Pat Roach, Serving the Culture Sunday AND Monday

The world is in disrepair. And just as often as not, we Christians are also in a state of disrepair. Sometimes we are out of sorts because of our best attempts at “reaching the culture” and being “relevant” to our surrounding culture. It is a good and right desire on our part to serve the culture, i.e. to serve the people who constitute our social order in its various expressions. But too often we think that reaching the world is simply catching up to the world, shamelessly imitating different expressions of culture, and trying to prove our relevance. Instead, the gospel of Jesus Christ enjoins us to something far more profound. We need to offer the world something it doesn’t have, something that is utterly renewing when actually embodied.

So how will we best serve culture as Christians? It is worth noting that the

Greek word from which we get our word “liturgy” (leitourgia) is best translated as “service.” While understanding I am making a bit of an exegetical jump, let me nonetheless suggest that the liturgy that shapes our gathered worship on Sunday mornings is the place to start. The purpose of gathered worship is for us to first offer to God the service of praise and devotion. This we do in the singing of songs, reading of Scripture, confessing the faith, hearing of the Word, and the receiving of the sacraments.

But amazingly, when we gather together to worship, God not only receives our worship but also shapes our hearts through the different things we do in worship. In gathered worship, God builds Christian character into us, so that we might be fit servants in the world. We gain humility by the confession of our sins, faith by the hearing of God’s Word, joy in then praising of God in song, and spiritual strength by receiving the Lord’s Supper.

Bridges

What does that mean for you Monday morning, then? Plenty. You see, how the Church – how Christians - can best serve our culture is by offering to it a counter-culture. A counter-culture shaped by the very practices of the gospel, as we are changed by the gospel through the different elements of gathered worship. It is service embodied by a humility that takes the time to listen to others, treating them as persons made after the divine image. It is service that reflects a deep joy in life, in the midst of all kinds of circumstances. It is a service marked by honesty that frees you to confess your sins to others. It is a service that manifests itself through praying for and spending time with the people in your area of influence, be they Christians or not. Author Walker Percy, in a speech on this exact topic, sums up nicely what the task of the Church in the world is:

“By remaining faithful to its original commission, by serving its people with love, especially the poor, the lonely, and the dispossessed, and by not surrendering its doctrinal steadfastness, sometimes the very contradiction of culture by which it serves as a sign, the Church serves culture best.”

© Pat Roach, 2005

Comments

[scott cunningham]

Alexander Schmemann has a book called For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy that talks about the link between the practices of the church and the Christian's desire to affect change in the world. I cannot remember much about it , unfortunately, though I did write a review of it on amazon, but I seem to remember thinking it sounded a lot like what you're saying here. (How's that for a lame attempt at responding to your excellent post).

[Pat Roach]

You got me! I'm just a compromised Calvinist trying to channel the Orthodox Schmemann and Catholic/Anabaptist/Methodist Hauerwas.

[scott cunningham]

I like it. Keep it up, then.

[Chris Willoughby]

Pat,

Great post. I agree that worship forms us. Public worship actually "trains" us how to live the rest of our lives.

[Wayne]

W00t! W00t! May your tribe increase!

I agree that we need to offer the world something it doesn't have, but I don't think a different lifestyle is the best thing we have to offer. The world needs a counter-Power, not a counter-culture. Cultures and lifestyles are arbitrary, set up by man and his rules, and a lifestyle is just another way of living.
The world has already tried countless 12 step programs to happiness/fulfillment/ peace/etc, and it's in the same state as before. Programs haven't fixed anything.
The world doesn't need another way to live; it needs another REASON to live.
I think the best thing we can do for the world is show them our own reason for living. Often that's so hard to do, cause it doesn't involve us proactively doing anything other than just going about our business, living out our lives, totally focused on Him. I think that's when the world gets the best look at the real thing, at that Other Power, and realizes hey, this thing could actually be real.

I'm not quite sure what you are disagreeing with me about. If you like the language of Power better, then fine. The point of the article is not to articulate a "program" as much as to say that gathered worship shapes us to be a people who bring kingdom life to bear in this "present evil age" in all areas of life as we live it. The Holy Spirit is the "counter-Power" who empowers God's people to do and be what cannot be found anywhere else. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control are Spiritual fruit that are only embodied by Christians. They get practiced in the everydayness of life. As they are lived out they obviously point others back to their source of origin, Jesus. God's power is no abstraction, but is concretized to real people in real places through tangible deeds rooted in Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. Gathered worship is one of God's vehicles for graciously building all of that into us. God does not untether Himself from reality - either our culture or lifestyles -but instead brings His gospel to bear on all of it because it is all His in the first place.

[GL]

Well said, Pat.