An Inkling
Woe is me. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
So prayed Isaiah when he found himself in the very presence of Almighty God (Is. 6:5). It was and is a good prayer for a person like me who lives in the midst of a people like us.
I did today what I have done most years when I’ve been at General Assembly on Sunday – I skipped the official General Assembly worship service and found another.
Back in 1990, when I started going to Assemblies, I attended these services. Their size is always impressive, for most of the Presbyterian congregations in the area join in the service. You can also be sure that the service and its music will be planned with great care. But after four or five years of this, and realizing that I left the service depressed each time, I decided for the sake of my own weak spirit that I had better find an alternative.
Most often I have found a local congregation where I knew the worship would be distinct from the Assembly worship, i.e., one where I knew that the preaching would not likely denature the gospel, where the liturgy would not be more concerned with the odd standards for non-sexist language* than it was with honoring God, and where we would not spend the whole service congratulating ourselves on how diverse we are.**
Usually I’ve found a local congregation of Presbyterian flavor that was having its own service. Once I attended an Orthodox Church across the street from the convention center. This time I could find no ready local church option, so I went to a gathering of about forty friends in a hotel meeting room, all of whom had decided for reasons similar to my own, that they would do better to have their own service.
It was both wonderful and sad. It was a wonderfully unself-conscious time of worship. Language was unguarded, natural, and affectionate toward God. Prayers for each other and the larger church flowed from the heart. The songs were mostly a capella, but they were heart-felt and God-honoring.
I didn’t leave depressed, as I often have from the Assembly services. Nonetheless, there was a sadness too, as I realized that I was in a part of the body of Christ that felt the need to worship separately from the larger part of that body. We thereby gave expression in our worship to the very sort of divisions that mark us as a church these days. Lord have mercy.
Or better yet, Woe is me. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Lord, bring on the coal (Is. 6:6-7).
And start with me,
Keith
* For those unacquainted with these “standards,” they are such things as:
- It’s better to jump through all sorts of grammar hoops, thereby rendering the liturgy into clownish English, than it is to use the common biblical pronoun for God, “he.”
- It’s okay to make rare use of the name by which Jesus frequently addressed God, “Father,” so long as it is “balanced” with a parallel reference to “Mother.”
- But it is better to avoid “Father” altogether lest someone think that the one who wrote the prayer is ignorant of the “standards.”
- Etc. (Lots of etc’s.)
** This one is even harder to explain than the “standards.” God’s Kingdom is diverse, and the less diverse a church, the paler it’s representation of the Kingdom. But when the church in worship is more focused on its own diversity than it is on the One whose gracious presence can gather an amazing diversity, which is what I’ve found in most Assembly worship services, then worship devolves into mere corporate religious narcissism – not a pretty sight.
