Orthodox men love church, says Frederica Matthewes-Green. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across an article she had written after dialoguing with one hundred Orthodox men who had converted to Orthodoxy as adults to find out what drew them in.
It's no secret that in most Protestant churches, females make up a larger portion of the congregation, often significantly. This was one of the reasons Matthewes-Green decided to find out why Orthodoxy bucks that trend. What she discovered was very interesting. Look at some of the responses below. It is especially noteworthy, I think, that many of the men commented on the challenge of Orthodoxy:
"It's the only church where you are required to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you."
"Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it's also about overcoming oneself. I am challenged in a deep way, not to 'feel good about myself' but to become holy. It is rigorous, and in that rigour I find liberation."
"Guys either want to be challenged to fight for a glorious and honourable cause, and get filthy dirty in the process, or to loaf in our recliners with plenty of beer, pizza, and football. But most churches want us to behave like orderly gentlemen, keeping our hands and mouths nice and clean."
"Christ in Orthodoxy is a militant, Jesus takes Hell captive. Orthodox Jesus came to cast fire on the earth. In Holy Baptism we pray for the newly-enlisted warriors of Christ, male and female, that they may ‘be kept ever warriors invincible.'"
"...‘the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay’ has almost nothing to do with the Eternal Logos entering inexorably, silently yet heroically, into the fabric of created reality."
"Men get pretty cynical when they sense someone's attempting to manipulate their emotions, especially when it's in the name of religion. They appreciate the objectivity of Orthodox worship. It's not aimed at prompting religious feelings but at performing an objective duty."
A lot of the things these men say they like in Orthodoxy could be true of Protestantism as well. The problem, though, is that many churches have changed and have adapted too much to modern culture. But a Protestant church that is true to its heritage and tradition does require you to adapt to it. I mentioned the Book of Common Prayer the other day; worshipping in a church which uses the BCP presents a challenge that you need to adapt to. Protestant faith is serious and difficult and demanding; Jesus said that if anyone was to follow him they needed to first lay down their life (Matt. 16:24-25). We are called to be holy too, and learning to submit to Christ's Lordship over all of your life is a difficult process. Early Protestants saw Jesus as a strong and powerful King; the tender, soft Swedish Jesus is a modern invention. Protestant worship isn't about feelings and emotions and it does require participation.
But it's not difficult to see that in many churches this is not the case anymore. So, maybe we need to change something. Maybe it's not about coming up with new ways to challenge men, but returning to more classical forms of faith and worship. Maybe instead of dumbing everything down, we make men wrestle again with words and phrases that take some work to understand. Maybe instead of making worship as comfortable as we can, we make them kneel once in a while or stand for prolonged periods of time. Maybe we get them thinking hard about being disciples of Christ, as workers, as husbands and fathers, as citizens, as sports fans. Maybe we don't allow them to be passive and train them to teach or to lead in prayer or to mentor young men.
Christianity should be hard work. It should be challenging. It requires us, after all, to surrender everything to Christ. If men are not learning that in our churches, then something is wrong.
The Prayer Book is a treasury of words and phrases that are still for countless English-speaking people the nearest you can come to an adequate language for the mysteries of faith. It gives us words that say where and who we are before God: 'we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep', 'we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table', but also, 'we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs through hope of the everlasting kingdom'. It gives us words for God that hold on to the paradoxes we can't avoid: 'God... who art always more ready to hear than we to pray,' 'who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity, 'whose property is always to have mercy.' A treasury of words for God – but also a source of vision for an entire society: 'Give us grace seriously to lay heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions'; 'If ye shall perceive your offences to be such as are not only against God but also against your neighbours; then ye shall reconcile yourselves unto them; being ready to make restitution'.
The world has changed, the very rhythms of our speech have changed, our society is irreversibly more plural, and we have – with varying degrees of reluctance – found other and usually less resonant ways of talking to God and identifying who we are in his presence. If we used only the Prayer Book these days we'd risk confusing the strangeness of the mysteries of faith with the strangeness of antique and lovely language. But we're much the poorer for forgetting it and pushing it to the margins as much as we often do in the Church.
This is one of the reasons I love the Prayer Book. The language may be difficult and dated, but for myself, at least, it has a way of putting into words things I sometimes have trouble expressing. There is a challenge – a good challenge – in wrestling with the phrases and thoughts, one that will draw you deeper in the mysteries of faith and the wonders of God.
We do ourselves a great disservice when we cast off as irrelevant those things which require some work to understand. In the case of the Prayer Book, we miss out on some of the richest prayers and words of worship, and some of the most profound ways of expressing the timeless truths of the Christian faith.
I've often wondered why Psalm 117 is so short, just two verses:
Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord.
But as I was reading it this morning it struck me that nothing more needs to be said. What other reason do we need to praise God than his great love toward us and his enduring faithfulness?
Incidentally, I discovered that Psalm 117 is the middle chapter of the Bible, according to the chapter division our Bibles use. Fitting, I think, that the central chapter of the Bible is a call to all people to praise the Lord.
Of the things I have never understood, these are included – why church attendance rises so much at Christmas, and why so many recording artists produce Christmas albums during their career. The only conclusion I can draw is that they must not think about the words they are singing when they sing the traditional hymns of this season.
The church has many great hymns that proclaim the wonderful truths of the Christian faith, but I find that many of our Advent and Christmas hymns make those declarations in an especially poignant way. I was thinking about this yesterday evening during our carol service, looking at the many unfamiliar faces gathered in the church. Why were they there? And why did they so readily sing these songs, even with exuberance?
If people took a moment to think about the lyrics of the Advent and Christmas hymns, I wonder how they would react to something like the third verse of 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing':
Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, Ris'n with healing in His wings. Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.
Many of these songs are joyful expressions of the wonder of the incarnation. Other songs boldly present a challenge to those who have not confessed Christ as Lord, and demand a response. Consider this verse, from 'Joy to the World':
He rules the world with truth and grace, And makes the nations prove The glories of His righteousness, And wonders of His love.
Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, Born this happy morning, Jesus, to Thee be all glory giv'n!
In November of last year, Al Wolters wrote an excellent article for the online version of Comment magazine, making a similar point about the 'Hallelujah Chorus' in Handel'sMessiah. He notes that despite the overtly religious theme – that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and that his Kingdom rules over all the earth – people in our culture still stand up when the choir sings the majestic chorus. What makes this especially interesting is the juxtaposition of the confession of Christ as Lord, ruling over all the earth, with Psalm 2, which is sung prior to the chorus. Wolters observes,
The meaning is unmistakable. The nations at large conspire against the Lord and against his Anointed, and plan to cast off all restraints that he has imposed on them. But God will only laugh at their defiance, and he (now addressed in the second person) will crush their rebellion and smash them like a piece of pottery. Then the "Hallelujah," with its celebration of the universal triumph of God in Jesus Christ, is sung. And audiences across several continents get to their feet in symbolic endorsement.
What do we make of this? It may be surprising that people who don't consider themselves Christians continue to sing these songs (or even celebrate Christmas, for that matter), but old cultural mores die hard, and that these songs remain so widely known owes to the vestiges of a culture in which Christianity once had a more prominent place.
Still, how can so many people sing the words of these songs and not be taken aback by the startling claims they make? One reason, perhaps, is their familiarity. Repetition serves as an aid to remembering something and implanting it in our mind, but too much repetition can sometimes dull the effect of the thing to be remembered. We hear these songs played over and over again at this time of year, and it may just be that the oft-repeated choruses no longer hit us with the full force of their declarations. More, the power of the message of the church's Advent and Christmas hymns is diluted further when mixed in with the many trivial and meaningless seasonal songs that have been produced over the years, such as the patently ridiculous 'Here Comes Santa Claus.'
Unfortunately, many of those who sing these songs during this season will likely not be in a place where the songs are accompanied by a faithful proclamation of the gospel, underscoring and heralding the powerful truths the hymn-writers penned, challenging the listeners to surrender their lives to the newborn King they sing of. The sad reality is that many of the churches that see a swelling of attendance during the holidays are no longer known for their orthodoxy, and so the bold hymns of Christmas just become happy carols to sing by candlelight.
That being said, it really is quite significant that during this season, even in our day, people will repeatedly hear songs proclaiming that Jesus is Lord broadcast over the airwaves or in their neighbourhoods or in churches all across our towns and cities. Let us hope and pray that as they hear and sing these songs and find themselves confronted with the truth of the gospel, that they would be captivated by the wonder and the promise of the incarnation, and fall on their knees in worship before the Lord of heaven and earth.
These sorts of videos where someone draws while another person narrates seem to be trendy these days. I've mentioned before the importance of recognising the value of our work, and so I found this video to be particularly good. It's so important for those in our churches to see their Monday-Saturday work as a calling, not just something they do to pay the bills. Let's keep working to help people see the significance of their vocation, and their work as an act of worship.
Last night, we had dinner with an elderly couple from the church, after which we stood around their piano to sing some hymns. In the preface to the hymnal, which was produced by the Evangelical Movement of Wales, was this list of instructions originally given by John Wesley on how to sing hymns:
1. Learn the tunes. 2. Sing them as printed. 3. Sing all. If it is a cross to you, take it up and you will find it a blessing. 4. Sing lustily and with good courage. 5. Sing modestly. Do not bawl. 6. Sing in time. Do not run before or stay behind. 7. Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself or any other creature. In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually.
It is not a bad list to check yourself against as you think about your own singing in worship, whatever the musical style.
Here is a conversation that went on over on my Facebook wall a few days ago:
You can see from one of my responses that I had ulterior motives for posting the question, more than just finding out what people thought about it (as interesting as that was). The reason I initially posed the question was because I was reading an article by N.T. Wright the other day regarding his position on the ordination of women, and the point discussed above came up. The context was a discussion of Paul's instructions for worship in 1 Corinthians 11. Wright's conclusions are as follows (and you may need to read more of his article for the broader argument):
The underlying point then seems to be that in worship it is important for both men and women to be their truly created selves, to honour God by being what they are and not blurring the lines by pretending to be something else. One of the unspoken clues to this passage may be Paul’s assumption that...in worship we are anticipating [creation's] eventual restoration (15.27–28).
...When humans are renewed in the Messiah and raised from the dead, they will be set in authority over the angels (6.3). In worship, the church anticipates how things are going to be in that new day. When a woman is praying or prophesying (perhaps in the language of angels, as in 13.1), she needs to be truly what she is, since it is to male and female alike, in their mutual interdependence as God’s image-bearing creatures, that the world, including the angels, is to be subject. God’s creation needs humans to be fully, gloriously and truly human, which means fully and truly male and female. This, and of course much else besides, is to be glimpsed in worship.
The Corinthians, then, may have drawn the wrong conclusion from the ‘tradition’ that Paul had taught them. Whether or not they could follow his argument any better than we can, it seems clear that his main aim was that the marks of difference between the sexes should not be set aside in worship. At least perhaps.
We face different issues, but making sure that our worship is ordered appropriately, to honour God’s creation and anticipate its fulfilment in the new creation, is still a priority. There is no ‘perhaps’ about that. When we apply this to the question of women’s ministry, it seems to me that we should certainly stress equality in the role of women but should be very careful about implying identity. This passage tells, for me at least, quite strongly on the side of those who see the ministry of women as significantly different to the ministry of men and therefore insists that we need both to be themselves, rather than for one to try to become a clone of the other.
The point of this post is not to state or defend a position on women's ministry and ordination, but I will confess that I found Wright's line of reasoning confusing. I have not heard this argument before in the material I have read on the subject (including the Counterpoints book on women in ministry, and numerous papers and articles). I realise that this is only one point in his broader argument, but I am really not sure how Wright got from arguing that worship is an anticipation of the new creation to arguing, essentially, that women should be ordained. What especially strikes me is that he keeps emphasising equality of the sexes while emphasising different identities and marks of women and men (a point which the 'complementarian' camp makes frequently in defense of their practice of not ordaining women).
If those of you who participated in the initial discussion have come over here to read this, what do you think now? How would you change or add to your previous answer to the question? What do you think of Wright's reasoning? For everyone else, what do you think?
On the desk in his office, the pastor of our church has this definition of expository preaching, which he ascribes to someone named Dr. Olsen. I'm not sure who that is, but I think this is a helpful working definition:
In recognition of the power of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word of God, and expository sermon explains a given passage of Scripture clearly, interprets it carefully in its context and in relation to the whole of Scripture, and applies it relevantly by deriving its central idea and structure from that text in expectation of the response of the hearers in faith, obedience and worship.
