Misplaced Pastoral Priorities

A few years ago, I was in a discussion with a group of pastors on the topic, “getting out into the community.” The prevailing assumption was that the primary duty of pastors is to get out into the community to do evangelism, that pastors become too sheltered within their churches and neglect the call to reach out to unbelievers. If the church is to become more “missional,” pastors will need to model a lifestyle that is aggressively evangelistic.

Shortly after this discussion, I was talking to a pastor who asserted that every member of his pastoral team needs to be committed to the idea that everything in the ministry of the church revolves around outreach: the purpose of worship is evangelism; the purpose of discipleship is to create more evangelists; everything in the church is calculated to maximize evangelistic impact. The primary focus of the church, in other words, is on those who are outside; pastors are there to win unbelievers to Christ and to coach church members to become effective evangelists.

This mindset leads pastors to complain about those in the church who want to be discipled, or who want to be fed from God’s Word. “Why can’t these people learn to feed themselves?” “Why can’t they see the importance of giving up what they want, so that seekers can be comfortable in the church?” “Don’t they see that I need to be focused on winning the lost, not catering to the desires of those who are already saved?” (I've often heard these, and similar, complaints). Again, the assumption is that pastors need to be freed from the obligation of nurturing believers so that they can be more “missional.” There are so many outside the church that spending time discipling believers is sheer extravagance.

There are two serious problems with this: the willingness to use worship as a tool for evangelism, and the unwillingness to seriously follow through on the work of the Great Commission, which is to "make disciples." Those I've spoken with in this movement are unapologetic about using worship as an evangelistic tool; it works, they say; lives are being changed and the church is growing. Whether this is true, and whether it means anything, is open to discussion, but the primary concern is using the worship of God as an end for something else. In my contact with pastors of this mindset I've noticed a remarkable absense of emphasis on God and His glory. This just isn't the sort of thing that gets talked about. One hears that God cares about numberical growth, because that means more people are being saved, but one looks in vain for any discussion about whether God is being honored and glorified by the methods that are being used.

Martin Thornton, in his Pastoral Theology, has strong words about making evangelism the primary focus of the Church: “Pelagianism [an inadequate understanding of the Fall combined with an excessive confidence in human effort] arises as soon as evangelism, in the sense of recruitment, is regarded as the main work of either priesthood or corporate parish. This again is an extremely delicate position, since sanctification in and through corporate worship is the most spiritually contagious thing there is. It is in fact the method of true evangelism laid down by the pattern of our Lord’s incarnate life and followed by his Church ever since, but it follows only when a life of adoration is accepted as the one ultimate aim. In pastoral thought a very delicate twist is sufficient to reduce the most sublime common worship to a justifying work. We face a subtle kind of multitudinist-exclusion compromise when it is suggested that worship – even all we mean by Prayer – is only of value as the ascetical means of evangelism. Our motive for adoring worship of God in Christ becomes recruitment to his Church; which, like so many Pelagian ramifications, sounds wonderfully well so long as we do not listen too hard. As St. Bernard said long ago, the only motive for the adoration of God is God himself” (Pastoral Theology: A Reorientation (London: SPCK, 1961), pp. 72-73). Six years ago I attended a service that was intended to celebrate the great things God was doing. I had to tell the bishop afterward that the celebration was not about God at all; it was about what great people we are to give God the privilege of working among us.

On the second problem, the refusal to engage in serious discipleship in the interest of winning more converts leads pastors to invest the majority of their time in people who demonstrate the least interest and commitment. It’s interesting to notice that Satan’s tactic is just the opposite. He focuses his most violent attacks where they’re likely to do the most damage: on those in positions of leadership and influence and on those who are making significant progress toward spiritual maturity. No doubt he is also interested in destroying the souls of those outside the church and those on the fringes, but he’s able to accomplish far more toward this end by attacking those closer to the center. He recognizes that undermining the spiritual growth of those who are most committed will have a ripple effect. Neglecting the work of discipleship in the interest of winning more converts shows a remarkable shortsightedness, a failure to invest effort where it will have the most long-term effect (not to mention disobedience to the command of Christ to make disciples and teach them "everything that I command you").

Thornton goes on to note that Jesus focused most of His time, not on the masses (who were clearly needy) but on a bare handful of His followers. “Indeed the more we study the Gospels the more clearly we shall recognize that Christ did not cast His Gospel loose upon the world – the world which was so incapable of appreciating it; that would have been indeed to cast His pearls before swine; but He directed all His efforts to making a home for it, and that by organizing a band of men called ‘out of the world’ and consecrated into a holy unity, who were destined to draw others in time after them out of all ages and nations (see Jn. xvii). On this ‘little flock’ He fixed all His hopes. He prayed not for the world, but for those whom God had given Him out of the world” (Bishop Gore, quoted by Thornton, pp. 36-37).

What was Jesus thinking? Why was He investing so much time in those thick-headed, ungrateful disciples, when He could have been winning the whole world? Clearly His priorities are different from ours, and North American pragmatic thinking doesn't give us an adequate framework for understanding His mission. Here's Thornton one more time: “On the whole it is evident that His aim is not present success or numbers of adherents, but the preparation of a solid nucleus of men and women so absolutely committed to the service of the kingdom that they have cast all self regard and all prudence to the winds; and from these He asks an absolute faith, and a complete detachment – the attention of their whole minds and the loyalty of their whole hearts, without any regard for their traditional prejudices or their personal or family interests” (pp. 37-38). He was seeking to nurture those closest to Him, to help them become people so enamored with Him that they would leave everything behind to follow Him and carry on the work of making disciples to the ends of the earth.

A Mere Christian Journey

“You just need to choose a theological camp and commit yourself to it,” my friend said in exasperation. He was concerned for me, and he couldn’t understand why I couldn’t fully commit myself to any one denominational position. I think by this point he would have been content with an arbitrary decision.  I just needed to join a (Protestant) theological camp and stick with it.

My problem was what I saw as the provisional nature of denominational authority. Advocates of each position have ways to defend their ideas from Scripture, but they disagree with one another in very important ways (and, of course, each is sure that all the others are wrong). But their authority is based on their ability to make a credible defense to me, as an individual. A number of years ago, a family visited the church I was pastoring, and one of the first things they asked me for was a doctrinal statement. They wanted to make sure that we were in line, theologically, with their understanding of Scripture (and, since we were not, they ended up attending somewhere else). In practice, denominational authority rests not in the Scriptures or in the Church, but in the interpreting individual, and the problem with this, for me, was that the more I learned, the more I saw the inadequacies of whichever system I was trying to embrace. I couldn’t commit myself unless I was convinced, but even after I was convinced there was the possibility that further investigation and a better argument would lead me somewhere else.

After committing my life to Christ in a Pentecostal church, I believed that speaking in tongues is the sign of receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. But then I began to encounter, both in person and in my reading, Christians who showed strong evidence of the presence of the Spirit but who had never spoken in tongues. After reading John Calvin and an assortment of the Puritans and their successors, I embraced Reformed Theology. I became a Presbyterian, certain that this was where I belonged. But I discovered, among Reformed Christians, a remarkable tendency to fragment in search of a truer version of the Reformed Faith. A friend of mine left the Orthodox Presbyterian Church a number of years ago and started meeting with a group of people he found online, because he believed these people were more serious about the Westminster Confession of Faith. Since most Presbyterians I knew admitted that others outside the denomination were true Christians–but that Presbyterianism was a fuller, truer expression of Christianity– it was clear that Presbyterianism was less than the fullness of the Church, which raised the question, “why do our differences with other believing orthodox Christians necessitate separation into different church bodies?”

I’ve heard various explanations for this. Some are based on a desire to maintain doctrinal purity in the church: “of course, it’s true that these people are part of the body of Christ, but they have certain theological errors which we can’t tolerate in the church.” Others are based on pragmatic concerns: “you can’t build a church life with people who disagree theologically.” Mind you, those concerned about doctrinal purity don’t normally accuse their opponents of actual heresy; both sides acknowledge one another as theologically orthodox, which raises the question, “if God puts up with their ‘errors’ and remains in fellowship with them, why can’t we?” Is doctrinal uniformity more important than showing forbearance toward one another in the light of our continuing imperfection and God’s gracious acceptance of us? I found myself enriched and challenged by worshiping and working with believers from other theological perspectives during my four years with the missions group Operation Mobilization. We were free to talk about our differences as long as we treated one another with respect. What I learned from this experience is that it is possible for Christians who think differently to worship together, recognizing that our oneness in Christ is more important than those differences which are rooted in our present state of imperfection.

During my first 20 years as a Christian, the one constant was my assumption that Roman Catholicism was a corrupt form of Christianity. Then, in graduate school, I began interacting with, and reading, Catholic thinkers. I found, in Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak, a serious engagement with culture and a passionate commitment to the gospel. I went on to discover John Henry Newman, Romano Guardini, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Howard and many others, Roman Catholics with a deep, solid commitment to Jesus Christ. Somewhere along the way I also discovered Eastern Orthodoxy and found Orthodox writers feeding my soul with their reflections on Scripture and their teachings on prayer.

Over the years since I left Operation Mobilization I’ve favored the term, ‘mere Christianity,’ but the problem is, where in the Church does one go to be a mere Christian? It’s simpler if one is settled in a tradition and is able to exist there with an appreciation for the larger historic Church. In the mid-1990's, in my desire to find a church home after I left Presbyterianism, I decided to connect with the small Pietistic Anabaptist denomination I had encountered in college. I had not become Anabaptist by conviction, but this particular group had a history of embracing one another across significant theological differences (similar to what I had experienced during my years with OM), so I thought there would be freedom there, at least, to continue exploring and thinking. I even became a pastor and served in ministry for eight years. But at the same time that I was moving into a deeper appreciation of the historic Church, the leaders of my denomination were embracing the mega-church movement and were increasingly uncomfortable with the things that had drawn me to their church. After eight years I again found myself ecclesially homeless, having been invited by my bishop to find ministry opportunities elsewhere. The problem with trying to be a mere Christian is not how  to do so in a stable church environment; the question is how to find a stable church environment when one is in a state of theological and ecclesiological development, given the fragmentary nature of North American Christianity.  Dwight Longnecker points out that those seeking to be mere Christians increasingly find themselves, like me, without a church home (More Christianity, p. 30).

As I have continued to reflect on all this, I’ve begun to see a pattern, an overarching tendency, in this long, and frequently perplexing, journey. I’ve been, over the years, even without knowing it, looking for a rooted authority (rather than an arbitrary authority based on my limited understanding as an individual interpreter); and I’ve been looking for largeness and fullness (as opposed to the highly fragmentary and reductive nature of denominationalism). This points in the direction of two words, both of which are contained in the Nicene Creed: Apostolic, for a rooted authority; and Catholic, for the largeness and fullness of the Church, which leads me to believe I have been mistaken in limiting my search to the world of denominational Protestantism.

The early Church submitted to the writings of the apostles, but also to their verbal instructions.  So a Church that is Apostolic is rooted in both the verbal and written teachings handed on to the following generations of leaders: according to the apostle Paul, the Church, rather than the Bible, is the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). And a Church that is Catholic seeks to embody the fullness of Christian possibilities, not striving for a doctrinal purity which reduces the Church by setting one group of Christians apart from all others.  Several years ago I came across the term “More Christianity” (Dwight Longnecker), expressing the need for something more than the least-common-denominator approach of Mere Christianity that I have embraced in the past.  Longnecker, a former evangelical who became Catholic, notes that “Catholics affirm all that other Christians affirm; they simply cannot deny what they deny” (p. 37).

The problem with the journey I’ve been describing is that I have been the one in charge, making authoritative judgments about church teachings.  With the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, authority ends up residing not in Scripture, but in the individual.  Each church needs to sell itself to me, but I make the final determination about whether it is true to the Bible. In rejecting the authority of the Church, the Reformation ended up placing authority in the individual.  

I increasingly agree with Louis Bouyer, who argues in The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism that the Reformers were generally right in the things they affirmed and wrong in the things they denied; this led to a loss of the fullness of Christian teaching.  In the terms listed above, the Roman Catholic Church is Apostolic, rooted in the apostles and their successors, and it is Catholic, holding onto the full richness that God has given to His people.  I can listen with confidence to the Church established by Jesus Christ and built on the foundation of apostles and prophets.  I don’t need to choose a theological camp based on my limited understanding; I can submit with confidence to the historic Church as teacher, the “pillar and foundation of truth.”

Thoughts on "Why Catholics Can't Sing," by Thomas Day

I had high expectations for this book, based on a review I read in First Things and Neuhaus' recommendation in Catholic Matters.  But it was pretty disappointing.

First, the title.  The problem he's addressing is not that Catholics can't sing, it's that they, for the most part, don't sing during corporate worship.  He's addressing the question of why congregational singing is so weak in American Catholic churches: "I have heard a congregation of fifty elderly Episcopalians produce more volume than three hundred Roman Catholics" (p. 1).

The author begins by looking at historical factors that have led to the present situation, but most of the book is a critique of the kinds of music being used since Vatican II.  He's especially critical of the folk movement and is scathing in his opinion of the St. Louis Jesuits, Michael Joncas, etc.  For example, he is scandalized by what he calls "voice of God songs" in which God speaks to the believer ("Be Not Afraid" and "Here I am, Lord" are two prominent examples).   "In other words, the composer sets the text so that the congregation sings God's words, usually without quotation marks, in a somewhat bored, relaxed, almost casual style," which he says is "unprecedented in the history of Christianity" (p. 64).  He goes so far as to accuse these songs of  "vulgar pantheism" (p. 172).  But "How Firm a Foundation" (written in 1787) includes words of God (some of which are not direct quotations from Scripture), and the musical style of that song is not so different from the folk style he's criticizing.  So in what sense is this approach "unprecedented in the history of Christianity"?  And in what way is it pantheistic?  I understand that Day doesn't like the music and that he finds it personally distasteful, but accusing these songs of vulgar pantheism is nonsense.

In any case, whether he likes this music or not is beside the point.  Do the supposed shortcomings of these songs explain why Catholics don't engage in congregational singing?  (After all, this is the point of the book).  I've seen these songs used in Protestant congregational settings (I've even used them myself), and people have sung them, often with great fervor.  The songs themselves don't prevent Protestants from singing, so why don't Catholics sing them?

There is, I suspect, a spiritual dimension to this problem that Day does not address, although he alludes to it in places.  "A 'universal' church cannot always have it both ways; it cannot keep its doors open to 'the people' and, at the same time, expect the kind of robust congregational singing associated with private,' homogeneous congregations or 'clubs'" (p. 79).  But there's more at work here than differing ecclesiologies.  Surely it's possible for a church to keep its doors open to the people and, at the same time, call these people to respond to God in ways that they've not yet learned to do.  Maybe the problem is related to the well-documented failure of catechesis in American Catholicism or the scandalously low quality of preaching and teaching.  The problem is not just that American Catholics don't sing during worship; it's that very large numbers of Catholics are not seriously engaged with the faith.

Worst of all is the tone of Day's arguments: "In the song On Eagle's Wings, and similar compositions, the icon or the mosaic of Christ in Majesty is replaced with the glossy poster of the male Hollywood heartthrob, the latest take-your-breath-away movie star.  Perhaps On Eagle's Wings, Be Not Afraid, and countless other 'contemporary' sweet songs are just another product of the Great Hollywood Factory of Dreams and Romance.  Certainly, this kind of music tries very hard to imitate the sound track of a three-hanky romantic film starring Greta Garbo or Bette Davis" (p. 63).

In this and the many similar passages, the book comes across as a sustained rant by a musician who doesn't like a particular type of music and finds it offensive.  In the end, he fails to say, with any clarity or in a convincing way, why Catholics can't, or rather don't, sing.  The book is focused on musical style and has little to say about the connection between spiritual vitality and worship.

Quote

Quote for the day: "'Did you boys go to Mass today?' (It was Sunday." Why, no, said Valachi. They had been too busy trying to assassinate Bugs Rafferty (and, besides, Valachi had no use for religion). The old man shook his head. 'Rubbing out Bugs is important for business,' he said, 'but going to Mass on Sunday is important for your soul.'"

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The Incarnation and Christian Spirituality

Lew Rinard

September, 2005
 

      Awhile back, there was an intense discussion on the Internet about this claim, made on an evangelical church’s web site: “God hates religion and so do we.”  The discussion largely revolved around the question of whether it’s true that God hates religion, which, for most, amounted to “whatever I don’t like in traditional Christianity,” (and this largely boiled down to suspicion of anything connected with ritual and form).  Another church web site says: “We believe in exposing people to the authentic Jesus. Most people are turned off by the religious trappings but are captivated by the simple teachings of Jesus.”  The “authentic Jesus” is encountered through His “simple teachings,” not through the “religious trappings” of ritual, liturgy or physical environment.
      These websites reflect the common evangelical assumption that, in spirituality and corporate worship, things like environment, physical actions, posture and form are not important, because “the really important thing is what’s in one’s heart.”  This assumption was apparent in a worship service I attended recently in a growing evangelical church.  This church has its own building, and there was plenty of space for the needs of the congregation; but the worship took place in a gym, with stackable chairs and a large stage.  There was a screen for power point and a few flower arrangements (which were pretty-much swallowed up by other things in the room).  There was no cross, no attempt at creating a visual environment for worship; the room would have been suitable for a meeting at the local high school.  And, I suspect, if one had inquired about the absence of any visual dimension in worship, the answer would have been along the lines of, “what’s really important is to be worshiping from the heart.”
      Evangelicals are comfortable with symbolism and ceremony in other areas.  One is unlikely to hear, in an evangelical church, that a wedding ring is “just” a symbol.  The ceremonies surrounding the raising and lowering of the national flag are not usually condemned, except by some Anabaptist groups, as idolatrous.  Evangelicals, on the whole, do not seem to be uncomfortable with national celebrations like Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, even when these are full of symbolism, pomp and ceremony.  This tendency to exclude from worship and prayer what is permitted, or even supported, in other areas of life is more than a simple matter of personal taste.  Thomas Howard rightly observes:

By avoiding the dangers of magic and idolatry on the one hand, evangelicalism runs itself very near the shoals of Manichaeanism on the other – the view, that is, that pits the spiritual against the physical.  Its bare churches, devoid of most Christian symbolism... bespeak its correct attempt to keep the locale of faith where it must ultimately be, in the heart of man.  But by denying to the whole realm of Christian life and practice the principle that it allows in all the other realms of life, namely, the principle of symbolism and ceremony and imagery, it has, despite its loyalty to orthodox doctrine, managed to give a semi-Manichaean hue to the Faith.¹ 

It’s important to note that Howard is not accusing evangelicals of Manichaeanism, but of giving a Manichaean hue to the Faith, an impression that the physical and spiritual realms are in conflict and must be kept separate.
      This excessive concern about avoiding “religious trappings,” along with a studied neglect of the physical dimension of corporate worship, supports Donald Bloesh’s claim that “Conservative Protestantism is strong on the atonement but not as strong as it could be in its conception of the Incarnation.”²  A few years ago, some members of the church I was pastoring were concerned about another member who was dying.  When they questioned him about his commitment to Christ, he responded by referring to his baptism.  This worried them: “baptism is a public witness,” they said, “but have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”  His baptism was insignificant, in their view, because it wasn’t apparent that he had gone through the necessary steps of “making a decision to accept Christ.”  Had he gone through these steps, baptism would have been an important (but not completely necessary) step of obedience in making his conversion public.  This disregard of the significance of the sacrament of baptism reveals, among other things, a weakness in understanding the Incarnation.  As Martin Thornton points out, sacramentalism is rooted in reflection on the Incarnation.³
      The doctrine of the Incarnation states that God has taken on human flesh “undergoing a voluntary process of humiliation to enter into human history and take on the entire experience of existence as a human being.”⁴  John’s gospel says this clearly in the first chapter: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (1:14).  This is how it was stated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451:

Following the holy Fathers, we all with one voice teach and profess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the one and same, is perfect in humanity, the same is genuinely God and genuinely a human being with a rational soul and a body, the same is consubstantial to the Father according to divinity and consubstantial to us according to humanity, like us in all things apart from sin.  The same was begotten from the Father before the ages according to divinity, for us and for our salvation begotten in the last days from the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer (Theotokos), according to humanity.⁵ 

      It is notoriously difficult to hold faithfully to both the deity and the humanity of Christ⁶, and throughout history there have been tendencies to emphasize one at the expense of the other.  While contemporary evangelicals are, for the most part, committed to theological orthodoxy, there is a strong tendency toward what has been called a “functional docetism.”⁷  Docetism, from the Greek word dokein (“to think, or seem”), is a tendency which affirms the deity of Christ but denies His full humanity.  Gnosticism, with its dualism identifying evil with the material world, found the Incarnation unthinkable and early warnings against its docetic tendencies can be seen in the New Testament, as in these words from 2 John: “Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.”⁸  
      Evangelical Protestants affirm the orthodox doctrine that Jesus Christ is both human and divine at the same time.  But evangelical reflection on Christ mostly emphasizes His deity, with little thought on the significance of His humanity.  This tendency has been so pervasive that in the popular evangelical mind the Incarnation is often perceived as a temporary thing: Christ became flesh long enough to accomplish the work of redemption, but now that He has no more use for a body He’s discarded it.⁹  Even when the permanence of the Incarnation is affirmed, there’s little awareness of its significance.  Several years ago I was involved in a discussion about the sufferings of Christ and one member, a medical doctor who prided himself on being a serious, well-informed Christian, said “Knowing that He suffered and was tempted doesn’t help me that much; after all, He was God, so of course He had the strength to endure these things.”
      Rather than seeing the Incarnation as merely an essential step toward accomplishing the real goal of wiping out the judicial guilt of fallen humanity, it’s important to begin by seeing that the Incarnation is an essential, inseparable part of God’s work of redemption.¹⁰   It’s not only that the Incarnation had to take place in preparation for the atoning sacrifice on the cross; rather, “In the incarnation, the whole human story, right from the beginning, is recapitulated and begun all over again.”¹¹  In other words, Christ doesn’t merely become human as a prelude to the real work of redemption; His becoming human is an essential part of the work of redemption. 
      The angels sing at Christ’s birth, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors” (Luke 2:14), not just because of what He is going to accomplish in a little over thirty years, but because of what He has done in uniting Himself with fallen humanity.  The Incarnation has led to an identification between God and humanity that was impossible previously.

He is the Theandropos or ‘God-man’, who saves us from our sins precisely because he is God and man at once.  Man could not come to God, so God has come to man – by making himself human.  In his outgoing or ‘ecstatic’ love, God unites himself to his creation in the closest of possible unions, by himself becoming that which he has created.  God, as man, fulfills the mediatorial task which man rejected at the fall.  Jesus our Savior bridges the abyss between God and man because he is both at once....  The incarnation, then, is God’s supreme act of deliverance, restoring us to communion with himself.¹²

Redemption is not only about the passion of Christ, to which the Incarnation is nothing more than a necessary prelude; “redemption begins with the incarnation....  In the incarnation humanity was grasped by God; the human condition of sin and the resulting death was borne by God, who took into himself the reality of death.”¹³
      But Jesus not only became “human” in a generic sense; He became a specific man, Jesus of Nazareth, born of the Virgin Mary, who lived for about 33 years in first-century Palestine.  While docetic Gnosticism is fond of spiritualized generalities, orthodox Christianity is full of specificity.¹⁴  Jesus “was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.”  In the Incarnation, God the Son emptied Himself and experienced life as a human being in the fullest sense.  So far was He from “playing unfair” by the exercise of His divinity that Paul describes the message of the cross as “God’s weakness,”¹⁵ a message that shames those who rely on, and appeal to, human strength and wisdom.¹⁶  Although Jesus was “raised by the power of God,” He was “crucified in weakness.”¹⁷  Romano Guardini develops this idea of Christ’s weakness: “Failure lies at the heart of the life of Christ.  It points the way... to the understanding of his intimate self.”¹⁸  My friend’s assumption that the sufferings of Christ were less significant because of His divinity reflected a failure to properly understand the self-emptying involved in the Incarnation.  “Not without meaning was it said that God ‘emptied Himself,’ made Himself into nothing, abandoned His consciousness, when He came into the world.  When God became man, he entered into the condition of a sacrificial victim.”¹⁹  While the nature of the self-consciousness of the Incarnate Word is an impenetrable mystery, it is important to avoid assumptions which undermine His full humanity.
      In speaking about the end of the age, Jesus says: “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32).  In the Garden of Gethsemane, He becomes distressed and agitated (Mark 14:33) tells the three disciples with Him, “I am deeply grieved, even to death” (v. 34) and expresses disappointment at their inability to stand with Him during His time of need (v. 37).  He experiences hunger (Mark 11:12) weariness and thirst (John 4:6ff.).  Christ’s participation in human weakness was essential to salvation, since “what was not assumed was not healed.”²⁰

Contrary to Gnostic thought, Jesus was not a mystical “universal man” but a specific individual, with a unique genetic signature, composed of particular molecules which were continually being recycled as ours are, subject to spatio-temporal limitation, nurtured in a particular culture....  If God’s Son did not disdain to assume our human condition, then nothing that is part of our humanity need cause us to be dismayed.²¹ 

      “The Word became flesh,” “like us in all things except sin,” not only as a prelude, or an inescapable prerequisite, to the real work of becoming a sacrificial victim, but as an essential part of redeeming fallen human beings: “the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning.”²²  This means that salvation is not only a matter of forgiveness of sins, but “the restoration of the entire created order.”²³  Christian discipleship is larger and more inclusive than just “saving souls.”  Every area of human experience has been grasped by the Incarnation, and every area of human life is of significance in both corporate and personal spirituality; “in the world of redemption nothing pertaining to the world of creation is disowned.”²⁴  It’s because of this largeness of vision, I suspect, that John Henry Newman considered the Incarnation “the central aspect of Christianity.”²⁵  “The Incarnation... transfigures the whole fabric of life for us and delivers it back to us and us back to it in the seamlessness that we lost at our exile from Eden.”²⁶
      It is not sufficient to correctly state the doctrine of the Incarnation in our faith statements.  The reality that the Word has been made flesh touches our lives and has the power to transform us in every area: “All of our inclinations and appetites and capacities and yearnings and proclivities are purified and gathered up and glorified by Christ.  He did not come to thin out our human life; He came to set it free.”²⁷  The Incarnation, rightly understood and applied, leads to a fullness that is too-often lacking in evangelical spirituality and worship.
      The Incarnation implies, first of all, that God makes Himself known through material things.²⁸  Alexander Schmemann argues persuasively that the physical world was created to be an “epiphany” of God, that all of creation was intended to be transparent, to point beyond itself to its Creator.  Because of the Fall, the world is now opaque; we experience objects as ends in themselves, separated from their Creator.  But the entire created order is, by design, sacramental: “the very notion of worship is based on an intuition and experience of the world as an ‘epiphany’ of God, thus the world – in worship– is revealed in its true nature and vocation as ‘sacrament.’”²⁹  In other words, worship reunites what was wrongly separated at the Fall.  Worship that perpetuates this faulty separation between the physical and spiritual is working in the wrong direction.
      Reflection on the Incarnation was at the heart of the argument in favor of icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council.  This council had been preceded by a century of violent controversy (no doubt complicated by the rise of Islam, which absolutely prohibits the use of visual imagery in worship).  The iconoclasts appealed to the prohibition against images in the Old Testament law: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4).  This doesn’t prohibit all visual imagery, since the tabernacle (and later the Temple) made use of two and three dimensional images.  But it does prohibit visual images of God.  Since Christ is God Incarnate, it was argued, pictorial depictions of Him fall under this prohibition. 
      Protestantism has, on the whole, tended to agree with the iconoclasts.  J.I. Packer argues, following John Calvin, that pictures and statues, including pictures and statues of Christ, violate the commandment and have no place in worship: “for all pictures and statues are necessarily made after the ‘likeness’ of ideal manhood as we conceive it.”³⁰  Packer goes even further and asserts that, “Just as it forbids us to manufacture molten images of God, so it forbids us to dream up mental images of Him.”³¹  This would seem to rule out visualized meditation on the gospels, because our mental conceptions of Christ will fall short of “ideal manhood.”  Were even those who were eyewitnesses permitted to remember the visual appearance of Jesus, since over time their memory would become clouded?  The conclusion he arrives at is this: “The point is clear.  God did not show them a visible symbol of Himself, but spoke to them; therefore they are not now to seek visible symbols of God, but simply to obey His word.”³²  However, God did provide a visual image of Himself in Jesus Christ.  Did Jesus look different than other men?  Did He have the likeness of “ideal manhood?”  Those among whom He grew up found it difficult to believe in Him; most of those He encountered, even during His public ministry, were oblivious to His divinity.  Isaiah says “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (53:2).  Jesus, it seems, looked like a mere man; there was nothing in His appearance to suggest that He was God Incarnate.  Icons don’t seek to portray “ideal manhood,” nor do they portray a “nature,” whether divine or human.  They portray Jesus as a man. 

Every icon portrays a person....  The icon portrays only what is visible in a man, only what is particular to him, what distinguishes him as this man from all other men....  Icon theology... is mainly interested in the “knowable” aspect of a person.  The ultimate ontological core of a person, its independent being, its subsistence, can obviously be known only indirectly, through a person’s outward behavior, through his properties and specific qualities.³³ 

An icon portrays “only what is visible,” not a “likeness of ideal manhood” but the face of a man. Since these issues were discussed at length during the iconoclastic controversy, Packer’s arguments would be more persuasive if he at least took some account of them.  As it is, his position is based solely on exegesis of the Old Testament passage, with no consideration of the significance of the Incarnation.
      The arguments in favor of icons primarily revolved around the Incarnation.  John of Damascus was especially influential in making the case for the iconophiles:

In former times God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted.  But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see.  I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take his abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter.³⁴ 

Because God has appeared in the flesh, it is now permissible to make an image, not of the invisible God, but of the man Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word.

If we made an image of the invisible God, we would certainly be in error... but we do not do anything of the kind; we do not err, in fact, if we make the image of God incarnate who appeared on earth in the flesh, who in his ineffable goodness, lived with men and assumed the nature, the volume, the form, and the color of the flesh.³⁵ 

The Incarnation has not canceled out the prohibition against images of the invisible God; what has changed is that God has presented Himself in visible form.  Jesus is “the image (or icon) of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).  “If God is invisible and intangible, then we are unable to discern God in any direct manner.  Yet if Jesus is God... then Jesus is to be seen as an excellent visual image of what God is like.”³⁶  Christians are able to encounter God through the sense of sight with the use of icons (and other visual aids), which point beyond themselves and function as “windows into heaven.”
      This use of visual aids is sacramental in the broad sense that Schmemann has in mind; God originally created the world as the sacrament of His presence, so physical things by their very nature are intended to function sacramentally.  A sacrament involves at least three things: 1) there is an element of mystery (a realization that there’s more going on than can be grasped with the mind); 2) a sacramental object (or act) points beyond itself and becomes a tangible point of contact with spiritual realities; 3) when received or exercised in faith, a sacrament leads to a transforming encounter with God.  Too much discussion, since the Reformation especially, has been occupied with defining the number and efficacy of the sacraments, and the whole dimension of sacramental acts has largely been lost.  But this comment by Jonathan Edwards points in the right direction:

The main benefit obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind at the time, and not by an effect that arises afterwards by a remembrance of what was delivered.  And though an after-remembrance of what was heard in a sermon is oftentimes very profitable; yet, for the most part, that remembrance is from an impression the words made on the heart at the time; and the memory profits, as it renews and increases that impression.”³⁷ 

Here Edwards is arguing that preaching is something distinct from teaching, that the primary function of preaching is to facilitate an encounter with God.  The preaching of the Word, as Edwards sees it, forms a tangible connection with eternal realities; in other words, preaching functions sacramentally.  This suggests that although Protestant reflection on the sacraments has been stifled by the controversies of the 16^th century, the sacramental instinct, which is built into the very fiber of the created order, is still present.  The Incarnation has reinforced this sacramental bent of the visible, tangible creation:

The Savior of us all, the Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as a man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way.  He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body.³⁸ 

As Hugh of St. Victor observes, “The Incarnation redresses the Fall by teaching us to raise ourselves to God by the help of the senses.”³⁹ 
      The Incarnation also suggests that salvation involves more than forgiveness of sin.  Evangelicals tend to be aware of the judicial dimension in salvation but are uneasy about the connection between salvation and obedience.  Assertions about the necessity of obedience are frequently met with resistance, because of a fear of undermining the gospel of free grace: if obedience is necessary, isn’t one moving in the direction of salvation by works?  Among some evangelicals who are strongly committed to evangelism I have observed, in recent years, a growing discomfort with discipleship and spiritual formation.  In discussions with pastors, I’ve frequently heard complaints about those in the church who want to be nourished spiritually.  “Why can’t these people learn to feed themselves?”  “Why can’t they see the importance of giving up what they want, so that others can feel comfortable in the church?”  “Don’t they see that I need to be focused on winning the lost, not catering to the desires of those who are already saved?”  The assumption is that pastors need to be freed from the necessity of feeding believers so that they can be more “missional,” so that they can model an “unapologetic evangelistic lifestyle.”  The focus of Christian ministry is increasingly on getting people inside the door of salvation; even if these people don’t become committed followers of Jesus Christ, the assumption is that at least they’re safe for eternity. 
      A few months ago I spoke with a senior pastor who asserted that every member of his  team needs to be committed to the idea that everything in the ministry of the church revolves around outreach: the purpose of worship is evangelism; the purpose of discipleship is to create more evangelists; everything the church does must be calculated to maximize evangelistic impact.  The primary focus of the church, in other words, is on those who are outside; the people in the church are there primarily to be trained so that they can more effectively win others, and the life of the church needs to be tailored to this central purpose.  Pastors are there, primarily, to win unbelievers to Christ and to motivate church members to become effective evangelists.  This mind set reflects an understanding of salvation primarily, if not exclusively, defined by conversion leading to the judicial removal of guilt.
      However, if salvation is not only a matter of forgiveness of sins, but “the restoration of the entire created order,” reflection on the Incarnation can point the way toward a larger vision of the Christian life.  Guardini asserts, “The whole life of Christ recapitulates itself ever anew in man.  To live as a Christian means to participate in the re-enactment of Christ’s life.”⁴⁰  To be a Christian is not only to experience forgiveness of sins, but to incarnate the life of Christ.  Guardini is writing about Galatians 2:20, but John’s first epistle expresses similar concerns: “whoever says, ‘I abide in him,’ ought to walk just as he walked” (2:6); or “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world” (4:17).  The point of salvation is not only to provide forgiveness, but to restore the defaced image of God: “He became what we are, so as to make us what he is.”⁴¹  The removal of judicial guilt is essential, but it is only part of the picture: “By taking up our broken humanity into himself, Christ restores it and, in the words of [a] Christmas hymn, ‘lifts up the fallen image.’”⁴²
      God’s purpose in salvation, then, is to restore broken humanity in His image, which means incarnating the life of Christ in those who belong to Him.  Discipleship is not in conflict with evangelism, as long as evangelism is understood in this larger context.  The point of evangelism is not to “make converts,” but to “make disciples” (Matthew 28:18-20).  Too often evangelism has been confused with salesmanship, and making a convert has been understood as “closing the deal.”  Conversion is the beginning of a life of discipleship, incarnating the life of Christ in the concrete details of daily life.
      From this perspective, the imagined conflict between evangelism and social action also disappears.  Historically, Christians have understood the importance of showing compassion, but during the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy in the early 20^th century, when those on the modernist side of the discussion increasingly emphasized the importance of the social implications of the gospel, fundamentalists reacted by going to the opposite extreme.  This dichotomy is not as pronounced as it was in the mid-20^th century, but evangelicalism (which grew out of the fundamentalist movement) can still be prone to an unhealthy, individualistic pietism.⁴³  If the point of Christian discipleship is to incarnate the life of Christ, however, it is clear that this needs to include a compassionate response to those who are suffering.
      This provides a model for responding to one’s own suffering.  In contemporary America, suffering is perceived as senseless, even to the point of robbing life of its value.  Those lobbying for Physician-assisted suicide appeal to the sense of meaninglessness in suffering, the feeling that life is no longer worth living when one is in pain.  It is important to see Jesus’ suffering as not only judicial, a “payment of the debt,” but also as a model.  He entered into this world and experienced, in the fullest sense, its grief and sorrow.  His suffering as the second Adam doesn’t mean that His people won’t suffer (since He’s done it all for them); He repeatedly, in the gospels, calls His followers to take up their cross and follow Him.  He provides a model for meaningful suffering, suffering as part of one’s calling.
      God’s people have frequently testified to a deepened communion with Christ during times of suffering, a sense of sharing in the sufferings of Christ.  Paul has this in mind when he tells the Colossians, “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (1:24).  In Philippians, he expresses a desire to know the fellowship of sharing in Christ’s sufferings: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death” (3:10).  In communion with Christ, suffering is not meaningless.  It is a sharing in Christ’s sufferings on behalf of His church.  There is a sense of deepened companionship with a God who knows firsthand what suffering feels like: “If God really became one of us, then God bears all the pain and suffering that human nature knows....  God has trodden the road of pain, suffering and death before us as one of us.”⁴⁴
      The Incarnation also has implications for the theology of the Church.  Thomas Reeves observed, a few years ago, that religious individualism is at the core of American Christianity:

Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney concluded, ‘Typically Americans view religious congregations as gatherings of individuals who have chosen to be together, in institutions of their own making and over which they hold control–fostering what sometimes, in the eyes of observers from other countries, appears as “churchless Christianity.”’ For Americans, ‘religious authority lies in the believer–not in the church, not in the Bible, despite occasional claims of infallibility and inerrancy on the part of some’”⁴⁵  

But if the Church is more than a voluntary society of like-minded individuals, if the Church is, in fact, a body of people called by God to incarnate the life of Christ (which is far more consistent with New Testaments images like “the body of Christ,” or “the bride of Christ”), then this individualistic view of the Church is seriously defective.  Jesus said, after all, “I will build my church,” not “my people will decide to form a voluntary society.”  From an incarnational perspective, the visible unity of the Church deserves far more priority than it tends to receive from evangelicals.  
      Simon Chan observes that the theology of the visible church is “one of the least developed areas in Protestant thought, especially among evangelicals.”⁴⁶  Since evangelicals think primarily in terms of the invisible church (the community of true believers scattered through all orthodox denominations), lack of visible unity is often accepted as an inescapable situation in a fallen world, or even as a desirable state of affairs which provides an outlet for a large variety of tastes in worship style, theological inclinations and interests.  “There is little sense of the church as a corporate, spiritual reality existing in and through time, worshiping God with the apostles, prophets, saints and martyrs together with angels and archangels and all the heavenly host.”⁴⁷
      Reflection on the Incarnation underscores the importance of visible unity in the Church.  The Church, the body of Christ, is called to incarnate the life of Christ corporately: “making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:3-6).  The Church is called to be one, just as Jesus is one with the Father (John 17:21).  Although the fragmentary state of the Church in the early 21^st century seems insurmountable, the place to begin is with a new realization of the scandalous nature of divisions in the body of Christ and with prayer for healing.
      A sense of “spiritual oneness” in the invisible Church is not enough.  Jesus’ prayer, in John 17, is “that they may be one.  As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (v. 21).  The oneness of the church is a tangible representation of the oneness of the Trinity.  The unbelieving world, looking at a unified church, can see something about God that they wouldn’t see otherwise.  In this sense, the Church itself is sacramental; it becomes a tangible connection between physical and spiritual realities.  “The Incarnation redresses the Fall by teaching us to raise ourselves to God by the help of the senses,”⁴⁸ applies not only to prayer and worship, but also to the Church’s witness in the world.
      From an evangelical perspective, one of the most divisive issues is the veneration of the Virgin Mary in both Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.  But one reason evangelicals are so resistant toward Marian reflection, one suspects, is the lack of emphasis on the Incarnation.  If the Incarnation is only perceived in a functional way, as providing a body so Christ could die to atone for sin, it’s not surprising that Mary is also seen simply as a vessel for the provision of that body.  After the birth of Christ, her work is over and her importance to the Church is at an end.  In thirty years as an evangelical, I’ve heard sermons on Moses, Paul, Peter, David, and even figures from church history like Martin Luther and Charles Spurgeon.  But I’ve never heard a sermon on the Virgin Mary.  It’s not only that preaching a sermon on Mary would make one suspect of Roman Catholic sympathies; Mary simply doesn’t enter into the evangelical mind.
      But reflection on the Virgin Mary is rooted in the defense of the Incarnation: “In order to do honour to Christ, in order to defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation, in order to secure a right faith in the manhood of the Eternal Son, the Council of Ephesus determined the Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God.”⁴⁹  In the second century, Justin Martyr described Mary as the Second Eve (building on Paul’s references to Jesus as the Second Adam), and later in the same century Irenaeus developed that same idea.⁵⁰  Richard Neuhaus asserts that refusal to think about Mary is connected with Docetism.⁵¹

The Word really did become flesh, just as the prologue to John’s Gospel says, and that great thing happened in a specific place and a specific way, in the womb of the Virgin Mary....  At every step of the way, Mariology is Christology.  For instance, Chalcedon made it definite that Mary is to be acknowledged as “Mother of God” (Theotokos is the Greek term)....  She must be called Theotokos not in order to honor her, but in order to tell the truth about Christ.⁵² 

If evangelicals are to overcome the limitations of “functional docetism,” a willingness to reflect more deeply on the theological significance of the Virgin Mary will be necessary.  This will not only help in overcoming docetic elements in evangelical thinking; it will also make evangelicals more tolerant of those Christians who go further in their admiration of Mary.
      Although modern Protestants tend to ignore Mary, this has not always been the case.  Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli both held Mary in very high esteem.⁵³  Even as severe a critic of Marian excesses as Karl Barth says about Mary:

There is one here who is greater than Abraham, greater than David, and greater than John the Baptist, greater than Paul and greater than the entire Christian Church; we are dealing here with the history of the Mother of the Lord, the Mother of God himself.  This is a unique and unparalleled event.⁵⁴ 

There is no necessary connection between Protestant theology and hostility toward Marian reflection.  The Dombes Group offers a series of very helpful suggestions for a Protestant conversion of attitude toward Mary, calling for “a return to the Mary of the Gospels and the mark of a greater fidelity to the scriptures.”⁵⁵
      A more incarnational spirituality needs to begin with an awareness of the deficiencies of the word “spirituality” as it is commonly used.  Eugene Peterson notes that the word has become hopelessly muddled in contemporary American culture,⁵⁶ and frequently uses, instead, “the Christian life.”⁵⁷  But he finds it impossible to avoid the word altogether and suggests vigilance and attentiveness: “spirituality has much to do with the material, the external, and the visible.  What it properly conveys is living as opposed to dead.”⁵⁸  Gabriel Bunge points out that, in the early Church Fathers, “spiritual” points to the personal influence of the Holy Spirit: “‘spiritual’ always signifies... ‘endowed with the Spirit’–wrought or inspired by the Holy Spirit.⁵⁹  So “spiritual” refers, not in a vague sense to “the interior life,” but to the practice of Christian obedience in relation to God, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
      Christians are not called to a pure spirituality, unencumbered by physical necessity.  To say this is not a concession to human weakness but a recognition of what it means to be human. Since Christ lived a fully human life, without in any way diminishing His divinity, Christian spirituality is, by definition, an embodied spirituality.  Evangelicalism, in neglecting the physical dimension of spirituality, has tended either to become rationalistic⁶⁰ or descend into pure sentimentality.  Ronald Allen reminds worship leaders that “Heart and body worship are not mutually exclusive; they complement each other.”⁶¹
      An incarnational spirituality will involve a larger place for the sacraments than is common in evangelical churches, recognizing that we encounter God not only by studying the Bible, but that “God communicates to us through visible and tangible means.  He came to us in an enfleshed form.  He was made man and lived among us.  Now he continues to act in our lives through those symbols we call sacraments.”⁶²  Rather than looking for ways to explain away the sacramentalism of the New Testament (such as Jesus’ expression “born of water and the Spirit,”⁶³ or Peter’s call to “repent and be baptized... so that your sins will be forgiven”⁶⁴), the
incarnation frees us to embrace the sacraments as tangible and material things God uses to communicate His healing presence.⁶⁵  If God makes Himself known through the sacraments, quarterly celebration of the Eucharist is seriously inadequate; in addition, the priority and ongoing significance of baptism need to receive more attention.  In the New Testament, baptism isn’t something one “gets out of the way” and then forgets about.  The knowledge that one has died and risen with Christ in baptism is foundational to growth in sanctification.⁶⁶
      Beyond this, more thought needs to be given to the larger dimension of sacramental acts.  Evangelicals have much to learn from Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians in this area.

Protestantism is sometimes guilty of confining life with God to cerebral operations: preaching and hearing the Word, analytical Bible study and so on.  But life in the Spirit can be enriched considerably through visual (postures, gestures and dance), olfactory (incense and candles) and tactile (beads and anointing oil) routes.⁶⁷ 

When Julian of Norwich was thought to be dying, a parish priest held before her eyes a crucifix, saying “I have brought you the image of your Creator and Savior.  Look at it and be strengthened”; this led to the visions in her Revelations of Divine Love.⁶⁸  Many evangelicals enthusiastically embraced Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”  It is only a small step from this to the use of a crucifix, or a crucifix icon, as an aid to meditation on Christ’s sufferings.  Orthodox Christians often use a prayer rope when praying the Jesus Prayer⁶⁹ (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”), and Roman Catholics use rosary beads in a variety of ways, but evangelicals do not have anything similar which functions as an aid to concentration in prayer.  Austin Farrer, an Anglican, describes his own change of mind about the benefits of praying with rosary beads and presents an approach to praying the mysteries of the Rosary that is more consistent with Protestant sensibilities.⁷⁰  An even simpler approach is to use the Jesus Prayer instead of the Hail Mary prayers.  Having a physical object in the hand helps free the mind to engage in prayer without distraction.  The sign of the cross is deeply rooted in both Eastern and Western Church history and could be used as a tangible way of identifying with the crucified Christ.⁷¹  The use of holy water as a reminder of one’s baptism, prayer toward the East⁷² (toward the light of the rising sun, which points to the “dayspring from on high”⁷³) and the importance of setting apart a place for worship and prayer are also aspects of this larger sacramental dimension.
      Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman, “the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth”⁷⁴ do not imply that the place of worship is insignificant, only that it is not of primary importance.  God is Spirit⁷⁵ and can be worshiped anywhere, but humans function better when a specific place is set aside for worship and prayer.  Jesus participated in the Temple worship, and He was in the habit of going alone into the mountains for times of extended personal prayer.  Origin, in the early third century, pointed out that one could pray anywhere, but then went on to give this advice: “in order that each person may say his prayers in peace and without distraction, there is also a command to select in one’s own house if possible the so-called holiest place and... to pray [there.]⁷⁶  Every place is appropriate for prayer, but the human need for freedom from distraction needs to be accommodated in learning to pray.  One can and should worship God anywhere, but the human need for sacred space, space set apart for the worship of God, needs to be taken into account in planning for corporate worship.  A few years ago, a friend of mine was out fishing and another man said to him, “I don’t need to be in church to worship God.  God speaks to me right here.”  My friend replied, “really, what does He say to you?”  To which the man had no reply.  What he was saying, in reality, was something like, “when I’m in the outdoors, I feel like I’m part of something larger than myself.”  He was sensing something of the sacramental nature of creation, but it was falling short of genuine worship.  As Balthasar points out:

When in meditation a Christian finds the mystery of God’s fullness in his inner divine self-giving, manifested in Jesus Christ, in his Eucharist and in his Church, the Christian too will not find if difficult to find this fullness again in the world so apparently empty of God.  If the person does not pray meditatively but only commends personal intentions to God, this refinding will prove to be much more difficult.”⁷⁷ 

The regular worship of God, in a place and time set aside for that purpose, has a similar effect.  One who neglects this, because “God can be worshiped anywhere,” is unlikely to experience the nearness of God in the details of daily life, while one who worships God regularly in church is better equipped to worship Him at other times and places.
      An incarnational spirituality will also give some attention to techniques and forms for cultivating a life of prayer and worship, what Simon Chan calls an “asceticism of small steps.”⁷⁸  One who struggles to find the right words for prayer can be helped by using a prayer book in the same way that a hymnal is used in worship.  It is good to exhort people to spend time in private prayer, but they need to know what to do when the prayer time begins.  How is the time going to be spent?  Several years ago, I was introduced at a retreat to lectio divina, a four-step approach to prayerful meditation on Scripture.  I had heard, for years, about the benefits of Christian meditation but had never been given any suggestions about how to go about it.  This is a bit like telling someone to engage in jazz improvisation without providing instruction on how scales and chords fit together.  Since there is such an abundance of teaching in the area of prayer, it is irresponsible to leave people with the simple formula, “just talk to God.”
      But having said that, the Christian life is more than acquiring techniques.  One woman, in a class I was teaching on prayer, was very enthusiastic about putting it all into practice.  She had recently divorced her husband and was sure that now she’d be able to cultivate a life of prayer, since the pressure of living with a man she “never really loved” had been removed.  But her refusal to cultivate a self-emptying love with her husband (and also with her children) ended up undermining her spiritual aspirations.  The Christian life is primarily a life of growing obedience to God, and techniques for prayer and meditation are channels for learning to turn one’s heart to God.  But these techniques are incompatible with persistent disobedience; they only operate within the context of growing obedience and discipleship.  That’s the point of Jesus’ words in John 14: “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”⁷⁹
      Christian spirituality is not about developing one’s inner potential, but about incarnating the life of Christ in the concrete realities of this fallen world.  Obedience is central to discipleship.  But that obedience doesn’t have the character of a grim, determined moralism; it is a loving response to a growing relationship with God, who has revealed Himself in the Incarnation of His Son.  That loving response to God is not carried out within one’s heart, apart from physical reality.  It involves the whole person.  Because the Son of God became Incarnate without diminishing His divinity, Christians are free to engage in the sacramentality of all of life, perceiving God by means of the material world and using created things to make connections with the Creator.  “What is in one’s heart” matters immensely, but what is in one’s heart is directly connected to what one is doing with one’s body.

Ministry Without Results

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Ministry Without Results

Lew Rinard

November 2005
 

      “Church members are concerned. Attendance has been declining, and some are beginning to wonder about your leadership. I think it's time for a change,” the bishop concluded. “It's time to try something new; maybe another pastor will succeed in turning things around.” The pastor, a friend of mine, had not fallen into moral sin, nor was his orthodoxy in question. He had been faithful in preaching the Word and was committed to shepherding those under his care. He was a good pastor. But numbers were declining, and after further discussion the bishop asserted, “I'm looking for tangible, measurable results.”
      There is a growing assumption in American churches, in both personal and corporate spirituality, that spiritual heath correlates with outward, measurable success. Individually, it is assumed that faithful discipleship will lead to an ever-increasing felt awareness of God's presence. As one young man who visited my church said, “I've always assumed that if I don't feel exhilarated in a worship service I'm doing something wrong” (although it is more common to blame those in leadership). The norm is to feel God's presence in worship and prayer, so a decline in this felt awareness is an indication that something is wrong.
      This is frequently combined with an expectation that healthy churches will grow numerically. The church is an organism, it is said, and organisms grow unless they are hindered by disease. A dwindling church, a church with declining membership, is in trouble spiritually.  And the pastor of such a church is, by definition, a failure; he hasn't managed to “grow the kingdom” in his particular place of ministry. He may be a faithful preacher and a model of godly living, but he's in the wrong place (and maybe in the wrong calling), because his leadership is not producing growth.
      The picture, in both corporate and personal spirituality, is that progress toward maturity can be reliably measured by tangible results, that as one grows in holiness there is a corresponding increase in “felt awareness” of God's presence, and that if a church has a strong core of faithful disciples there will be a continuing pattern of numerical growth. There is thus a tangible “bottom line” in spiritual formation, just as there is a bottom line in the world of business: an effective pastor provides his congregation with meaningful, relevant worship experiences, which also attracts newcomers and leads to numerical growth. This tangible bottom line enables leaders to set measurable goals, and when the goals are met the assumption is that God is doing a great work; when the goals are not met, there is a call for change: maybe the current group of pastors are not a good “fit” with their congregations; or perhaps there is a need for methods that are more relevant, more in step with the felt needs of the community. If the bottom line of measurable success is not being met, something is wrong.
      This outlook borrows heavily from the business world and is seriously at odds with teachings that have been recognized and affirmed in the Church over time. In the writings of St. John of the Cross, for example, excessive concern about feeling God's presence is an evidence of immaturity: “In receiving Communion they spend all their time trying to get some feeling and satisfaction rather than humbly praising and reverencing God dwelling within them. And they go about this is such a way that, if they do not procure any sensible feeling and satisfaction, they think they have accomplished nothing.”¹ They are more concerned with feeling God's presence, with getting something for themselves, than they are with pleasing God:

They have the same defect in their prayer, for they think the whole matter of prayer consists in looking for sensory satisfaction and devotion.  They strive to procure this by their own efforts, and tire and weary their heads and their faculties.  When they do not get this sensible comfort, they become very disconsolate and think they have done nothing.  Because of their aim they lose true devotion and spirit, which lie in distrust of self and in humble and patient perseverance so as to please God.² 

The focus, in other words, is not so much on God as it is on meaningful, fulfilling worship experiences and times of personal prayer.
      An insistence on feeling God's presence (whether in corporate worship or private prayer) can actually cause a person to resist God's purposes, because in His wisdom He “through pure dryness and interior darkness... weans them from the breasts of these gratifications and delights, takes away all these trivialities and childish ways, and makes them acquire the virtues by very different means.”³ God withdraws the pleasure of His presence to lead His people to a stronger focus on Him (rather than their feelings of Him). So, the loss of sweetness and pleasure in prayer (if it's not preceded by a lapse into sin) is a sign that God is leading a person forward in holiness.  “Oh, then, spiritual soul, when you see your appetites darkened, your inclinations dry and constrained, your faculties incapacitated for any interior exercise, do not be afflicted; think of this as a grace, since God is freeing you from yourself and taking from you your own activity.”⁴  If one is looking for tangible evidence of God's blessing, John would suggest, darkness and aridity are often more trustworthy than exhilarating experiences in worship and prayer.
      John was not just spinning theories. He had, under the leadership of St. Theresa of Avila, been part of a reform movement in the Carmelite order. But those who opposed the reform imprisoned him for the better part of a year in a small, dark room that had been built as a visitors' toilet. During the months he spent in that makeshift prison, John was subjected to both physical and emotional torture; but the most devastating thing was that he was also deprived of any sense of God's presence: “It was all happening together: physical and emotional abuse; a whirl of anxiety in his mind; and, in his relationship with God, darkness. At the time when, if ever, he needed to feel the divine presence, his God seemed distant, even alien, and John felt himself a stranger.”⁵
      In John's view, confirmed by his own experience, growth in holiness and spiritual maturity leads in the direction of unpredictability and surrender in the darkness of faith, rather than rational calculation which issues in measurable goals. One often doesn't know where God is leading or what He has in mind, and His ways frequently defy human rationalization. Even an apparent dead end or setback doesn't necessarily mean one has taken a wrong turn, because God often works in a hidden way. Periods of spiritual darkness have a counterpart in an experience Constance Fitzgerald calls impasse:

By impasse, I mean that there is no way out of, no way around, no rational escape from, what imprisons one, no possibilities in the situation.  In a true impasse, every normal manner of acting is brought to a standstill, and ironically, impasse is experienced not only in the problem itself but also in any solution rationally attempted.  Every logical solution remains unsatisfactory, at the very least.  The whole life situation suffers a depletion, has the word limits written upon it.⁶ 

In impasse everything has fallen apart, but God is at work in ways that are not visible or measurable. God is calling one, in this situation, to surrender to Him in the darkness of faith without being aware of what He is doing. Impasse, like the dark night, is a place of surrender to God, not a place for trying harder or planning an escape.
      This appears to be a consistent pattern: God leads His people in surprising, even perplexing, ways. The path that leads to holiness isn't easily reconciled with a pragmatic commitment to short-term success. Jesus, the pioneer of salvation, was made “perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10). This meant embracing the Father's will when everything within Him cried out for escape (Matthew 26:36-42). His obedience involved self emptying, rather than self-fulfillment, and when He called His disciples He didn't say, “I've got just the thing you're looking for.” He said, “he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:38). Many of His disciples were offended when He said things the people of His day were not ready for, but rather than adapting His words to avoid turning them off, He spoke without compromise and lost a significant part of His following (John 6:60-66). He then went to the cross, in apparent defeat. Jesus' public ministry was characterized by suffering and surrender to the Father's will in the darkness of faith, rather than rational calculation and programmatic goal setting.
      The same is true of the apostles. James and 1 Peter, in their opening verses, consider temporal instability and suffering a normal, even expected, part of Christian discipleship (James 1:2-12, and 1 Peter 1:6-7). The author of Revelation is identified as “I John, who share with you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance,” writing from the Island of Patmos where he is in exile “on account of the word of God” (Revelation 1:9). Or consider Paul's description of his ministry in 2 Corinthians: “We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger....” (2 Corinthians 6:3-5). The thing that commends his ministry is not “a really awesome worship band,” power point or a positive, uplifting sermon; what commends his ministry is “great endurance” in the way of the cross.  What were Paul's tangible results, by which he could judge the effectiveness of his ministry?  He lists some of them:

Are they ministers of Christ?  I am talking like a madman-I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death.  Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.  Three times I was beaten with rods.  Once I received a stoning.  Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false bothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked (2 Corinthians 11:23-27). 

He concludes: “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness” (2 Corinthians 11:30). The ministry of the apostles, like that of their Lord, defies rational planning and measurable success, because they're following Jesus in the way of the cross. Christian discipleship in a fallen world leads, by its very nature, to a temporal instability and unpredictability that undermines bottom-line goal setting.
      Tangible success in the short term has a mixed record anyway. Baalism was far more successful than the worship of Yahweh during the period of the Kings. Many left the early church to follow gnostic teachers, because Gnosticism connected with their felt needs in a way that orthodox Christianity did not. In the fourth century, Arianism seemed to be winning the day, so much so that Athanasius, the champion of orthodoxy, was exiled repeatedly. Many of the greatest saints have endured long periods of darkness and apparent failure: “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated-of whom the world was not worthy-wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (Hebrews 11:37-38). Both Scripture and Church history attest that it is impossible to tell, by looking at empirical, short-term results, what is going on in the spiritual realm.
      This is more than theological nitpicking. Church leaders who embrace a results-oriented approach to ministry are out of step with Jesus and the apostles. When they identify God's call with a specific ministry goal (a specified number of new churches within the next ten years, for example), they've committed themselves to a mindset that doesn't leave room for the unpredictability of the Spirit's work. They're assuming a degree of knowledge and control that they don't possess. How will they explain it if their goals don't materialize? Will they imitate many in the business world by defining it as a ministry failure (“our ministers, or church members, haven't held up their end of the deal”)? Or will they consider the possibility that God has something very different in mind (and that they have perhaps been guilty of the sin of presumption)? Do their goals allow for the possibility that God may lead both ministers and churches through long periods of darkness and impasse? When goals are met, are there adequate grounds for attributing this to the work of the Holy Spirit? A commitment to a results-oriented ministry makes it very difficult to face these questions honestly, and even more seriously, God becomes peripheral and the felt needs of people take center stage.
      This is illustrated by an advertisement from a church web site: “We're a group of ordinary people who have discovered the benefits of an active Christian life-style....Our informal, upbeat meetings will give you the lift you need to face the coming week....   [Our pastor's] practical, positive messages deal with the pressures and problems we all encounter. [He] shares biblical solutions that make life more fulfilling.” Attending this church, it is claimed, will provide a lift for the coming week and a more fulfilling life in the long run. The product benefits of Christian discipleship are such that the only sensible thing is to become a Christian: lots of fun, a more fulfilling life, and an eternal reward in the end. But when God, in His work of purification, begins to lead His people through times of darkness and aridity, times when everything is falling apart and there's no tangible evidence of His presence and blessing, life doesn't feel very fulfilling. Those who are converted and nurtured in an environment like this are ill-equipped to face impasse and spiritual darkness when they arrive; their environment has led them to expect something different. 
      If growth toward maturity does not guarantee a positive outcome in terms of numerical growth or feelings of self-fulfillment, what are the observable evidences of God's work? What should Christian leaders be focusing on, if the nature of Christian formation prevents them from setting measurable objectives? Paul gives some sound advice in chapter one of his second letter to Timothy (2 Timothy 1:8-18). To this younger disciple, who is somewhat timid and vulnerable to external pressures, Paul says, “don't be intimidated” (v. 8). The value of the gospel can't be measured by the priorities of this world. Those who rejected Jesus will also reject those who speak in His name. Those who value power and wealth and status will see the gospel as foolishness (or they'll try to twist it into something more consistent with what they want). Paul is saying, “don't be ashamed of this seemingly foolish message, and don't be ashamed of your association with me, a prisoner for the Lord - an apparent failure; be faithful in exercising your spiritual gifts in Jesus' name, and join with me in suffering for the gospel.” The danger is that, if he gives in to the temptation of shame, Timothy will begin tampering with the message. He'll try to adapt it into something more respectable, something less at-odds with the mentality of the surrounding culture.
      So Paul urges, in verse 13, “Hold to the standard of sound teaching... in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus;” and verse 14,“Guard the good treasure... with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us” (v. 14). Timothy is a steward. He's been entrusted with something that doesn't belong to him. This includes two things: the content of truth, and the gospel lifestyle rooted in the truth. Timothy has heard Paul's teaching and he's seen Paul embody a lifestyle consistent with that teaching. As Paul approaches the end of his life, he reminds Timothy to follow his example “with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” He shows no interest in measuring the temporal success of Timothy's ministry. He's concerned about the stewardship for which Timothy will give an account one day.
      If Jesus, the apostles and their followers are concerned at all about measurable results, they have in mind things like increased obedience; growth in the fruit of the Spirit; the imitation of Christ in the concrete details of daily reality; and perseverance in faith when everything is going wrong, when even spiritual consolations have been taken away. This process is a slow one, and it doesn't show up very clearly on quarterly reports to the denominational office. Eugene Peterson says about spiritual formation, “If you are in a hurry, you probably should not do it, because it is messy and lengthy and marked by much failure - burrowing into the soil of your place, your people, your congregation, your own life, sticking with it creatively, waiting for creation and covenant to form.”⁷ In other words, it's unpredictable, slow, and difficult to measure. It doesn't give denominational leaders statistics that they can point to and say, “look what we're accomplishing with your support.” The work of God's Spirit is not under our control or supervision. When we're in the middle of it, we can't see how it's all going to turn out.  Church leaders who insist on measurable results are in danger of undermining this slow work of the Spirit, because they're focusing on the wrong things and are not willing to allow sufficient time for creation and covenant to form. By seeking to manage the church to produce the desired outcome, they end up with a counterfeit.