Jamie Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, published a book in the fall of last year called Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, which was probably the best book I read in 2009. I was a little late in noticing this, but in January he gave a lecture at Calvin that highlighted the main themes of the book. The lecture is excellent (as is the book, which you definitely should read), and there is a lot to glean from it. Enjoy.

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I know I already posted this at the old site, but I'm posting it here as well as I continue to explore the new features and interface here, as well as to give you an opportunity to interact with it, as the comments on the old site cut out nearly as soon as the post went up.

I tip my hat to Jeff Patterson for posting this on his blog first. This short, five-minute clip talks about four major ways sound affects us. There is a lot of interesting and surprising information in the clip. I have little to add except this: consider what he says about sound, and then think about it in terms of worship. That was one of the first things that came to mind when I watched it. Enjoy.

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In my spare time—well, actually when I should doing schoolwork—I have been reading some on the history of Anglicanism. Having known very little about the tradition, I wanted to get a better picture of its roots. It was only recently that I learned of the great influence some of the continental Reformers had on Anglicanism during its most formative time, like Peter Martyr Vermigli and Martin Bucer, who both spent many years there, and John Calvin, whose influence spread through his writings.

The most notable Reformer in the English tradition is Thomas Cranmer. Church history classes I have taken in the past have touched on his life and work, but my knowledge of him was rather limited. One of the books I have been reading is Stephen Neill's 1958 study, simply called Anglicanism. Early on, discussing Cranmer's influence in the English Reformation, he writes the following:

It is to be noted that Cranmer, like the other Reformers, had fallen in love with the Bible. But his love took a particular form. He believed that the Bible was the living word of God to every man, and that it comes with the greatest power when unaccompanied by any human gloss, comment, or exposition. He was convinced that, if his fellow countrymen could be induced to read the word of God, or, if illiterate, to hear it read, it would in course of time make its way into their hearts and consciences.

Neill writes that the composition of the Book of Common Prayer was, without measure, the most significant contribution Cranmer made to the Church in the Reformation era. Whereas the genius of men like Calvin lay in their theological contributions, for Cranmer it was formulating a liturgy saturated with Scripture. Neill continues:

It was only in the next reign [of Edward VI] that Cranmer was able to provide his Church with a lectionary; when he was able to do so, he made the Church of England in a day the greatest Bible-reading Church in the world. In no other Church anywhere is the Bible read in public worship so regularly, with such order, and at such length, as in the Anglican fellowship of Churches. In making such provision, Cranmer was laying heavy demands on his Englishmen, and reposing great confidence in them. But in that too he was the typical Anglican—Anglicanism is a form of the Christian faith that demands and expects a great deal from ordinary people.

In those churches which still use the Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer's influence lives on. It is quite something to worship with an Anglican congregation and see how Scripture saturates the liturgy, and to know that this was the work of Cranmer himself. I find it quite significant that Neill sees the Anglican tradition defined by its worship, as opposed to a tradition like my own, which is characterized much more by its theology.

And so Neill writes, "We have no English Luther or Calvin...[instead] we have as our chief reformer the man who had a greater genius for liturgical worship than any other of whom we have record in the whole history of the Church."

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As I have been reading Desiring the Kingdom, author Jamie Smith has continued to provoke me to thought with his insights. Earlier, I quoted a portion of the introduction, which had pointed to some of the questions he was setting out to answer in the book. On page 68, Smith speaks briefly about Charles Taylor's notion of the "social imaginary" (discussed in Taylor's book, A Secular Age), and then talks about how that notion can help the Christian worldview conversation. In many ways, I think this portion directly addresses some of his earlier questions.

The 'social imaginary' is an affective, noncognitive understanding of the world. It is described as an imaginary (rather than a theory) because it is fueled by the stuff of the imagination rather than the intellect: it is made up of, and embedded in, stories, narratives, myths, and icons. These visions capture our hearts and imaginations by 'lining' our imagination, as it were—providing us with frameworks of 'meaning' by which we make sense of our world and our calling in it. An irreducible understanding of the world resides in our intuitive, precognitive grasp of these stories.

Now, what does this have to do with a Christian worldview? I suggest that instead of thinking about worldview as a distinctly Christian 'knowledge,' we should talk about a Christian 'social imaginary' that constitutes a distinctly Christian understanding of the world that is implicit in the practices of Christian worship. Discipleship and formation are less about erecting an edifice of Christian knowledge than they are a matter of developing a Christian know-how that intuitively 'understands' the world in the light of the fullness of the gospel. And insofar as an understanding is implicit in practice, the practices of Christian worship are crucial—the sine qua non—for developing a distinctly Christian understanding of the world. The practices of Christian worship are the analogue of biking around the neighborhood, absorbing an understanding of our environment that is precognitive and becomes inscribed in our adaptive unconscious.

What Smith means with the analogy of biking around the neighborhood is that when we live somewhere, we become intimately familiar with it such that we can make our way around it and to specific destinations without even really thinking about where we are going. Another analogy could be the unconscious way we operate a car with a manual transmission after years of doing it.

Smith's caution against the concept of worldview becoming too intellectual is one I am familiar with, and I think is helpful. The aim of worldview education is the transformation of the whole person; however, there is a tendency for it to get bogged down in thought and conversation. Smith is entirely right to recognize that worship (not just our public worship on Sunday) plays an integral part—in fact, it may even be the crucial part—in forming an holistic understanding of the world.

We must look at the world through the lenses of the gospel, and that begins when our hearts are rightly ordered. What we worship shapes our hearts, dictates what we love, and fosters that intuitive know-how we operate from as we make our way through the world. That Smith should point out how important it is that education be aware of this is not surprising.

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Last week I was listening to a sermon that was something like 17-18 minutes long. I cannot remember what the sermon was on or where I found it (I deleted the mp3 file), but I remember thinking that the preacher had really not done justice to the text. The fact that he had lumbered along in an utterly apathetic drone did not help.

That prompted me to tweet about it, to which Scott Schultz replied with that he thought sermons longer than that could border on distraction because there are so many other things going on in worhsip. That short discussion provides the context for this post.

First, as I mentioned in the tweet, I don't think there is a magic number for what length of time a sermon should be. I've heard Mark Driscoll before say something to the effect that he is going to preach for an hour no matter what. Part of it, I understand, is his desire to break the inattentive nature of this fast-paced culture. But I don't think he's right about mandating a length of time. In fact, it seems to border on some sort of legalism. It is also seems to be a reflection on evangelicalism's tendency to view the sermon as the only important part of worship, everything else being tangential.

Second, and related to that, I am in full agreement with Scott that there are lots of things going on in worship. Worship cannot be devoid of certain elements, nor can disproportionate weight given to one or two elements above others. The public worship of God is a unified whole, and needs to be viewed as such. Music, prayer, confession and absolution, the reading of Scripture and proclamation of the Word, partaking of the Lord's table, and the pronouncement of blessing are all integral parts of worship.

Third, although all the various elements are integral to worship, I do think there is something unique about the preaching of the Word and the sacrament of the Eucharist. There is a reversal of sorts—in our songs, prayers, and offerings it is us, the worshipers, in some sense giving those things to God. But in the preaching and in the table God gives something to us. The first chapter of the Second Helvetic Confession states, "The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful." Certainly, that is quite a loaded statement, but it gets at the significance of the proclaimed Word. Also, it is not insignificant that faith comes by hearing (Rom. 10:17), and that faith is confessed assent to the proclaimed message that Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:8-10).

Additionally, the Lord's Supper, as a means of grace, is also something that flows from God to us. The Heidelberg Catechism speaks of it as something that reminds and assures us of Christ's sacrifice (Q&A 75) and the nourishes and refreshes us (Q&A 77). John Calvin taught that the sacrament should always accompany the preaching of the Word because there was no more fitting way to conclude the proclamation of the Gospel than to taste and see it. John Witvliet, of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, agrees: "The sacrament seals the Word proclaimed. This means that if a sermon can’t be preached before the Lord’s Supper, it probably shouldn’t be preached!"

Fourth, and this is the main point I should have made more clearly originally, I have not yet heard a sermon do justice to a text in a short time frame of 15 minutes. It would be unwise to say it is impossible. In fact, what I heard at the wedding last weekend indicated to me that it is quite possible (although the context there was a little different). The years I have spent listening to sermons, however, seem to demonstrate a pattern of taking longer than that to really unpack a text. There is a personal perspective to this as well—having prepared a few sermons myself, I could not have adequately made the points I wanted to in less time.

All that being said, I think it would be quite wrong, as I said before, to require a sermon to fit within a time frame. That goes back again to something I read in Martyn Lloyd-Jones' lectures, Preaching and Preachers, for to do so would stifle the work of the Holy Spirit in preaching. There is a lot more that can be said about that, but I think you could easily draw your own conclusions on that point even if you have not yet read the book.

This all feels relatively inconclusive, but at this point I'll turn it over to Scott and anyone else who might like to offer some thoughts...

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