evangelical confidence in the Bible. They are not only cross-centred but Bible bound. It is only through the faithful testimony of the Scriptures that we know the good news of the cross. Sadly, in all too many churches that consider themselves Evangelical, the Scriptures are not formally read. If they are, people are served up a verse or two. And then they can close there Bibles because the sermon will make no further reference to Word. Instead the congregation is treated to stories, psychology, cultural references, and whatever else passes as the pastor's wisdom. Many of my students at The King's College, a broadly though seriously Evangelical college, clearly do not know their Bible content.

The final mark in Bebbington quadrilateral is activism, which corresponds to God's commissioning. The difference, of course, is that godly activity is not activism, which by virtue of the "ism" implies a kind of ideology, a worldly hope through human action, a political gospel or what one might even call a "social gospel." Faith without works is dead, i.e, no living and saving faith at all. But while the living will love, it is not by the works of love that we will live, i.e., either justify ourselves or realize the hope of the God's kingdom. Activism seems to me just a poorly chosen word. Evangelicals have always been active in good works--the Genevan deacons, nineteenth century ministries to the industrial poor, Spurgeon's orphanages, Prison Fellowship, etc. But "activism" connotes the social gospel and, more recently, shrill political carping for evermore pervasive government intervention.

What is missing from Bebbington's quadrilateral is the fourth stage of covenant renewal worship: communion. This is no surprise because with such disagreement across the Evangelical spectrum from high to low church there is little agreement on the nature and practice of the sacraments. So they are de-emphasized. If they are inessential to Evangelical unity, they must be simply unimportant. Perhaps this is also why church government, and one of its chief pastoral functions, church discipline, are also widely neglected. Communing is what God's people do with their God. It is their great privilege in Christ who is Immanuel, God with us. God's great covenant promise is, "I will be your God and you will be my people." In the end, on the other side of Christ's second coming, we are told, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men." This side of that day, it is not charismatic ecstasy.

The rediscovery and repositioning of the Lord's Supper, holy communion, as a means of grace and a covenantal, mountaintop meeting place is what I expect will be one of the great benefits of covenant renewal worship.