When we affirm the covenant God made with us in Holy Baptism, we also affirm our commitment to “hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s Supper.” That is, we recognize that gathering with the community of the baptized for worship is essential to our lives of faith.
Yet statistics show that worship attendance is declining. Even more, the threshold for what is considered “regular” worship attendance has decreased to every other week or less.
As the church, we must ask, why? Our lives are busy. The stores are open. Athletic practices are scheduled at the same time as worship. Worship may seem dull and out of touch with culture. We seek meaning in any number of places, making worship attendance one choice among many.
A crisis of faith
At the heart of all of these reasons is a crisis of faith. When hearing the word and sharing in the Lord’s Supper becomes a choice among many choices rather than the way of life for the baptized, we reveal our low expectations of God’s transforming and life-giving presence in the community of Christ gathered for worship. Do we really believe that God shows up and offers transformation through the worship of our congregations?
In the covenant God makes with us at baptism, God promises that we will encounter Christ’s living and transformative presence in the gift of worship. Although we can encounter Christ anywhere, the church is uniquely gifted with means of grace shared across time and space with its proclamation of the word of God and the administration of the sacraments in worship.
In worship, we hear the word of God in the Scripture read, sung and proclaimed entwining our lives and voices with the gospel story that names us as participants in that story. The hopes of the generations of the faithful become our hopes.
The word of God becomes living and active in our lives leading us to how our lives show forth God’s baptismal call to joy, service and justice. We are transformed by the word to live lives awash with hope and purpose.
The mission to share God’s grace with the hungry, sick, outcast and hurting is named as our own as we share in the Lord’s Supper. We partake of an abundant meal of mercy taking on the righteousness and love of Christ in grace, forgiveness and new life while also sharing in the struggles and needs of the world with the compassion of Christ.
In the sharing of the Lord’s Supper, our identity is one with the whole community of Christ. We are transformed by this meal to live lives awash with compassion and mercy.
The covenant God makes with us in baptism ensures that we experience the presence of Christ by hearing the word and sharing the supper which continually recalls to us our identity as the baptized and reforms our lives into the shape of God’s love for the sake of the whole world.
Worship that reflects a living God
How does your congregation’s practice of worship proclaim with confidence that God is living and active in word and sacrament, transforming the lives of those who are gathered?
How does your worship service re-form the assembly’s identity as beloved children of God leading them to live every day bathed in the mercy and compassion of God?
How does your congregation’s decisions about music, technology and other God-given worship tools point beyond themselves to the living and active presence of God in worship?
With God-given and diverse gifts, each congregation will answer these questions differently.
Consider:
In the time of the gathering, don’t just welcome people to worship. Affirm the response to God’s call to be in the presence of Christ as essential members of the body of Christ. Emphasize the participation of all generations and all education levels in worship. Plan worship services that engage all five senses. Doing so will offer places for all to participate, even those with disabilities.
Whenever the assembly participates in the proclamation or response to the word of God, leaders can remind the assembly that each member is an essential part of the proclamation of worship. Invite people to sing a hymn or song by saying, “Please stand and join your voice in proclaiming the gospel by singing (this song).” Or, before the prayers of intercession note, “We pray to God, confident that God’s love reaches into the whole world,” in the worship folder.
Connect the sharing of the Lord’s Supper to the response of the community to those who are in need in the community in preaching and music selections during the distribution of the elements. Concentrate on making the connections during the time of sending.
Worship leaders can specifically connect how the Scripture readings for the day shape our lives as the assembly is sent into the world through closing litanies, blessings and dismissals. Collections, donations or participants in specific service ministries may be blessed and sent into service from worship. Various vocations, from students to health care workers to teachers, may be affirmed in their baptismal vocations in everyday life.
For every community of faith, the forming of the body of Christ for worship is a gift of transformation and re-formation through word and sacrament promised to us in Holy Baptism. We remember our identities primarily as children of God.
Worship is a life-giving gift of God’s presence that leaves us with the desire for more, each week in worship and in our everyday lives.
"Please stand and join your voice in proclaiming the gospel by singing (this song)."
Really!?! Some hymns do hit the Gospel, and hit it very well, but that is not all of them. Proclaiming the Gospel is very important, and can be done with music, but it's not just making any old statement about God, or even Jesus. Unless you're prepared to go Willow Creek, gimmicks won't save church attendance.
What's lost here, why people are leaving the church, is that they don't see a need for Jesus (and by extension the church). That requires the Law, talking about sin, and confronting it head-on at the foot of the cross. It is only through that dying and rising with Christ, that the church will be relevant, can't help but be relevant and will be vibrant.
Practically, this means a lot more than "involving all five senses". Dealing with sin, including our own, is a messy business because our sins tear at us and bring us down. It's the struggle to get those sins to the cross, and hear/proclaim how Jesus bears those sins for us on the cross, and still gives us new life. It's hard, because confronting our sins means we must die. But to the congregation broken by disunity, or the congregation that struggles with providing a safe place in a rough neighborhood, etc etc, we must get at the root cause of the sin--our rebellion against God-- before the proclamation of Jesus crucified for us makes any sense.
Peter makes an excellent point. Law and gospel must be balanced. Much recent Lutheran theology regarding worship and other issues, including this article, does not properly distinguish law and gospel. The law is the necessary precursor to hearing the gospel. Self-satisfied, self-righteous people, like many in our time and culture, need the law preached to them to create a hunger for the gospel, as it is found in right worship. We should be careful to emphasize that the Eucharist primarily forgives sins; it is not foremost a motivation for good works.
Perhaps there is a fundamental issue with this article:
Most of us have never made that affirmation - we were baptized as infants and the decision was never ours. It was not a conscious choice led by the Holy Spirit.
I don't know if I was ever baptized, and in all likelihood, if it was done, it would have been called a "christening" since I was an Army Brat. In such services, it is the parents who make promises, not the "baptized." I don't know the specific promises they made, if there was such a service, but based on today's baptismal promises, I would have to say they failed to keep the promises.
Why then does the Church so abhor a possible second baptism at the "time of majority" or "age of reason?" One in which the person has been led by the Holy Spirit to formally join in Jesus' death and resurrection.
According to my research, most churches (at least Protestant) recognize a conditional baptism and some churches publish a re-baptism rite, yet I have never seen or heard of either being performed.
Personally under these cicumstances, I have to declare that I am not baptized. And, based in what I learned during this Lenten season, I may no longer participate in communion; I may not seek office in the church, and may not participate in many other church activities simply because I have not spoken those words. I have received the Holy Spirit already and am grieved with Him that I may no longer participate the way He calls me to do.
Temporarily Troubled,
You've completely missed the point of what baptism is all about and why Lutherans (among others) perform infant baptism. Baptism isn't about the promises that you, your parents or any other mortal makes on your behalf. Baptism is about the Promise God has made with us in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Specifically, that Promise is that God will save us, no matter how many promises we break, how unworthy we are, or anything. In fact, God alone will save-- we are as capable of earning, upholding or living out our Baptism as infants as we are as children or adults. Baptism is a Sacrament-- a Sacrament is something God does for us while something we do for God, even if prompted by the Spirit, is a sacrifice.
That Promise is good forever; hence there is no need for a second Baptism. It's also God's free gift, so if you don't think you have been baptised, go to your local pastor and receive it.
Thank you, Peter. I fully accept that God alone will save me - as a matter of fact has saved me. In a manner of speaking, He has saved me more than once. He has taken me to the tomb with Jesus to show me a better way than what I was about to do.
We have had long discussions about my unworthiness, to which He explained that he need not call the worthy. I stand before Him as I am, broken and flawed. But I also stand called and ready to do His will.
I don't know if I was baptised and, to the best of my knowledge, there is no one left alive who can tell me. What I do know is that I am not the person who was christened, if it happened, and that I am now living as God has called me - even with a new name.
My current pastor seems to be listening to my need; previous pastors seem to see the Holy Spirit within me and assume that means water has already been done and, therefore refused. I recently re-read Acts and can point to at least two times the Spirit came first, so I can no longer accept that argument.
For the most part, I had put this concern behind me, although slightly troubled by it. However, during Lent, the pastor made a comment about communion only being for the baptised. That's when our current dialog about this began. Before I heard that, I had volunteered regularly to be the reader and communion assistant, and was honored to do so. So now I feel it is inappropriate for me to continue doing these things; I feel empty. I could not volunteer for a church office during the congregational meeting and cannot attend the synod assembly.
I have had several conversations with the Holy Spirit about this and He directed me to re-read Collosians 2. With that He fully convicted me that I should be baptised, and I have to believe He knows if I am or not.
Meanwhile, I am no longer taking communion. In a Lutheran service, that leaves me with a long gap of non-participation.
Temporarily Troubled,
Stop beating yourself up. Whether it was formal "Lutheran" baptism, or a non-demonitational "christening" (as is likely as an military brat), you were accepted as a child of God. He has given you his grace. As Peter said, it isn't about your promises to God. It is about his promise to you. It's unfortunate that you have gotten yourself in this knot. It seems to me that the hair-splitting over whether it was a "baptism" or a "christening" is causing you needless guilt. In either, you were blessed with the holy spirit and marked with the cross of Christ, forever.
Accept God's love for you as a gift on his part, and not requiring an act on yours.
I hope you find your way to peace and to full participation once again in your congregation.
I do accept God's love; how can someone ignore a God who takes human form so that He can be nailed to a cross for my sins? How can one not accept a love so great that He forgives me more than I forgive myself? And beyond that He reached down with a miracle when I was within hours of death; in a way, you could say He has given me a third birth. And He has shown me the way He has for me is beyond human comprehension. The circumstances of my life and the leading of the Holy Spirit have convinced me that I must be baptized as I am now. This will happen on Pentecost Sunday.