Liturgy and Ecclesiastical Triage

What should someone prioritize when they search for a church? The answer to this question involves what we might call “ecclesiastical triage.” Considerations fall along the lines of a list of priorities. For example, we might put “doctrinal orthodoxy” at the very top of the list. Any church that is wishy washy on key Christian doctrines (i.e., the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection, etc.) is not deserving of the name and should not be attended for any reason (Protestants can also safely put the five solas at the top of their list). If these kinds of considerations sit at the very top of the list of priorities, we might put something like “views of the millennium in Revelation 20:1-10,” or “views of the age of the earth” on the bottom. How one answers such questions are not unimportant, but they probably shouldn’t figure prominently in one’s calculus on whether to join a church.

Between these two extremes, there are many considerations that, depending on circumstances and church availability, range widely in importance. Philosophy of ministry, Calvinism versus Arminianism, views on the spiritual gifts, adherence to the liturgical calendar, high church versus low church liturgy, views on baptism, views on the Lord’s Supper, views on divorce and remarriage, views on cultural and political engagement, denominational association versus independence, and church government all fit into this massively wide category of “not the absolutely most crucial” and “not relatively unimportant.” All things being equal, how high should some of these considerations sit in relation to one another? Presently, I have no intention of laying out my own ordered triage of all these considerations. Rather, I’d like to reflect on one area of church life that has been inching its way up on my list of importance in relation to others. But first I’ll ask the reader to indulge me in a wee bit of autobiographical background to set the stage.

Some Theological Pilgrimages

My church upbringing was about as “low church” as you can imagine. The tribe I came to Christ within hails from sunny Southern California and exuded all things casual: we were a Calvary Chapel family, which means our church leaders were the product of the Jesus People Movement of the 60’s, when hippies and rockstars experienced the Holy Spirit’s “high” and subsequently came to Christ in droves (to be baptized at the beach, in the case of many). This was a genuine revival. For better or for worse, what we know of today as “contemporary praise” music was the invention of my spiritual forebearers in the Jesus People. I have a profound affection for this tribe on account of what they gave me. They gave me Christ. They gave me the gospel. And they gave me a simple and devout love for the Scriptures I have never outgrown. But they also gave me some things I have since then had to return. The first of these gifts I sought a reimbursement for was a deep suspicion towards a word that used to send shivers up my spine (actually, it still makes my spine tingle, though very differently now): Calvinism.

The “tribe” that put a positive spin on this designation was the Young Restless and Reformed Movement, and when I was coming of age in College, the doctrines of grace exploded into vibrant colors in my imagination. Like many, however, I was not content to stay in the shallows of Mark Driscoll pounding the pulpit about the sovereignty of God, I wanted to go into the deeps. I wanted to go to the source. So, to the Reformers and the Puritans I went, and they called me further back to their own predecessors. They taught me that “all things are mine, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or Christ or Calvin or Aquinas or Augustine or Athanasius.” To catch up, then, my theological journey took me from Arminian-leaning low-church charismatic evangelicalism, to the Calvinism-lite of the YRR crowd, to the Reformers and the Puritans, to the whole Christian Tradition (which I am still catching up on and will continue to do so as long as the Lord grants me breath). This means that when I gave an aversion to Calvinism back to the Jesus People, I also gave them back their generally a-historical view of Christianity.

During this time, another exciting development in my theology was the twin journey into liturgical orderliness and informed ecclesiological convictions regarding polity. The Reformers helped with the former—with their emphasis on the Regulative Principle of Corporate Worship—and 9Marks helped with the latter—with its emphasis on Baptist ecclesiology and polity (essentially, it was the Regulative Principle applied to church government). This is around the time I wrote my first book, which is fun for me to revisit: it’s like a time-capsule capturing a snapshot of where I was in my theological journey at that point (i.e., after I became a Calvinist, a congregationalist, and an adherent to the Regulative Principle, but before I became Classical in my trinitarianism and confessional and creedal in my reception of the Christian Tradition).

Liturgy and Polity

And here’s where I’d like to camp out for the rest of this brief reflection. Once the cement began to harden around my convictions regarding church polity and the general picture of (what I assumed to be) the Regulative Principle, my “ecclesiological triage” developed for a long time in such a way that polity took uncontested primacy above all other concerns for choosing a church body to join. If having to choose between a church that affirmed one’s polity convictions versus one’s liturgical convictions, I would have balked at the prospect of someone choosing a church that conforms to one’s liturgical convictions but not polity convictions. In fact, I knew of self-conscious Baptists who joined Presbyterian or Anglican Churches because of their respective liturgies, and I was simply incredulous at the thought that someone would let “mere aesthetics” play such a significant role in someone’s decision for choosing a local church. Since then, however, the importance of a church’s weekly liturgy has been growing in my own estimation.

This growing sense of the weekly liturgy’s import has concurred with another growing sense: the sense of awareness that not everything that calls itself the “Regulative Principle” is actually or historically so. For example, I struggled to square the Regulative Principle with corporate recitations of Creeds and Confessions for an embarrassing amount of time. From where did that impression of a tension arise? Certainly not from the Regulative Principle itself (or its architects, since they all routinely practiced corporate Creedal confessions), but rather from some misplaced assumptions about what the Regulative Principle must mean. Many such assumptions, I believe, abound today. What, for example, about pre-written prayers or subscription to worship order books or kneeling during corporate confession or observation of (some modest expressions of) the liturgical calendar is necessarily at odds with the Regulative Principle? I cannot think of any. The contrast between such “high church” practices and the Churches that adhere to the Regulative Principle seems to me to be a contrast of accidental sentiments, not essential convictions. And to be honest, my appreciation for these practices is not nearly so large a leap, in my estimation, as was my leap from low-church evangelical services to weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper, or corporate confession and pardon, or corporate responsive readings.

For example, I have been incorporating the prayer office of the Book of Common prayer in my daily routine—praying three times a day—and the practice has wed me closer to the text of Scripture. As much as it might horrify some, I have also started to incorporate the sign of the cross in my prayer life, and while I would never bind someone’s conscience to such a practice, I have found it to be a fruitful way to worship not simply with my mind, but with my body—working into my mind and heart through the bodily practice the fact that I live and move and have my being in the Trinity, whose Triune life and love and light are mine to participate in by grace through my union with Christ.

Now, I recognize that this last example may be a bridge too far for some of my fellow Reformed Baptists, or my Presbyterian brethren, and I’m not even inviting anyone to join me in these private practices. I simply point to them as an example to illustrate that not everything we assume is characteristic of the Regulative Principle of corporate worship actually is so. The point is, liturgical concerns are not “merely aesthetic.” The weekly liturgy on the Lord’s Day is no tertiary matter. Weekly congregational liturgy is one of the most fundamental aspects to the Christian life—it is one of the primary ways the Lord nourishes his people, and historically (even in Protestant and Reformed contexts), this nourishment did not come through mere “lecture” and “song” but rather Word (Holy Scripture preached and read and sung) and Sacrament.

As it happens, my family is in an ideal context. We are very happy with the liturgical practices of our local church, and to a remarkable degree, I line up with the leadership on matters of polity and church government and the sacraments. But if circumstances were different, what then? If with one church, I agreed with the church leadership on polity and church government but not their liturgical practices, and with another church, I agreed with their liturgical practices but not their views on polity and church government, what would I choose? At a previous time in my life, the answer for me would have been simple, straightforward, and immediate: I would go with the former. I would have insisted on prioritizing government: I would have said, “these things are more important than any other ecclesial consideration by a wide margin.” Now, I’m simply not sure. While I could still conceive choosing the church with my preferred polity over the alternative, the choice is not nearly so simple to me as it once was. At the very least, I can see why someone would choose to settle on a less ideal polity structure if it meant receiving an ideal liturgical structure.

Why, then, does liturgy get a bump in my ecclesiastical triage list? Certainly not because my own convictions about polity or church government are waning, but rather because my theology of liturgy is waxing. What I have come to learn is that liturgy is more than mere ritual. Rather, it is the delivery system by which we receive and consume and inwardly digest the gospel in Word and Sacrament. We might even say the gospel in Word and Sacrament is the form of liturgy (and the liturgy therefore the matter of the gospel in Word and Sacrament), just as how the soul is the form of the body (and the body the matter of the soul). Liturgy itself is theology, in the truest sense of the word. When we participate in sacred liturgy, we are theologizing. In liturgy, we are contemplating God, in the presence of God, together with the people of God. And this means participation in weekly corporate liturgy is the closest to heaven we will ever get on earth. This being the case, how could our liturgy be totally neutral? All our liturgical practices are either helping or hindering—obscuring or showcasing—the gospel as the local church receives spiritual nourishment by Word and Sacrament. I have come to believe that traditional practices have come to be traditional for good reason. When we think about the “clothes” or the “delivery system” or the “matter” of the gospel in Word and Sacrament, it is probably good to be suspicious of novelty. What makes us so confident in our ability to determine “what really matters” in liturgy, and what is simple “window dressing?” The means matter as well as the ends. And means that turn the gaze of the soul heavenward in reverence and awe—through holistic bodily engagement, such that our words and actions connect us to the communion of the saints through the ages—is, in my estimation, far healthier than the standard evangelical alternative.

A Call for Liturgical Reform

This issue matters, I think, not merely as a personal thought experiment, but because of the state Protestantism and Evangelicalism happens to find itself in. Recently, I read a fabulous little book by Chris Castaldo and Brad Littlejohn called Why do Protestants Convert? Littlejohn and Castaldo seem to intuit what has been a growing suspicion in my own mind: namely, that some Protestant converts to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy are driven by mixed motivations, some of which are good (but unfortunately distorted when they lead to these erroneous communions). A hunger for timeless, ancient Christianity, tradition, liturgy, a high view of the sacraments, and a sense of gravity and holiness in worship can all be good desires. If the only alternative to Rome or Constantinople—who respectively promise to make good on these requests—is a shallow evangelicalism that aims to entertain and attract, I really can’t blame many for choosing to convert. But I believe, as does Castaldo and Littlejohn, that the best of the Protestant tradition scratches these good itches in ways superior to Rome or Constantinople. Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy can only offer distorted solutions to these good desires on account of their respective (and serious) doctrinal errors.

Protestantism, at its best, roots its adherents in the ancient faith, gives a robust liturgical vision of Word and Sacrament, and invites Christians into the gravity of sacred worship of the Holy God who is a consuming fire. Yes, Protestantism does this at its best. But is Protestantism at its bestright now? The reality is, few Protestant Churches (at least in America) actually offer this kind of vision of Christian worship. And the problem for Baptists like myself is that of the small number of Protestant Churches that fit this description, a fragment of them are Baptists. Personally, these realities have conspired to put me in a very uncomfortable position. On the one hand, I have never been more convinced of my Protestant and Baptist convictions than I am right now: I absolutely love my tradition, and I believe it has the resources to offer the very best expression of Christianity. At the same time, on the other hand, I feel a growing separation between myself and the standard evangelicalism on offer.

So, what are we to do in a situation like this? I am convinced that the Protestant world—especially the Baptist part of it—is in dire need of liturgical reform. There is a way to misconstrue what I’m saying, of course. What I am not saying, is something like, “People are looking for high liturgy, so we need to give it to them.” This would be an embarrassing new kind of seeker sensitivity—one that engages in a kind of high church LARPing. I am not proposing we pursue more liturgical reform simply because people want it; as if the desire itself were its own justification. Rather, I am saying that the holiness hunger people feel is actually a good, God-given hunger. Let’s not turn those starving souls away simply on account of a naïve misunderstanding of the Regulative Principle and a kind of reverse superstitionism which defines itself as being all things non-high church. In the meantime, I can’t blame my fellow Baptists who settle down in conservative Anglican or even Lutheran communions if the alternative is a thin, shallow evangelical Baptist church. Such a move is appearing to me to be more lateral than I would have previously assumed. Here’s to hoping, though, for some liturgical Baptists to rise and bring the best of Protestantism on offer. When I was a pastor and used to lead our worship liturgy through things like corporate confession of sin and assurance of pardon, I was routinely met with this frequent feedback: “You know, when we first started doing this, it felt weird. I didn’t like it; it felt too catholic. But now I genuinely look forward to it. I find it is shaping me in ways I didn’t anticipate!” Might similar fruit not be on the other side of further liturgical reform?

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This post originally appeared at samuelparkison.wordpress.com

Image Credit: Dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica (interior view).jpg