I am working my way again through Simon Chan’s marvelous book, Liturgical Theology. As a Pentecostal scholar who calls us back into the deep “traditions” of the Church, I have found this book to be a refreshing read over the years. Chan doesn’t pull punches.
He wants us to return to Cyprian’s goal of saying one who doesn’t have the Church as their Mother cannot call God their Father. Bold stuff for a Pentecostal.
The current “thought of the day” out of this book is his reminder of “mission.” We have been preoccupied with numbers, so we forget our mission. We think our mission is soul-winning. It is not. We are the Body of Christ demonstrating the power of the Kingdom in this world. It is far beyond counting noses at an altar call.
Worship should mark us as different. Worship should look different. It’s not about the entertainment factor. We are called to worship in spirit and in truth.
Mission does not seek to turn sinners into saved individuals; it seeks, rather, to turn disparate individuals into a worshiping community. The preoccupation of the modern church with numbers often misses the real goal of mission. Instead of turning out find works of art, the modern church tends to model its mission on the mass-production factory. The church becomes an efficiently run factory. We then market the megachurch as the model of a successful church. Is it any wonder that grandiose strategies of winning the world for Christ have produced a bloated church whose ways and values are not very different from those of the world? The ministry becomes departmentalized… mission is left to church-growth specialists, counseling is done by professionally trained counselors, and the pastor serves as CEO. (p. 45)
Let us worship. Let us produce pieces of fine art in this world… and leave the mass production to the cheap tricks of this world!
