My last two thoughts for now on the Eucharismatic ‘manifesto’ that I sketched.
Regularity and Form
I’ve drawn a doctrine of the church that maps four encounters with God: Baptism, Lord’s Supper, Preaching, and Contributory Worship. It’s not wildly different from lots of Protestant versions, it’s essentially word and sacrament, with the charismatic addition being my understanding of contributory worship. I, as you might have noticed, want to call two of these things sacraments and the other two sacramental, though that could be a sign I’ve been reading too much Alexander Schmemann.
I think that all four of these things should happen weekly, with the (hopefully obvious) exception that should only baptise someone if you have someone to baptise. However, spreading those you have to baptise out across multiple Sundays so that more meetings have all the encounters seems like a good thing to me, even though there are plenty of practical considerations that make that harder.
I am arguing for a liturgical movement through these elements as the story of the Bible is acted out for us. That’s why you would most naturally start with Baptism as birth, crossing from death to life, the Red Sea, and the Cross and Resurrection.
You’d then probably, and controversially, move to Preaching as we are instructed in the faith and God speaks with us. We don’t like that because people are late and would miss part of the sermon. I am, of course, arguing that all four of these things matter, the message is not the main event.
We’d then respond to God’s word and washing in worship, bringing our sacrifices of praise to the altar: our prayers, scripture readings, songs, tongues, interpretations and prophecies. We continue to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
Finally, we come to the altar, discovering afresh it’s become a table, laden with food for us to eat: the Lord’s Supper.
I’m not hung up on the order I just proposed, but I am hung up on the idea that the overall liturgical shape of what we do should tell a deliberate story.
Many charismatic readers will wonder ‘where’s the response time’—the answer being, wherever you want it to be. Which leads me on to my second thought
Dynamism and Change
We shouldn’t be scared of liturgy, as though our running orders weren’t a liturgy already. What’s important is our attitude towards them. Are we open to the idea that God might break into our forms and do something different? Are we actively listening to God to see what he would like to do with this people today?
We should be, and therefore our meetings should be ‘open to surprise.’ James K. A. Smith in some of his work on Pentecostal metaphysics speaks of a Cosmos that is ‘open to surprise.’ That’s a eucharismatic view of the world, even though I can’t claim him for my gang wholesale, our church meetings should feel the same.
Don’t shake them up because they’re getting ‘stale,’ repetition isn’t your problem there, eating stale bread on a different plate doesn’t make it more palatable. Instead, allow your church to be shaken by the Spirit of the living God: what’s he saying today? What’s he doing today?
Sometimes what he’s doing is changing lives through the ministry of Word and Sacrament, this is not to be despised. As these are the ordinary means of grace, that’s probably what he’s doing most of the time. Sometimes what he’s doing is different enough to change what we’re doing, and sometimes what he’s doing is blatantly obvious because the Spirit has fallen like fire from heaven and you’re all on the ground as though dead.
The Eucharismatic Argument
The argument is, in essence, we can have both/and. We do not need to throw proverbial babies anywhere, we can eat our cake, what has been kept apart need not be.
Now, I don’t have a lot of experience here. This series has not been ‘come and see my church and look at how to do it,’ I do not have a track record of convincing people that this is the way to go. It’s important you know that in case you’ve been fired up reading along.
In the first post I sketched a manifesto but said that really it was ‘in the direction’ of a manifesto—like that annoying thing academics do when everything is titled Towards X, because arguing anything with conviction is a bit gauche.
Manifestos require collaboration, they require ideas to be tested. I think this blending of sacramental and charismatic/Pentecostal thinking is important. I’d love to develop it further. I might be totally alone (I’m not, there are dozens of us—cue the meme). If you think I’m right, especially if you’d like to do some thinking about it, I’d love to talk.
Photo by Haley Rivera on Unsplash
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