Preaching as Worship by Michael J. Quicke

Author:Michael J. Quicke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

Dynamics of Community Formation

Combining the picture of the church as God’s building work with living stones and the vision of church as missional community involves complex dynamics (already anticipated in figures 3 and 4). Big-picture worship not only bonds believers together in Christ, empowered by the Spirit as a royal priesthood declaring the praises of God, but also forms a “holy nation,” with believers living good lives among neighbors (1 Pet. 2:9, 12). Community formation therefore occurs in several different directions—inwardly and outwardly, backward and forward, personally and corporately, by both verbal and nonverbal means working explicitly and implicitly. And always, God’s construction work needs continuous worship.

Continuousness

“And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another” (Heb. 10:24–25). This command is primarily about people growing together in community by regular contact. Strong communities cannot form unless people meet frequently and keep encouraging one another. “In worship we practice the basic skills of our faith. We practice them again and again, so that they become second nature to us, and in becoming second nature, they become the way we see the world and live in it.”[225] Continuous practice is essential for developing many aspects, including language, character, countercultural formation, and ethics.

Foreign languages can be learned from teachers and textbooks but also from visiting other countries and interacting with their people. Speaking French comes alive when visiting France. Similarly, the people of God learn the new language of worship not only through teachers and Scripture but also by continuous living among worshipers who speak it. Worship language includes the vocabulary of praise and confession, of God’s three persons, of Christ’s lordship and kingdom, of sin and grace, and of reconciliation and mission. As members of the baptized community, “we talk funny” because of the “weirdness of the gospel.”

The gospel is not a set of interesting ideas about which we are supposed to make up our minds. The gospel is intrusive news that evokes a new set of practices, a complex of habits, a way of living in the world, discipleship. The gospel means to engender, to evoke, a peculiar experience that we would not have had before we met the gospel.[226]

George Lindbeck’s important book The Nature of Doctrine triggered considerable theological discussion about language. Claiming that there are three main understandings of religion—cognitive-propositionalist (concerned with objective realities), experiential-expressivist (focused on experience in spiritually symbolic terms), and cultural-linguistic (religion as life and language of the community of faith)—he argues for the last. While not wishing to exclude the other categories, his emphasis on religion as life and language is especially relevant to worship. How worshipers talk about their doctrine and live its consequences help form their understanding. So, for example, expressing language about the trinitarian doctrine of God as three in one shapes the way worshipers live out and think through what it means to participate in God’s triune community.

Jonathan Wilson therefore describes “worship

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