Our culture has a meaning crisis, and people are dying and despairing because of it.
A further result and sign of this crisis is evident in the fact that we're increasingly vulnerable to new truth claims and techniques as they appear; this abundance of early adoption is an indication of our soul's hunger.
Many of the important social institutions, the things that previously gave us balance and rhythm, have long since passed into memory. Religious festivals have been replaced by commercial ones, Sunday as a day of rest has been replaced by the 'city that never sleeps', having a 'job for life' is a fantasy and often so is working the same shift patterns as the people in our home.
'You do you' is our mantra.
We all live lives that are less attached to local places often further away from our family. These factors, coupled with the rise of invasive new technologies and smart devices, have left many people mentally fractured and anxious, ill at ease in the world. Cultural commentator Mary Harrington has also written about the impact on our identities and mental health that the internet has had creating, as it has, ‘cyborg-selves’.
The result is that we now live as though we 'have' a body not that we are one.
At a time like this I believe that many of the tools that have been used by Christians for centuries in their discipleship take on a new significance for us. If we’re to thrive both as human beings and as followers of Christ in an age like ours then we need to rebuild some of the rhythms passed on to us by Jesus, his apostles and the early church.
In a newspaper column from 2018 one writer made the observation that whereas Islam and Judaism offered its adherents a clear cultural and behavioural identity, with clear (and often restrictive) expectations for entry and belonging, the church by contrast made few demands on its members and seemed happy with ‘easy come, easy go’ membership. The article then went on to give the advice that if the church is to survive and thrive at a time like this then it needs to offer its members a stronger sense of community and structure.
In short we need to take what we believe seriously.
More recently we are seeing a slight resurgence in parts of the church thought by many to be redundant and heading for extinction. In Protestant heartlands like England and North America the Eastern Orthodox Church is growing in popularity and, in a recent survey undertaken by the Bible Society, it was found that the Roman Catholic Church is experiencing a revival of its own.
What many (particularly young men) are finding attractive about these expressions of Christian faith is 1) the discipline and demands placed on them and 2) the use of physical things and grounded forms of spiritual devotion.
I’m aware that these things must be approached with caution - self-discipline and legalism crushed Luther until he discovered grace, and the human race has always had a tendency to make idols out of spiritually enriching physical objects. Nevertheless there is enough value in these things (and enough Biblical warrant for them) that we ought to consider afresh how we can make better use of them in both our discipleship and our mission.
Due to many of the social factors mentioned above there is perhaps renewed missional potency to things we may consider 'basic' such as routine, rhythm, physicality and structure. They are all things that help bind disparate individuals together into stable communities and they help to create order out of chas for individuals struggling to cope.
These factors, coupled with Iain McGilchrist’s observation that ‘attending to the world differently changes what we find there’ (ie we’re more likely to see God when we look for him), means that they have potential new power. They could particularly help people who've been raised on (and injured by) atheistic materialism find peace and purpose in Christ.
One such friend of mine who was formerly an atheist materialist, is learning to see the world differently by practising breath-work and meditation. After one conversation with him I gave him a prayer rope and encouraged him to use the ‘Jesus Prayer’ in his meditating. He’s now regularly calling out to Jesus to come and ‘have mercy’ on him. He’s not a Christian but the change in his worldview has been considerable. Perhaps, as C.S. Lewis once said, we need to help secular people become 'pagans again', not by encouraging them worship Odin by helping them to see life's enchantment again.
There are missional limits to these things of course.
For all the church's recent talk of ‘belong before you believe’ aimed at communicating inclusiveness and offering an invitation to explore Christianity before ‘buying’ it, it's ultimately not possible to be part of the church without believing. The church is a community of disciples and if it is to thrive it must maintain the high calling on its members to follow Jesus no matter the cost.
The other, perhaps obvious, limits to encouraging participation in the practices of Jesus are that none of them have the power to save souls. An individual can practice Sabbath, generosity and hospitality and still find themselves an enemy of God, cut off from Life. Worse, these things can rebuild a nominal and cultural Christianity that ends up taking Christ’s name in vain. These are not inconsiderable concerns.
Nevertheless by maintaining faithful gospel preaching, a commitment to salvation by grace through faith and sola scriptura I believe we can meet the opportunity of our age with the ancient tools of the church.
What might it look like for you and your church?
For us at life church we’re at the early beginnings of this, trying to help meet the needs of our day by cultivating some practices and rhythms we believe to be helpful for discipleship and mission.
Here's some of what it looks like for us:
Communion:
We break bread almost every week, use actual wine (as opposed to grape juice) and lead into it with prayers of confession and declarations of faith. Whilst we provide an alternative for those who can't have wine, the use of alcoholic wine is done because we want to take seriously the symbol Christ gave us. The stringent and highly specific worship practises in the Old Testament temple and tabernacle remind us that God tells us nothing by accident. We also believe that physicality matters. We are learning something at a level deeper than our conscious rationality whenever we use wine (or grape juice) that has theological importance for us.
Prayer ministry:
Sunday by Sunday we offer prayer and anoint people with oil as a sign of the Spirit’s presence. Again out of biblical precedent and out of a desire to take physical things seriously. We learn about God and God's world through our senses after all.
We have prophetic teams share words of faith for the room and we cultivate an expectation that the Spirit of God can set people free in an instant.
Prayer practices:
There are two modes of communing with Christ in prayer outlined by Tim Keller in his book ‘Prayer’. At one end of the spectrum there is verbal, intercession prayer. At the opposite end are methods of wordless and contemplative praying that involves having individuals commune with Christ in stillness.
We aim to encourage both. Our regular weekly and monthly prayer meetings are a mixture of worship and intercession whilst at other times in the year we will hold times for ‘Christian contemplation’ using set prayers of the church and by attaching phrases in prayer to our breathing such as in the Jesus Prayer.
We have also just completed our first annual prayer retreat, a time to seek God and be together.
Generosity:
We pass offering baskets, encouraging those who give online to hold them and pray as they pass. We take up yearly or twice yearly gift days.
Feasting:
Four or five times a year we hold buffet lunches altogether after the meetings. At other times in the year we encourage hospitality and offer lunches in people’s homes.
Fasting:
We are fasting a regular times in the year, sometimes based on a need whilst at other times based on the calander. A reality not often acknowledged if that God uses experiences of suffering to grow our faith more than we realise. Fasting invites experiences of 'micro-suffering' and teaches us to hold on to Christ and prove him to be enough for us even in times of distress. It is a discipline therefore that can be of great value for a Christian's disicpleship.
Sabbath-ing
Talking about, teaching into and inviting people round for Sabbath meals is an important part of establishing this practice in the church. Sabbath is a gift given by God for our refreshment and ought to be a day for unhurried activity and being present in the world is an important part of healthy Christian living. Helping people to see that is important. Many also talk about the importance of a 24hr ‘digital’ sabbath, a rest from devices that spoil our attention spans and fragment our minds.
Courses
We have written our own material on 'The Way of Jesus' that we make use of in a course for new believers. We also make good use of the Freedom in Christ course finding it to be a tool that excels at teaching the value of both a Bible-based worldview and the importance of repentance and refuting lies.
Mapped onto a calendar of the year our rhythms looks like the following:
January:
- Week of prayer and fasting
- Followed by week of feasting and hospitality
- An hour of Christian meditation and contemplation
Lent:
(Since some find the word too 'Anglican': in defence of Lent or ‘in Lent’s defence’ it was common since the second/third centuries of the church for some period of preparation for Easter to be observed. Whilst the contemporary form and indeed the name make one think of the institutional church it doesn’t ‘belong’ to them. It is perhaps part of a missionaries ‘cultural concession’ to use words and terms such as ‘Lent’ to help people understand)
- Daylight fasting on Mondays,
- Gatherings for prayer at various times
- Feasting and hospitality on Sundays
Easter to Pentecost:
- No communion on Sundays
- Extra time for prayer ministry and prophetic ministry
- Midweek early morning prayer meeting
- Prayer retreat: refreshing and renewal
Summer:
- Bi-annually: outreach event / Weekend away
November:
- International Sunday
December:
- Gift Day for the poor