Nobody will dispute that mainline Protestant churches are in precipitous decline. There’s not a denomination, particularly in the United States, Canada and Europe, that isn’t facing dissention, schism, and increasing irrelevance. By contrast, there are many splinter Protestant groups that are resisting these trends, and are proving to be a safe haven for many who used to attend mainline churches. These are the non-denominational, often evangelical churches, ones that have maintained a certain regard for Scripture and the behavioral mores that have traditionally characterized Christianity. For many, they represent a final and permanent expression of the Christian Church. They have dropped those anachronistic or archaic trappings of worship, and have kept only the essential. Their success seems to be proof that the formula is valid. The following question presents itself, however: are evangelical churches successful because they are essentially good and complete, or simply because their mainline counterparts are so bad? Is the new evangelical, non-liturgical, a-historical church capable of forming this generation of Christians who will be able, in turn, to pass on the essentials of Christianity to the next?
Let me focus on the state of the Church in the United States. It appears as though the history of Protestant Christianity in America is a history of extremes; swings of a pendulum that returns to center, to be sure, but which goes too far and never establishes genuine equilibrium. In his seminal work, The Democratization of American Religion, Nathan Hatch documents, in excruciating detail, how the American Revolution affected the practice of Christianity in the new nation, and not always for the better. His basic premise is that when the perceived yoke of a state religion with its historical forms and institutions was lifted by the American Revolution, something of a spiritual vacuum was created. That vacuum was immediately filled with a multitude of novel, vibrant, and sometimes correct expressions of Christianity. Most of these movements or groups shared a common distain for prior forms and institutions, and competed with one another to drop them as quickly as possible.
The established church did have problems and in many ways deserved its demotion. For one thing, most featured abstruse sermons on why Calvinism, which manifestly makes no sense, did in fact make sense. Attendees came to ask the obvious: if my spiritual fate is established by God on an arbitrary and capricious basis, why attend church at all? If I can do nothing to alter my spiritual trajectory for better or worse, why bother with Christianity? New non-denominational churches solved the problem by forgetting not only John Calvin, but theological education in general. There was an explosion of self-appointed preachers, few educated and fewer ordained, who invited people to take control of their eternal destinies. Sermons became long, informal, devoid of technical terminology, and extemporaneous. There was revival, to be sure, but there was also disarray. To quote an alarmed Philip Schaff, a theologian in the German Reformed Church, “Every theological vagabond and peddler may drive here his bungling trade, without passport or license, and sell his false ware at pleasure. What is to come of such confusion is not now to be seen.” Mr. Schaff has a point. The evangelical claim was that God was free to act for the first time in centuries, and that all that had gone before was automatically suspect. The cry was to return to the early Church, as she was in her innocence. Yet were the intervening years actually devoid of inspiration? Was ecclesial iconoclasm a sufficient basis for creating a new Church? Jesus uses the metaphor of a storeroom to address this very issue. He speaks of drawing out “new treasures as well as old,” not just the new. When the old was jettisoned to make way for the new simply because it is old, is it possible that something was lost in the process?
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews, probably Apollos, begins the sixth chapter of his letter with the following admonition:
“Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.”
Funny, but what he labels as elementary and by implication immature is the very stuff and substance of the program that non-denominational churches have retained. Pick any recent Christian church, the agenda appears to be about our justification: how we can be forgiven and go to heaven. They continue to specialize in how one becomes a Christian, but apparently neglect the agenda for what one does after conversion. Preaching on the benefits of repentance is good for attracting new members, but is limited in its ability to keep them once converted. After you submit to whatever evangelical shibboleth your group demands, what is next? You’ve gone forward for an altar call, you’ve been baptized by immersion, preferably in water from the Jordan River, you’ve said the sinner’s prayer, from memory, you’ve offered your testimony in a public forum, surely there’s nothing else to do! The result is a consumer culture in non-denominational churches that produces converts but not disciples.
This brings us to the perhaps the greatest problem of the typical non-denominational church, that it is very dependent upon the skill and personality of the leader. On the one hand they must produce confidence in their listeners, that they are justified and going to heaven. On the other hand, they must produce enough doubt about their fate that they need to keep coming back. In this regard they are not unlike their Roman Catholic brethren, with whom they claim no affinity. Evangelical leaders must research new ways to keep their flocks involved, even after they have received a guarantee of heaven. Better preaching, better music, less repetition, less doctrine, less moralizing; all these have been tried in an attempt to keep an increasingly critical audience satisfied. There appears to be no end to this trend in sight, to the dismay of non-denominational leaders.
Rather than continue in this marketing nightmare, non-deonominational and evangelical leaders might try examining their product. The real reason evangelical leaders find themselves in this dilemma is because their message is only half the Gospel. The first half consists of our justification, to be sure. On the Cross Jesus was assigned our guilt and was executed in our place. This is a one-time event that, in the words of Scripture, expiated “the sins of the whole world.” Attempts by anyone, especially those in the Reformed tradition, to “limit” the power of the blood of Christ are in error and harmful. Our justification is not peculiar to the individual; all are justified by the Cross. Nor is our justification dependent upon experience; it is based on a one-time event in history and applies to all, even those who lived before Good Friday. The facts of our redemption from sin need to be rehearsed again and again to make sure everybody understands the power of the Cross. This is best done in the context of a sermon. But after the fact of the substitutionary atonement, exchanging our sin for Christ’s righteousness is firmly established, what then? For evangelical churches to focus on what is a universal fait accompli is not only unnecessary, it is a distraction. Eventually they run out of material and end up doing things twice that should never be repeated, such as baptism.
So what is missing? What are churches supposed to do besides talk of justification? If the first half of the Gospel involves forgiveness, the second half involves our salvation. The Apostle Paul makes a distinction between the two in Romans chapters 5, 10, and 1 Timothy 4:10, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews makes reference to the difference at the end of chapter 9, and Jesus posits a difference in many places, notably in Matthew 22 in the parable of the wedding banquet. If justification has to do with the forgiveness of sins, our salvation has to do not with what we did wrong, but what we did right, if anything. Note that in the two accounts in the NT of the final judgment, in Matthew 25 and Revelation 20, we are judged according to how we treated others, notably Christians, and whether or not our name was in the Book of life; good things, not bad things. We have been placed in Christ by the Cross in a legal or forensic sense. The question then becomes, was Christ in us effectually as of Pentecost, that he might bear fruit through us? Those who are found to be fruitless branches, were originally, “in me,” according to Jesus in John 15. Remember that all were invited to the wedding banquet, “both good and bad.” Our response to the fact of our justification is not to fold our hands in gratitude, but rather to let go of those things that hinder, that grieve the Holy Spirit, that we might play host to him and allow him to do what we cannot do on our own: bear fruit.
If this is true of how God redeems, the weakness of the evangelical church becomes obvious. By harping on our justification, this brand of Christianity is belaboring something in which we have no role. We are placed in Christ without our knowledge, consent or cooperation. Jesus is the Savior of all. What does require our knowledge, consent and cooperation, however, is that we play host to Jesus in the person of the Holy Spirit and obey him as Lord. This involves a deliberate and repetitive ceding of the will in sovereign preference to the Spirit. If you look at the “liturgy” of any evangelical church, there is no place in the service that addresses our need to cooperate with Jesus as Lord, apart from the periodic altar call. The service is well suited to a rehearsal of those saving acts by which we are justified. We sing songs to him as Savior, but any deliberate renunciation of our right to decide what is right and wrong, a confession of sin, etc., is nowhere to be found. The evangelical format and message is great for telling us we are forgiven, but does nothing to help us deal with Jesus in his other role, that of Lord. This is precisely where the historic, liturgical church excelled.
If the chief function of corporate worship is to make us better hosts for the Holy Spirit that we might obey Jesus as Lord, then any service without the Holy Eucharist is inadequate. Scott Hahn, an ordained minister in a Reformed, evangelical church, came to believe that his own pastoral practice was misguided, in that he preached long sermons but left no time for Holy Eucharist. He has since joined the Roman Catholic Church. It is when the worshiper kneels before the Lord, offers a Confession of Sin, and prays something along the lines of the Prayer of Humble Access, that their hearts are prepared to enter into a moral transaction with the living Jesus. The Eucharist operates on at least two levels, God’s perspective and man’s. From God’s point of view it is a chance for us to re-invite the Spirit into our hearts, the seat of our will, so that Jesus can again reign as Lord. We eat daily, we should have communion at least weekly. This permission is the essence of Christian worship. Then from man’s perspective, the Eucharist is a recapitulation of the last Supper in which the bread and wine we consecrate become the same loaf and cup Jesus consecrated at the Last Supper. It does not bring God to us, it takes us to God. We were there no less than the apostles, and the promises and commission he gave them as recorded by the apostle John he gives to us anew. It is while we kneel and humbly take the elements that we acknowledge that the only real life in us is that of the Risen Lord Jesus, and that our only hope is to once again grant him full access to our mind, will and emotions that we might serve and obey him as Lord.
If all this is true about the centrality of the Eucharist to corporate worship, why do not more churches adopt traditional liturgies? The answer is that by and large, today’s Christian is basing his worship decisions not on what makes him a more fruitful Christian, but on what is most pleasing to his senses. It can be argued, in fact, that in jettisoning traditional worship elements, the modern evangelical is recommitting Adam’s sin of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that is, deciding for himself what is right and wrong. Today’s non-denominational is perhaps the most arrogant of all Christians in that he has strong opinions about what constitutes acceptable worship forms, without any regard for what the Church created and conserved for two millennia. A lack of regard for historical practices not only allows the loss of things that are valuable, it also makes one subject to accepting modern innovations that are destructive.
To return to a liturgical church, with worship constructed around the Eucharist, with a Confession of Sin, a Prayer of Humble Access, and a Post Communion Prayer, involves many sacrifices. First of all, it takes the focus off the celebrant; his skill and genius have no way to present themselves. Further, there will be a lot of kneeling, which, in addition to being humiliating, is also uncomfortable. Then there’s the matter of having to transact business with Jesus each week. The message will eventually get through that Jesus wants to be Lord not just on Sundays, but each and every day of the week. The worshipper will be confronted with the sins and shortfalls of the week, the missed opportunities and the times of outright rebellion. It will become impossible to leave church feeling only refreshed, encouraged and satisfied. There will other sensations as well, such as regret, relief, hope for improvement, and resolve; all the things that come up when we realize we have a Lord. God is calling his Church to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the admonition of Hebrews chapter 6, that we preach the whole Gospel and reach a personal and collective maturity. This can only happen in a church service that seeks not how much from the past it can discard, but how much it can retain.
So this is where we are today: where and how we worship matters. God cares, and so should we. The mainline churches are clearly still on the side of the ministry of the Table, where Biblical preaching is neglected, leaving a blind, uninformed, and no doubt superstitious celebration of the sacraments. They claim to be honoring Jesus as Lord, but they have forsaken his Word. The evangelical churches, on the other hand, are still on the side of the ministry of the Word, extolling Jesus as Savior, but doing little to help their adherents submit to him as Lord. Neither is approach is adequate, and neither bears lasting fruit. That the Church would recover both halves of the worship service, and both roles of Jesus that they seek to portray, and produce Christians who are, in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews, genuinely mature.
