Prayer: Not As The Hypocrites…

I’ve been enjoying Christopher Hall’s study of the early church’s worship.  Though I don’t agree with every point, and though I think sometimes Hall’s comments seem to get in the way of his explanations, this book is an insightful glimpse into the early Christian church and her worship of the triune God.  Here’s one section worth noting.

“The church fathers took Jesus’ instructions to retire to one’s room to pray alone very seriously (Mt 6:5-15).  They seem reluctant to have individuals pray publicly, at least in terms of public, spontaneous prayer, because of the danger of using prayer as a method of self-promotion.  The fathers viewed with wariness exaggerated posturing, speaking loudly in prayer as though we needed to catch God’s notice, and any attempt to draw attention to oneself rather than God in prayer.”

“Tertullian, I think with a hint of humor, advises us to use a ‘subdued’ voice in prayer, rather than a loud one.  ‘For, if we are to be heard for our noise, what large windpipes we would need!  But God is the hearer – not of the voice – but of the heart.’  ‘It is characteristic of the shameless man to be noisy with his cries’ (Cyprian).

[Cyprian:] “‘He does not need to be clamorously reminded, for he sees peoples’ thoughts…Hannah prayed to God, not with clamorous petition, but silently and modestly – within the very recesses of her heart.  She spoke with hidden prayer, but with open faith.  She spoke with her heart, not her voice.’”

“We don’t need to shout to wake a sleepy deity.  God is always listening and watching.  To be truthful, it is we who possess the hardened eardrums and have blinders on our eyes.  ‘Be constant in both prayer and reading,’ Cyprian exhorts, ‘First, speak with God; then let God speak with you.  Let him instruct you in his teachings, let him direct you.’”

“The fathers wisely understood that God is the audience of our prayers, not our family, the members of our small group, the larger congregation or TV spectators.  This is not to say that the fathers forbade public prayer – Tertullian acknowledges that Paul and Silas sang in prison, with wonderful results (Acts 16:25-34).  It is to say that the fathers understood that pride often undetectably infects even the most holy actions.  Human beings adore center stage and the spotlight.  We can deceive ourselves too easily, imagining that we are talking to God when we are only talking to ourselves, sometimes about ourselves” (p. 87-8).

Christopher A. Hall, Worshiping with The Church Fathers (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009).

shane lems

Sunday and the Small Church

NOTE: This is a slightly edited repost from May 26, 2009.

Here’s some great stuff from Preaching and Worship in the Small Church by Willimon and Wilson (Nashville: Abigdon, 1980).  In this section (chapter three), Willimon and Wilson write about the primary activity of the small church: Sunday worship.

The authors first lament the fact that many things have taken the focus off Lord’s Day worship in American churches.  Sunday school, Wednesday night prayer services, youth groups, ladies’ groups, mens’ groups, singles’ groups, college groups, endless committee meetings, social-action programs, and so forth threaten the “centrality of Sunday” (p. 39).  “Sunday worship became the victim of the ‘full-program church’ mentality.” 

In the past, a shorthand definition of a Christian was: “He goes to church on Sunday.”  Now that person is “quickly informed that that was only a small part of the Christian life.  ‘What you do outside the church is more important than what you do inside the church,’ was how the slogan went.”  All the other programs and events and meetings and groups “conspired to convince people that worship was only one small part of the full program.”

“Such thinking had an undeniable appeal to the pragmatic, utilitarian, work-oriented society, such as we have in the United States.  Time spent in worship tends to be thought of as idle time – unused time.  We are a nation of doers and achievers.  How can ‘acts’ of worship compete in importance alongside activities such as Christian education, counseling, youth programs, board meetings, Bible study groups, and charitable work?  The ‘active’ church with its doors always open, meetings in progress every night of the week, newsletters recruiting participants for a host of activities, insuring that every person is kept busy throughout the week (provided that person truly wishes to be an ‘active’ church member) has become the paradigm for any church that aspires to greatness” (p. 40).  “Even the worship services of those [busy] churches frequently have a breathless, hurried, distracted quality” (p. 42).

The authors continue the discussion by explaining the fact that doesn’t seem obvious: small churches don’t (can’t!) usually have those programs, events, committees, and so forth, but that is good news.  Because they lack these programs, the authors argue, “small churches celebrate Sunday in a fashion that puts many of their larger sister churches to shame” (p. 41). 

“Congregational worship is a reliable barometer of the life of the small church.  Here the church family will celebrate its victories, lament its defeats, act out its deepest needs.  The small church will often express an intense sense of ownership of its Sunday worship practices.”  Often, Willimon and Wilson note, many small church parishioners will violently react to radical change in Sunday service.   They say well that this should be viewed as a positive thing: it shows that the saints there value the Divine service above other church programs and activities.

This is a great word for those of us who are members of smaller churches (quite a few of us I’m guessing).  It is tempting to emulate the large church down the street and literally “get busy” with all sorts of programs.  The problem with this is, as the above notes well reflect, that the busyness displaces the Divine service on Sunday.  The church gets spread out so thinly that it is like a beehive with the saints all buzzing past each other.  The only time they actually stop doing something is during the pastor’s prayer and brief sermon on Sunday morning, around 30 minutes total.  The rest of the service is filled with activity, swirled in with the activity during the week.  The 30 minutes of “rest” or quietness becomes a footnote in the life of the saint: every second of the remainder of the week has a full calendar screaming: “Get to work!”

I’ve benefited from Lord’s Day worship in a small church.  Sunday is different.  We don’t have programs and activities.  We stop.  We think.  We sing.  We pray.  We hear Scripture.  We rest.  We sit still and be quiet, learning how to receive from God as listeners.  We are fed by Jesus.  We teach our kids to quit fussing around (which we ourselves ironically do all week!); we practice the cycle of God’s time.  This goes against the grain of our nature and culture, but as Willimon and Wilson say, this is a great way for a small church to recover their own unique sense of mission and restore their biblical self-image.  When we in small churches “boldly claim the fundamental significance of Sunday for [our] congregational life,” we will be a great light of “rest” to the darkness of the busy world around us.  And above that, we’ll be reminded that we’re pilgrims who depend on God’s word to live each day of our lives.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

We Worship One God in Trinity

  One of the beauties of Reformed liturgy is that it reminds Christians week after week that we worship the Triune God.  In fact, as the pastor of a small Reformed church in rural Washington State, I begin many services with these words: “We are gathered here in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  In case you were wondering, we (confessional Reformed pastors) don’t say things like that in the liturgy just to be traditional, vintage, or old school.  We say those words to remind everyone that we are part of the historic Christian, Apostolic church and we gather to worship one God in three persons, blessed Trinity.  Jaroslav Pelikan talks about the Trinity and Christian worship in volume one of his excellent series.  Here’s an excerpt.

“…This christology was, the Alexandrians argued, conformable also to the liturgical practice of the church, and they insisted that the christology of their opponents was not.  The admonition of Second Clement to think of Jesus as of God also implied that Jesus Christ was deserving of that worship which was properly paid to God alone.  In the controversy with Arianism, Nicene orthodoxy had made much of the inconsistency between the Arians’ practice of worshiping Jesus Christ and their refusal to acknowledge that he was God in the fullest and most unambiguous sense of the word; the same argument had been used, on the basis of the doxologies, in support of the deity of the Holy Spirit.”

“At this point more than at any other, the application to the christological controversy of an argument invented during the trinitarian controversy proved to be effective.  For the defenders of Nicea refused to distinguish between the worship appropriate to the Father and that appropriate to the Son.  The Detailed Confession of Apollinaris, which summarized Nicene orthodoxy without getting into the speculations about the human soul of Christ for which the author was later condemned, was speaking for the main body of the tradition when it attacked an interpretation of the Trinity that would lead to ‘three dissimilar and diverse systems of worship, [contrary to the institution of] a single legal way of religious observance.’”

“There was, he wrote elsewhere, ‘nothing that is to be worshiped and nothing that saves outside the divine Trinity.’  The Christian worship of God was properly addressed to the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, without any distinction at all as to degree or kind.  Such was the orthodox interpretation of the Nicene decree and the clear outcome of the post-Nicene development, as eventually stated in the formula that the Holy Spirit was ‘the one who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified’” (p. 238-239).

Or, as the Athanasian Creed says so well, “And the catholic [universal] faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.”  This isn’t theological nitpicking; it has everything to do with our God who has saved us from sin, death, and hell.  The Father chose us in Christ the Son who died on the cross for us, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and now gives us his Holy Spirit to sanctify us in his truth and lead us to glory.  “Glory be to the Father! And to the Son and to the Holy Ghost…!”

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Kuyper: Worship Songs as an Artistic Exhibition?

It’s been awhile since Andrew or I pointed our readers to Abraham Kuyper, so I thought it would be good to do so once again.  The following quotes are found in chapter seven (“Congregational Song”) of Our Worship.  I’ve edited it for the purpose of this blog.

“We defend the use of hymns, but we should remember the following: 1) The spiritual depth of the psalms exceeds by far anything that afterward was composed as a church hymn and was sometimes claimed to be even more spiritual.  2) Whenever hymns came into the churches, they always seemed, first, to push back the psalms, and then to supplant them.  3) The psalms have always echoed the enduring, eternal keynote of the pious heart, while hymns usually had a temporary quality and were marked by what was popular at the moment.  4) In the struggle between hymn and psalm, all nominal members favored the hymns over the psalms while the truly pious members were much more inclined to use the psalms rather than hymns [Of course, we do not mean to say that everyone who favored hymns could no longer be called pious.  After all, who would want to exclude Luther?  Yet, it seems to us that the…points mentioned above do express what experience has shown us to be true.]”

“…During the Middle Ages abuse [of hymn singing] had become very real.  Choirs replaced congregational singing.  Men and women, boys and girls with the most beautiful voices were enticed to join these choirs, even though their moral reputation was often far from impeccable.  Also, the songs they sang often led much to be desired.  The sound, the tone of voice, and the artistic element became most important, and the content of the song of secondary importance.  Singing became an artistic exhibition and ceased to be an expression of thanksgiving and adoration of god by the believers.”

“…The [hymnal] ‘Evangelishe Gezangen’ (evangelical hymns) of 1807 …was written in a time of little poetic competence and of slackened religious interest.  When you compare the poetic and religious quality of that hymnal with our ‘Psalter,’ the former looks like child’s play.  Gilded tin and real gold have nothing in common.”

If I can interject here, I’d say that there is far too much ‘gilded tin’ in Christian worship today (though ‘gilded tin’ is probably too charitable a term for some P&W songs).  The best way to get rid of ‘gilded tin’ is to sing more Psalms.  On that note (pun intended), read the aforementioned chapter of this book: Our Worship by Abraham Kuyper.

shane lems

Applications & Implications of the RPW

Based on the 2nd commandment and other biblical texts and stories, historic Reformed and Presbyterian churches have taught and practiced the Regulative Principle of Worship: we are to worship God in no other way than he has commanded in his word (HC Q/A 96, WLC Q/A 109).  There are several different applications and implications of the RPW.  Here are a few based on Exodus 32 and some other verses.

1) True worship is not a democratic endeavor.  What is right and proper in Christian worship is not based on what a majority of people think is right and proper.  Many Israelites approved of the golden calf but it was still blatantly disobedient and offensive to Yahweh.

2) True worship does not cater to the consumer.  What people want or are looking for should not determine how Christians’ worship God.  True Christian worship isn’t based on what attracts people – such as entertainment, celebrity, comfort, and what is the most fun or relevant.  Israel no doubt enjoyed the rowdy party around the golden calf, but Yahweh still detested the calf and Israel’s worship.

3) True worship is not grounded on emotions and feelings.  Just because a person feels like a certain style of worship is good doesn’t make it so.  Feelings, emotions, and experiences can be false or sinful and should not drive our worship principles.  The Israelites felt the need to have the golden calf since Moses was taking so long, but it was still a breach of God’s command and thus a terrible sin that was punished severely.

4) True worship is not a matter of preference.  The standard for true worship is not what I like, what you prefer, what the youth want, or what unbelievers will be attracted to.  Aaron’s preference was to throw a wild party for Yahweh around the calf, but Moses still told Aaron that he had sinned against Yahweh.

5) True worship is (obviously!) a matter of truth.  Christians must worship the triune God in Spirit and truth – God’s word is truth (Jn. 4:23 & 17:17).  In other words, worship must be clearly biblical: in worship we must sing the truth, pray the truth, preach the truth, and listen to the truth.  If something is not commanded in Scripture, it cannot be part of corporate worship.  Reformed churches are reformed – and always reforming – according to the word of truth.  This also has to do with one of the solas: Sola Scriptura.  The word is our ultimate authority.  In worship, we should want to do what God wants us to do: “thy will be done” even applies to worship.

6) True worship forbids formality.  A person can worship the true God using true words, but the heart might still be far from the Lord (Is. 29:13).  Just going through the motions of corporate worship is not true worship.  So we must repent of formality, hate it, fight it with a renewed appreciation for the gospel of sovereign grace, pray that our hearts would be “in” worship, and prepare our hearts for corporate worship.

There are more implications and applications of the RPW (I encourage you to think of some).  These are some evident ones based on the following resources I’ve read over the years: Give Praise to God, A Better Way, With Reverence and Awe, Dining with the Devil, and The Necessity of Reforming the Church, among others.

shane lems