Missional Worship, 4

Haven't been here for awhile. Other things got in the way. But one more post in this line of thought.

A missional impulse for worship would make clearer the connections between God, church, and world. As we've seen in worship practices like the Lord's Supper, worship enacts God's care for the world through hospitality. This rehearsal, this anticipatory dinner, is also the way Christians learn their vocation in the world. The same hospitality they receive in worship, they extend to their neighbors.

So, there is not a wide gulf between what happens in worship on Sunday and the kind of life we live on Monday. To the contrary, there is a seamlessness. The way we are in worship is precisely the life to be lived among others.

This includes the way we speak in worship. We praise God not only because praise is due him, but also to learn praiseworthy speech. We bless to learn to bless. You get the idea.

Christianity is a Word religion. God creates through his word. Jesus is a Word incarnate. The Holy Spirit provides for us the words we use with others. God creates, sustains, and transforms his world through speech. What Christians bring the world is a gospel--a speech-act, that brings new worlds into view.

It is striking to me how often speech ethics are the focus of the biblical writers. The psalmist tells us that the throats of those who oppose God are "open graves," while the righteous have the fruit of praise continuously on their lips. Ethical sections in New Testament letters are peppered with admonitions about speech. We are to put away boasting, slander, gossip, unwholesome talk, etc, and instead to speak the truth to one another in love.

I am struck in 2 Corinthians how often Paul's self-identification with the death and resurrection of Jesus is coupled with a statement about his speech. Because he has experienced the power of death and resurrection, he speaks differently. "We have behaved in the world," he writes, "with frankness and godly sincerity." Or, "we are not peddler's of God's word..., but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity." Again, "We have renounced the shameful things one hides; we refure to practice cunning or to falsify God's word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God." These statements could be multiplied. The point is, Paul's encounter with the God who raised Jesus from the dead has changed the way he speaks to others.

We learn this way of speaking in worship, or at least should. This is one thing I like about highly liturgical traditions. We speak to one another in worship. The words of Scripture are not simply the set-up for the sermon. They become the church's dialogue. We say them to one another and we respond in certain ways when we hear them spoken to us. We have blessings spoken over us and we respond in kind. We are learning to listen to one another, and speak in ways that offer life.

It is true that the significance of this is often lost on parishioners. I think this is due in part to the fact that we have thought of worship as space and time separated from the world. The world is not present to us in worship in any kind of constructive way. We are often told in worship to leave the world and its cares behind so that we can focus on God, as if God only shows up in the world when we gather to worship, as if God is uninvolved in the cares of this world.

Missional thinking would recover the public horizon of Christian worship, and in turn heighten our awareness of how the various things we do in worship form us for vocation in the world.

The Failure of Discourse

I can hardly look at Facebook today. The passage of the health care bill has brought out the worst in us, both those in favor and those opposed. We are awash in words--bitter, angry, sarcastic words. We are only over/against the other. And because of this, we have the lost capacity to hear, to listen, to understand, and with this we have lost the capacity for discourse.

I am not naive about this. In a two-party system, the pressures on language are almost unavoidably negative. Both parties are locked in a language game which is aimed at getting things done. Jurgen Habermas calls this instrumental reasoning. It's a form of reason different than one designed to understand one another. For Habermas, instrumental reason too easily is objectifying, propagandist, and manipulative.

I'm not saying that people in politics are bad people. They aren't. And I'll give all of them a pass at the level of motives (this is naive, I know, but is part of what is required of me as one who follows a crucified God). But they are thrown into a system that forces them to play by a certain set of rules to get things done. They are beholden to principalities and powers that, for both good and bad, are a part of a representative democracy. (Twain's quip that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others comes to mind here. It was Twain, wasn't it?).

Habermas' hope for discourse lies in what he calls communicative reason--reason designed for understanding one another, not getting things done. And the place he hopes this will occur is in civil society--the public spaces in our society not governed primarily by the state or the economy.

One of my professors, Gary Simpson, sees the church as a public companion in the sphere of civil society. It is a place for the church to be public and moral without lapsing into the snares of partisanship. And part of its role in civil society is to keep the capacity for discourse alive through a posture of openness to the other--a mark of the Trinitarian life of God. I like this understanding of the church and think it corresponds to biblical understandings.

It is striking to me how often Scripture associates righteousness with speech ethics. Evildoers' throats are open graves, according to the Psalms. The righteous, in contrast, have the fruit of praise continually on their lips. And this goes beyond, for me, singing praise songs. This is about refusal of gossip, slander, slurs. Praiseworthy speech is for building up, not tearing down. One of the capacities Christians ought to be able to offer to the world is the ability to keep discourse alive, to stay in conversation without impugning motives or resorting to ad hominem attacks. To disagree without demonizing through sarcasm, sloganeering, etc.

(As an aside, read 2 Cor and notice how often Paul's experience of the death and resurrection is subsequently embodied in the way he speaks--openness, frankness, godly sincerity, not peddler's of God's word, etc).

I am convinced that without this capacity, we lack the ability to discern what it is that God might be up to in the world, and we certainly lose the capacity to say anything meaningful that might pass as "good news." Speech designed to accomplish things forecloses on other possibilities. Discourse designed to understand remains open as long as possible. And gospel as speech category is an open category, designed to open the world to the continuing voice of God. Speech ethics are crucial for this kind of openness.

Facebook is a place within civil society. I am not an idealist like Habermas. I don't think there's a societal "place" where we can retreat from the effects of state or economy, where our speech can be totally free from instrumental concerns. This week, Facebook suggests that instrumental reason trumps communicative even in forums like this, and that Christians are as implicated by this as anyone.

But I hope for more. I do think its possible for the goal of speech in forums like these to be understanding and not convincing. My sense is that people move most when they feel understood, not because they find a particular argument compelling, and certainly not because they've been subjected to fear, sarcasm, gloating, etc.

Ministry Maxim, 2

My first month in a fulltime ministry position, a more seasoned minister gave me a maxim that I have tried to follow to this day.

Maxim #2. You can't outpuke a buzzard.

I worked at the time for the "liberal" church in town, and had volunteered our congregation to host an area wide summer youth gathering. The watchdog churches in the area decided that we weren't really a safe place for their teens and so began a public campaign to boycott our time to host. Seriously. We spent an entire morning on the phone with the attack dog at one of these congregations trying to convince him that we were ok. Toward the end of the conversation, a more experienced minister dropped by to see how we were holding up and insisted that we get off the phone with this guy. "My daddy taught me," he said, "that you can't outpuke a buzzard." My dad taught me other colorful phrases, like "that's as slick as eel snot," but this buzzard saying has far more cache in ministry.

There are some conversations in ministry that aren't worth having. In fact, you know you're having one when it doesn't qualify as a conversation. I had a member who for several weeks would meet me Monday mornings as I came into the office to express his concerns about the church, a passive way of saying he had concerns about me. I wasn't preaching enough about heaven, which was code for I wasn't preaching enough about hell. He was afraid we were getting morally soft.

After a few weeks of explaining both my preaching commitments and my theology, it became apparent that this was not really a conversation. I was puking with a buzzard. One morning I asked him if he found these conversations satisfying. I told him I didn't and wasn't really interested in having this conversation anymore and wondered if this was really the kind of relationship he wanted to cultivate with me. He looked stunned, as if I had broken some kind of ministerial obligation to sit and listen to all criticism ad infinitum. We stopped having that conversation, and over time he took me up on my offer to have a different kind of relationship.

One of the hardest things about ministry is the people pleasing side of it. Many of us get into ministry because we're pleasers to begin with, and in a consumer driven society church members pretty much think its our primary job to please them. It's exhausting. It's a prolonged effort at customer relations and it really does not serve the purposes of the gospel. And ultimately the church will break your spirit if you're in it to please, or what amounts to the same thing, to win their approval. And they probably should.

With chronic complainers (aka, puking buzzards), I learned to redirect the conversation. "You know, Fred (the name is changed to protect the guilty), I've noticed that this isn't the first thing you've complained about around here. I'm coming to the conclusion that keeping you happy isn't a reasonable goal. I can't think that this is much fun for you. I know its not pleasant for me. I'm interested in having a different kind of relationship with you."

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, you should know that this approach is not always received positively. I've been cursed at in church at the end of one of these. But it does keep them from coming back to complain about something else. And in some cases, it has been a turning point in my relationship with them, and them with the church. And trying to please a chronic complainer has never turned them into a happy camper in my experience.

Three caveats here. First, this is not an excuse not to listen, and especially not to listen to criticism. We are always obligated to try to understand the other, which requires genuine, empathetic listening. But there comes a time when these matters are no longer occasions for listening, when what is occuring is no longer a conversation. Buzzard puking.

Second, this has to be an expression of genuine concern for the other. The phrase, "I'm wondering if we can try a different kind of relationship" has to be a genuine offer. And its going to be up to you to initiate that.

Third, this works best if everyone in leadership is on the same page. There are elders and other leaders who know that one source of power (a pretty weak source, ultimately) is to be the guy the complainers go to. I'm convinced that a congregation cannot discern the will of God if the congregational ecosystem doesn't sustain dialogue. Criticism has to be allowed, even encouraged, and leaders need to know some of that will come their way. But a culture that honors complaining is another matter, and leaders need a common approach to this dialogue killer.

Finally, anger and defensiveness have to be avoided at all costs. I'm usually pretty good at controlling my anger. I'm horrible at avoiding defensiveness. I'm the buzzard. It's no longer a conversation. Apologize and reschedule.

It is striking to me how many of the ethical admonitions in Scripture have to do with how we speak to each other. Sometimes this includes knowing when not to speak to each other.