A Tragedy
“We don’t regularly take communion,” the pastor confessed with a confident tone of contemporary conviction. “Many weeks we just can’t fit it in.” These were the words I heard just before guest preaching at a large, influential church in a major American city. My soul cried.
He was right. In addition to staples like the sermon and songs, the transition bumper, the special relevant song, and the prolonged video announcements filled all the extra space. Loyalty to the idol of efficiency meant time was up, and another Sunday had come and gone. How terribly tragic.
Historically, and in many traditions still, the Eucharist is what brings the church together. The omission of this historic practice, which Jesus taught us to regularly take, is just one example of the sub/conscious commitment many have to a pragmatic rather than transformational approach to Sunday.
Is there any practice Jesus gave that increases in value as it decreases in use?
No, there is not.
Information, Transformation and Curation
Phenomena like this partly explain why the organic and emergent church movements developed as a prophetic reaction. Still today, many churches subtly nestle into the safe arms of ecclesial pragmatism when transformation is available. More than a few churches bow the knee to, as Steven Proctor said at the 2014 Praxis Conference, the trinity of lights, camera, action while paying lip service to the Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit. And capricious Christians across the West are the fruit to show for it.
Information is good. Application is better. But transformation is best.
We assemble to sing, yet settle for love ballads; we gather the church, yet neglect the communion; what we name “good preaching” has often been “better tips for living”; we hear the Scriptures read, but fail to be read by them.
If we long for change, our gatherings must change – and this must begin with the leaders of local congregations choosing to take risks on Sundays. We must risk going from being controllers to stewards, from gatekeepers to God-seekers. Simultaneously, we must disciple the assembled congregation to value encounter more than efficiency, and conviction over entertainment.
What is Curation?
To curate means to “select for presentation.” This term is helpful because it speaks into the nature of the pastoral grip on the Sunday gathering. Curating a gathering with transformative possibilities means to involve our hands, making careful liturgical/programmatic selections, yet refusing to squeeze too tightly.
As pastors, our role on Sundays is not to control, contrive, or coerce an outcome. In contemporary Christian pragmatism we have the abilities to inform and even inspire—and these are not bad things. However, they are not the “telos” of why Christians gather. The term ekklesia means “the assembly of believers.” It, therefore, stands to reason that if what constitutes a “church” literally means a gathering of believers, the practices employed during that time should be primarily for believers.
This is where many churches in America are divided. The loss of this term led to the contemporary pragmatism that is prevalent in many large churches today. The appropriate response is to curate transformative practices that mature the believer into Christ-likeness rather than informing or inspiring bland tips into better living that could be universally applied in a self-help seminar.
A Sacrament
To narrow the focus, the Eucharist will serve our example.
There are of countless elements available when curating transformative space. For example – the call to worship, the Scriptures, the sermon, silence, confession, and the benediction all serve as historic practices that shape Christians on Sunday. In fact, it is possible for many (if not all) of these ingredients to be present in gathering and still be pragmatically oriented. Therefore, we can deduce that the transformative approach to Sunday speaks more into the “how” of these elements than the “what.”
God can use anything, and does. These are not spaces absent from pastoral shepherding and leadership; they are spaces where the pastor lays the track, but the Spirit is depended upon to power the movement of the train.
What happens in the Eucharist?
The Eucharist is an important weekly element for the assembled church because through it we embrace a transformative mystery. In this mystery, we proclaim at least two transformations:
First, we bear witness that Jesus is Lord. If we are not regularly inviting our congregations to rise and walk to the table on Sunday, why should we expect them to rise and walk toward the Kingdom on Monday? Pragmatism often appeals solely to the congregation’s cognition, with little to no invitation to engage the body during worship. Therefore, the Eucharist is the first act of every week that we belong to Jesus. This act requires we stand up and actively walk toward the grace of God, which we passively receive, in the elements of the Eucharist. Transformative practices seek to engage the congregation holistically.
Second, the Eucharist as a transformative element reminds us of God’s redemptive use of the material world. We reject the residue of gnosticism that still permeates the atmosphere in many of our churches. It errantly galvanizes the material against non-material, body against spirit, church against world. We reclaim God as redeemer of all creation.
The Eucharist speaks into this proclamation as the material body of Jesus is ingested to transform us at the spiritual, social and physical levels. Furthermore, it instills the profundity that if God will move through ordinary objects like bread and wine, imagine how God can move through the Church.
A Question
Reclaiming Sunday as an integral piece of the discipleship process is essential- which is to say, an environment where people can be transformed into further Christ-likeness.
When you plan your weekly gathering, are you more interested in what works or what forms?
Become a V3 Church Planter.
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