Recent reports about the age of messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention have alerted some to the “graying” of the convention. Specifically, the percentage of messengers aged 18-39 dropped from a high of 35.9 percent in 1985 to a low of 16.1 percent in 2005.
Strictly speaking, this is not news, and it is certainly not unique to the SBC. Across the Protestant world this age range has been shrinking. A little more surprising is that Illinois' Willow Creek Community Church, once thought to be the hope of the Church's future, is now experiencing its own malaise. According to a study at Willow Creek, roughly one quarter of its congregants are “stalled in their spiritual growth” or are so dissatisfied they are considering leaving.
There are, I'm sure, an almost limitless supply of sociological, cultural and economic explanations of why this is happening. I want to suggest at least one theological one: We have a serious misunderstanding of the purpose and nature of worship. And this impoverished understanding of worship has serious implications for the formation necessary for long-term obedience and discipleship.
This misunderstanding is reflected in the language we use. A small example is the replacement of the term “sanctuary” with “worship center.” As with other aspects of contemporary reflection on the church, there is a supposed method to this madness — the archaic “church” language puts off potential seekers. The difficulty, however, is that “sanctuary” has a long biblical history, a meaning that is completely absent from a worship center, which evokes the connotation of a “service center” where I might take my purchase to be exchanged or my car to be lubed.
An even more egregious instance of this reduced and confusing language is the replacement of “worship” with “worship experience.” The former focuses on God, the latter on us. It was the late Elizabeth Achtemeier who observed that God did not bring Israel to Mount Sinai in order to provide them with a “worship experience;” he came to tell them to have no other gods before him.
The “experience” at Sinai was one of terror, for the people had entered into the presence of one who cannot be controlled. Israel could only respond, either with obedience or rebellion.
Annie Dillard is surely right to remind us of the kind of expectation we ought to bring to worship: “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares. They should lash us to our pews.”
But where does this leave us? Should we place helmets at the doors of the church with a sign, “Danger: Beware?” It would surely be foolish to appear so uninviting. And yet even Moses, despite his terror and dread, was drawn to the holy presence in the burning bush. To acknowledge that worship is risky, even dangerous, is also to say it's not simply about us. It's about a God we cannot domesticate, a God who surprises and even shocks us out of our easy complacency.
In Luke's Gospel, Mary was greatly troubled and then afraid before God's messenger. Yet Mary gave birth to the greatest scandal of all: God made flesh.
We are easily tempted to believe that the survival of the church depends upon us. If this were true, we would have to figure out ways to make the gospel more palatable on the world's terms. Yet “God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor. 1:25). As foolish as it seems, worshiping with “holy helmets” prepares us to be astonished by a holy God.
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— Beth Newman is professor of theology and ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. [email protected]