A friend recently suggested there’s every chance that protestant churches, like ours, and the free church charismatic church movements, like mine, run the risk of leaving us ‘worse off’ than before the reformation.
The context was that we were discussing the lack of formal liturgies in our churches, and the lack of formal training we seem to give to our pastors. The sort of things I mean are: telling a pastor what he's supposed to say to comfort the dying, or when anointing someone with oil, or when administering communion. What should he say or do when making a hospital visit, or when preparing someone for baptism? What does he need to say at funerals? All of the above are, I’m sure you’d agree, important moments in a person’s life and faith, and therefore important aspects of pastoral ministry.
And yet, when I came into ministry I wasn’t given any scripts or prayers or advice on any of the above and I know I’m not alone. I borrowed a funeral liturgy from another pastor who’d in turn borrowed it from someone else, and I quizzed several seasoned pastors from other traditions for advice on hospital visitations. If I hadn’t taken these initiatives, then I’d have needed to make it all up myself; which may be fine, but then again it may not be, and risks quite a lot and requires quite a lot from the pastor, which in turn limits who can be an elder.
‘Making it all up’, is what I did for baptism preparation; I cobbled together thoughts and Bible verses and I (again) ‘borrowed’ from other churches and traditions. I can do that, I have an acumen for it (creative thievery I mean), and I have an inquisitive and theological enough mind for it. However, ever since my friend dropped his little line about the reformation into my ear I’ve not been able to shake it out. The reason is, simply put, I fear he might be right.
Before the reformation the priest of a church was at least told what to do, when to do it and how to perform it. Church services were works of theatre (just as ours are), with carefully directed staging, symbolic costume and scrupulously rehearsed scripts. A priest would practise and practise until he got it right and when the priest, at the high point of the service, uttered those immortal words ‘hoc est corpus meum’ Christ was believed to be made present among the people, and the people received communion with faith in their hearts.
The priest could have been (and sometimes was) an immoral scoundrel, but still Christ would inhabit the moment and still his grace could be felt by the faithful, and still the priest's words (if not his lifestyle) had pedagogical value to them. The priest could have had only enough theology to pass the entrance exams as in fact appeared to be the case in many a situation since many priests of the era apparently knew very little of the Bible, with a great number not even being able to recall all ten of the commandments! And yet, with their scripts and their training they could still have been mediators of the divine presence, precisely because it wasn’t left down to them and their creativity or piety but to their training, their scripts, their traditions and their liturgies.
Nowadays, in many a free protestant church, a congregation is at the whim of the pastor’s own creativity and spiritual instincts. The church members have only to hope that the pastor can craft a good message, listen well at their bedsides or command a stage with ‘presence’.
Without being immersed in any formal traditions, radical protestants seem to have to reinvent their liturgies from scratch each week, which will inevitably lead to error.
We should be concerned for at least two reasons:
- When a person is sick or in distress, or just emotionally ‘compromised’, they need to be able to access something in their memory that could help them. If they’re not particularly literate or (as is the case for increasing numbers of people) can’t concentrate long enough to read much beyond a proof text or two, what help do they have? If their assurance is lacking, do they have a creed ‘up their sleeve’ to recite or a catechism to recall? Unlikely for many.
- Secondly, it leaves our churches much more (not less) vulnerable to abuses than before the reformation. Strong and dynamic personalities are untethered from ecclesial traditions. They have loose oversight, and oversight that’s built more on the pastor’s ability to relate to or receive from superiors. A ship’s course that’s off by only a few degrees will lead it into very different waters. What about a pastor who, in the name of mission, invents or uses new terminology or untried leadership models?
I'd also add to the above that we're in danger of naivety as to the power of the World and its influence on the church. In a post-christian culture like ours we're especially vulnerable to being colonised and co-opted by the ungodly beliefs of our age. Expressive individualism isn't Christian, a testimony isn't a higher authority than scripture and is the inner life of the spirit to be elevated above the body, and yet to look at our practises you wouldn't know it. Our churches reflect our cultures unless we have timeless things in place to protect us.
Now, having said all this, I of course trust the Spirit’s leadership and the Good Shepherd's protection, but shouldn’t we be perhaps a little more prescriptive on some of the things we consider so important? When I came into eldership I didn’t sign, read or agree to any theological statements nor did I when joining my church's network. Not that those things are essential of course (or always an effective safeguard), but its absence does leave us a little open to the elements does it not?
Despite insisting that the early church of the New Testament is our guiding light, we’re all grateful for Cranmer’s wedding script, or for Nicea’s formulation of our belief, or for Heidelberg’s ‘only comfort’, and Westminster’s ‘chief end of man’.
Relying on the informality of relationships, or a pastor’s personal work ethic, or their vibrant walk with Christ could leave us worse off than before.
It could lead us right back where we began, in need of counter-reformation.
Maybe I’m missing the point, or maybe I’m appreciating the point but forgetting the active role of the Spirit in all things. All I think I’m really saying is: let’s equip our pastors better with some of the more formalised aspects of ministry and, while we’re at it, let’s stop overlooking the gifts the Spirit gave to our brothers and sisters across our truly Catholic Church. We’ll be able to release far more people into ministry and plant far more churches if we do, now there's a thought.
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Having written the above quickly and imperfectly, I then came across this fascinating and better expressed article. So, yea - what he said: How To Lead in Prayer