Copyright: © 1997 Paul F. Bosch.
This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit to the author and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

In my last essay in this series (Essay 11), I argued for the legitimacy of critiquing Christian worship.

Worship is a human art-form, from one perspective -- a perspective that honours "religion". And, I proposed, human art-forms, including human religious art-forms, are simply part of the "flesh" that the Eternal Word assumes when that Word comes to dwell among us. You can no more do away with the "religious" aspects of Christian faith than you can do away with the Incarnation. To deny the role of the "religious" in Christian faith and life is thus to betray a docetic heresy -- Barth and Bonhoeffer to the contrary notwithstanding. (See my earlier Essay 9: "Bonhoeffer Was Wrong.")

Further: I suggested, in Essay 11, that it's a mistake to suppose that human art-forms are not legitimately subject to human evaluation and critique and even value-judgment, just because these art-forms are now pressed into the service of Christian corporate worship.

Finally, as I also tried to make clear, there is a significant difference between private prayer and public prayer, and indeed a significant difference between private piety and corporate piety. And to presume to critique or otherwise evaluate the performance of worship leaders, let us say, is by no means to presume to critique or otherwise judge the worship leader's heart. Only God can do that! I hope that is quite clear!

Indeed, the presumption, in critiquing the competence of worship leaders, is on the other side, so to speak: it is the worship leader who is "presuming." When you step into the chancel to lead Christian worship, that is, you are presuming to accept a dreadful, if joyful, responsibility: to lead God's people in the prayers of their hearts.

That is a responsibility to be taken up "in fear and trembling", indeed! It's no wonder the young Luther fled from presiding at his first Mass! This is holy stuff you're dealing with: not simply the Holy present "in, with, and under" the signs of this bread and this cup, but -- perhaps even more dreadful! -- the corporate piety of the Body of Christ, the Christian community, which you are helping to shape in this moment. Or hindering!

In these moments of leading public worship, you, in your very person, become an instrument of the Spirit in shaping a community into a more perfect likeness of the Body of Christ.

Now, to accept that responsibility is to take on a fearful, an awe-full "presumption." And, as I argued in Essay 11, if you are unwilling to try to gain competence in that role, you are presuming too much: you had better re-think your calling!

Let's consider, for a moment, the human art-forms you are necessarily dealing with, in any leadership of Christian corporate worship. I'm thinking of such arts as: 1) the architectural or environmental arrangement of the worship space; 2) the "body language" of worship leaders: your posture, position, and gesture; even your facial expression! 3) the music of your liturgy and hymns; 4) the texts of your liturgies and hymns and prayers; 5) the clothing of the space and of the leaders, that is, your paraments and vestments; and 6) the artifacts and vessels of your serving, such as bibles, books, candles, communion ware, oil for anointing, flowers and greens, incense -- even the graphic design of your Sunday guide-to-worship!

These are the art-forms that give shape and substance to our worship. Indeed, they give shape and substance to Christ's coming among us: they are simply part of the flesh that the Word assumes when that Word comes to live among us.

And there is no question about whether you will use them or not! It is not as if you can do without any of them! If you're not utilizing this environment or space-arrangement, then that only means you're utilizing another! If not these hymns and prayers, then surely others! If not these gestures and postures, then certainly alternatives! In Christian worship, you cannot not use the arts!

So you had better know them! These are the art-forms in which you had better be willing to gain real competence. And simply to dismiss them as theological adiaphora is not sufficient. Adiaphora? Sure. But also: Media of meaning!

Languages of human expression and communication! We would be speechless without their non-verbal "voices!"

And your mastery of these art-forms, your competence in handling them, is simply part of your homework, as worship leader. A competence in dealing with these art-forms, that is, is only one more aspect of your homiletical preparation. These art-forms are languages of human communication: they "speak" the Word as surely as the language of verbalizing.

Therefore, a warning: The "sermon" these "non-verbal" art-forms "preach", Sunday after Sunday, is certainly as compelling and as eloquent as your sermon from the pulpit! For better and for worse!