The title of this article is purposeful; it represents the content—simply some thoughts I have been reflecting on about the church. My thinking is not intended to be right or wrong, biblically exegeted, or an indication of personal preferences. Rather, it is simply some thoughts I have been pondering.
Over the past several years, there have been many conversations and debates, ideas floated, and books written about why people are “leaving the church.” These discussions lead me to think more deeply about how “we” view the who, what, and why of the church. I will go out on a limb and say the “we” represents many of us reading this article.
Some years ago, Mark Buchanan wrote a book titled The Rest of God, writing briefly about two words—liturgy and orgy—that I think may reflect some foundational ways we think about the church.
Buchanan writes:
In the days of the early church, orgy described a public event that produced a private, usually ecstatic, experience. It was the word pagans used for their worship, regardless of how many people were involved—and the more, the better—the emphasis was always squarely on the emotional experience of the individual. It was all about me.
Liturgy is done by me—I am invited, perhaps required, to play a role—but it is not about me. It’s about us. It is about the Other. Its purpose is to benefit the entire community—to provide protection or access to all.
But Buchanan goes on to say:
Liturgy is not law. This is important. Liturgy is a kind of choreography, a choreography for our dance with the things unseen, things ancient and things anticipated, things above and things below. Some things move through this choreography with light-footed elegance, others with flat-footed clumsiness. You can add your own steps and moves, ignore others, or sit it out entirely. No one will arrest you. But don’t you want to dance? Don’t you want to push beyond mere idea and theory into the realm of the actual…? My dance will be similar and different from yours. It will echo yours, but with its own style, and rhythm, and pace.
I also recently read a little book published by the Mennonite Publishing House in 1934—Instructions to Beginners in the Christian Life. It was developed by a team of writers because “for some time past, brethren in different quarters of the [Mennonite] Church felt that there was need of more uniformity, in subject matter used and methods followed, in the instruction of applicants for church membership.” As I read through what the writers thought important for every Mennonite to do and know, it struck me that it all sounded very familiar. I had heard some of the same words both when I went through instruction class in the late 1970s, and when I was baptized. Oddly enough, it wasn’t all a good familiar.
As I think back over my lifetime in the church, I wonder if, at some point, our liturgy became law. Liturgy that became law didn’t offer us a choreographed invitation to live and dance, but rather, felt heavy, and stifled the very life it was intended to procreate. So, we began to seek life and its fullest expression in orgy…but the self-focus and emotional high in congregational life can only last so long, as it becomes too hard to get along when we are self-focused. So why bother? What’s the purpose?
I have been thinking about liturgy, liturgy that becomes law, orgy, and the church. I have been reflecting on how those dynamics affect our existing churches. Are they preventing new churches from being born and disciple-making churches from reaching each neighborhood? I invite you to think about the church.
