My dear Pastor Arthur (now Reverend), God bless him, has taken to doing "taize" (pronounced "TI-zee" I think) style services for mostly scattered and sporadic occasions. Lately, however, it seems as if we've been having more and more of these very mellow and very different services at TJCAC and I'm not too sure I think this is a good thing.
For those who are unfamiliar with this (I myself do not know too much about it at all actually), it's basically a simplified way of seeking God's will in Scripture. That's the best that I can describe it, it's a form of church, like a Sunday morning service, but different. Instead of the usual message and preaching from the Bible by the pastor/speaker, there are specially chosen verses that are prepared ahead of time, read, and reread to the congregation. After each reading, there are a few minutes of quiet reflection while Arthur (or whoever running the program) asks a few questions like "What words jump out at you?" or "What's God saying to you through these passages?" or "What in your life do these Scriptures speak about?" Obviously, a lot of what the congregation gets out of it is very personal and will no doubt differ (probably drastically) from person to person. That's the general gist of the concept of a taize service.
Now, first, I do not wish to have anyone mistake my statement for something along the lines of "This is boring" because that isn't what I'm saying. Now that we've cleared that up, I want to go on and also say that the taize style bothering me isn't coming from any opinion that ordinary people should not interpret Scripture for themselves. I mean, that's one of the reasons why the Protestants split off and reformed from the Catholic system in the first place, if I have my historical facts and summary thereof correct. Luther understood that the Word of God (i.e. the Bible) must and was intended to be available to the common Christian. We take for granted that we have access to the Bible because we can just go and buy one (and pick a version you like!) at the store, but it was not always so. I'm thankful that Luther stood up for what he did and so I'm also grateful for the chance to own, read, and interpret my
own copy of God's Bible.
So we've got it cleared up what my problem with taize is not, but now I've got to explain what it is. To be honest, I'm afraid of coming off as nothing more than a lofty-minded talker instead of a realistic doer here, but I do think it deserves to be said. Basically, I just don't think the taize style of worship fits very well into how we ought to approach corporate worship. I've got a few reasons for this, but here are the three main ones:
- It is sometimes dangerous to leave interpretation of Scripture and the discernment of Biblical truths up to the common individual.
- Pastoral preaching really ought to be the focus of occasions where we have corporate (i.e. large group and community) worship.
- Personal interpreting of Scripture does mostly nothing to clarify or deepen understanding in Bible passages (especially to newcomers and young Christians).
It is important that I say "sometimes dangerous" and not just "dangerous" because, again, I do believe the individual Christian should be able to and is even responsible for reading and interpreting Scripture as an individual. But the key thing there is that it's done as an individual act of worship and should be kept separate from (instead of substituting) corporate worship. I can read God's word alone and personally seek out His revelation to me. That's fine and good, and a privilege too, but that act of worship ought not replace what we do as a congregation together.
Given a passage selected and read from the Bible, and told to "reflect on what it means to you," people in the congregation are left to draw their own conclusions which may or may not be entirely correct. I'm all for multiple opinions (even if I may not take much delight in seeking out others'). You and I may have different opinions, and I'm okay with yours being different from mine and I don't need to have you conform to my ideas. At the same time, however, I know for a fact (read: I know apart from opinion) that there are some things that are certain. This means, by implication, that there are some opinions more valuable than others (take Jesus' for example).
God has a reason for having only one "shepherd" (figuratively, a pastor) per flock. Like it says in 1 Corinthians 12, the "Body of Christ" (our congregation/church) is made up of a variety of parts and we can't all be feet, or ears, or appendixes. Every body has one head and even though all body parts have the ability to "know" certain things (like how to walk, how to grab things, etc... muscular memory is what it's called, I think) we still leave deeper and higher reasoning up to the head. Here I'm confronted with a little problem. I want to, for the sake of argument, say that it is the pastor who is represented by the head since he (or she in some churches) is the one who leads the congregation and decides on direction and vision for the church. However, it also says in the Bible that Christ is the head of the church so some people might take issue with my referencing here. Anyway, you get the point.
The pastor/preacher's job is to study Scripture, seek God's revelation in it, and then share his/her findings with the congregation and the congregation should be trusting and still discerning of the speaker's words. We trust that this person has been spoken to by God but should still listen alertly to see if their preaching agrees with what is Biblically true. 2 Timothy 3:16 says "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness..." (NIV) and so we can definitively say that, yes, God does speak through (potentially all of) the Bible and people can say "God says this: ..." if they are basing it on the Bible and it really does say that.
There are some truths that really just need to be affirmed and not discussed or opinionated. Too often we shy away from infringing on someone else's comfort and so we avoid confronting the issues head on, saying that what you think is as valid as what I think. This is tempting to believe, but rarely ever the case. The Bible is very clear about some things and we should be submissively accepting these rather than interpreting our way to (or more often than not, interpreting our way sinfully away from) these truths.
Without rambling on anymore, I just want to reiterate my first point: people interpreting Scripture is good, but interpretation that replaces what should be done in a pastoral capacity is dangerous, subjective, and a little wishy washy -- the pastor must take hold of his role and speak from the Bible, by the Spirit, and with authority given from God. People can read and think all they want about the Bible, but that shouldn't replace hearing the voice of God through authoritative speaking. Read, reread, and reflect on your own time.
This ties well into my next point, which is that when we get together as a collection of Christians, we should focus our attention towards to preaching of the Gospel, of God's message to man in the form of the Bible. I'm not pulling this stuff out of thin air, by the way. 2 Timothy 4 goes on to charge in a most grave and serious fashion the importance of preaching.
1 I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he appears to set up his Kingdom: 2 Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching.3 For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will reject the truth and chase after myths. (2 Timothy 4:1-4, NLT)
Verses 1 and 2 are very clear. It's infinitely important that the word of God be preached to the people. Not just read to the people, but preached. This pretty much always involves discernment and definitive "This is what God is saying..." statements on the part of the preacher. Anyone can read Scripture, but it takes a special calling and enabling by God to draw exceptional degrees of meaning from the Bible and to be able to communicate that to a congregation.
Reading on, you'll see that verses 3 and 4 are where I find Biblical support for my previous point, though it paints the congregation in a more sinister light. Same idea: people can interpret things wrong (especially if they
want to).
So Paul clearly marks the importance of preaching. I remember reading somewhere (I think it was on Alex's sixsteps) that one of the defining characteristics of a church body is that there is regular and consistent preaching from the Bible whenever it gathers. How true! Church just isn't church without preaching. It'd be just a country club for whiners.
Moving on, I recall a sermon by John Piper that presented things as follows:
Words >[Preaching]> Works >[Inspiring]> Wonder >[Stimulating]> Worship
To explain this potentially confusing diagram of sorts, Pastor Piper understood that when the word of God is preached it should lead to good works (i.e. a physical, tangible change in the way people live). These good works in turn inspire wonder and appreciation of God's goodness, power, majesty, and gloriousness and so lead to worship. Thus, by association, the word of God and preaching become necessary for worship to take place. Talk about a shameless plug (but hey, he's right).
Understanding must always be the foundation of feeling, or all we have is baseless emotionalism. But understanding of God that doesn't give rise to feeling for God becomes mere intellectualism and deadness. This is why the Bible continually calls us to think and consider and meditate and remember on the one hand, and to rejoice and fear and mourn and delight and hope and be glad on the other hand. Both are essential for worship.
This sums up my last point better than I could ever attempt. To be able to worship properly, we have to both understand what we're worshiping (i.e. we have to "get it") and be able to grasp why God deserves our adoration, while having an emotional experience rooted in that understanding (I know I'm just paraphrasing, but what else can I do). If we don't understand why God should be worshiped and do it for the good feelings, well, that's similar to saying sorry but not knowing what for. You don't know what you've done (or rather, what God's done for you) but you're going to admit to agreeing with things you don't even know about.
Preaching, as opposed to "do it yourself" taize interpretation, fulfills the need for guidance and correction in the people of God. We all need to be set straight, some more often than others, but without (confrontational) preaching, who is going to do the rebuking? If your teachers themselves don't point out your mistakes, why bother looking for/at them? There is no reason to change if all goes well. For this last point is one that I think must be made, especially about Jaffray. Everyone here knows one another since it's a small church, and very well at times, but instead of this allowing for frequent and necessary correction of one another, we've become too afraid to speak up and consequently shake things up a bit.
John 17:17 says that we are to be sanctified (fancy word for "become more and more like Christ") by the truth found in the Bible. We need to hear God's message from the mouths of our pastors, to hear "You've been a good steward, keep it up!" and "Honestly, this needs fixing. Shape up!" from our preachers. If there's one complaint from the congregation that every speaker should fear, it's that they are not challenging enough.
This last point becomes all the more important for new believers and newcomers. For the latter, I'm sure most non-churchgoers would not be able to understand for themselves what God has to say to them, especially if the passage selected was, like today's, mainly to do with issues faced within the church body itself (issues that outsiders would have little to no experience in, making them not immediately relevant to them). For new believers, they still lack the maturity to figure out for themselves the "solid food"of the Bible. You don't give babies steak or entire boiled eggs because they can't handle it. Similarly, new believers can't be expected to interpret Scripture for themselves yet since:
- The passages for taize are usually taken out of the larger context since there is little to no preaching to fill in the gaps.
- New believers do not have the wealth of Biblical knowledge to compare and cross-reference with what they interpret from a single passage.
The second point above would mean some people are quite haphazardly drawing conclusions, as best as they can, which may or may not have come from God at all -- the litmus test for whether something is from God or not is whether or not it agrees with (the rest of) the Bible. This is also why it might be dangerous (to revisit my first point stated many words ago).
For the seasoned Christian, taize might not be such a bad idea, but still, I'd argue that reading and rereading Scripture does not forward understanding of it significantly. I mean, you can only get so much out of hearing and reading it. That's why there are entire courses on
hermeneutics for pastors and ministry workers to take in seminary. That is (in part at least) what you (pastors and preachers) are paid for, so get on it!
I'm not going to go as far as saying that taize is a complete waste of time, since I do think it calms the heart to let it soak in the word of God among doing some other things, but I just don't think it's appropriate for Sunday services given all the things that could go wrong with it, the things we ought to be doing instead of taize, and its general lack of substantial content for most. But hey, all of this could just be me so feel free to leave a comment (or send me inflammatory hate mail in defense of taize) telling me what you think.
Labels: Christianity, Rant
