Worship That Awakens
By Alan Noble
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Do you think that visitors to your church leave with the sense that they witnessed a body of believers communing with and worshipping the living, sustaining, loving, creating, and awe-full God of the Bible? Do you think most members of your church have a sense of this communion with the living God on Sunday mornings?

My worry is that for a great many orthodox, Bible-believing churches in America, the answer to both these questions is “no”; that secularism has flattened religious belief to a personal, consumer preference and has made belief in the transcendent increasingly difficult to conceive.

In addition, technology of distraction — the ceaseless barrage of images, texts, and video — has conditioned us to avoid the kind of deep reflection and contemplation that have historically been central to Christian worship and spiritual growth. Together, secularism and technology of distraction have made it difficult for modern people to understand and participate fully in the act of corporate worship.

But the church has the resources to push back against both secularism and distraction through the historical Reformed liturgy. In these liturgies, we are called to practice an understanding of creation, ourselves, and God that disrupts our default modern assumptions. Therefore, the good news is that Sunday morning may be one of the most meaningful periods of evangelism in the 21st century. Alternatively, Sunday-morning worship services may simply reaffirm the view of Christianity as a lifestyle option. The stakes are very high.

It is not that I think that the members of our churches don’t cognitively understand the purpose and meaning of worship. On the contrary, I suspect that if I polled most evangelicals, they could correctly articulate the spiritual significance of a church service. Likewise, most visitors to these churches understand that when a pastor prays, he believes he is praying to a real God. This isn’t a problem of explicit knowledge about worship, but of belief, perception, and tacit knowledge. 

Attending Church Without Attending TO Church

We see the results of this disconnect between doctrinal knowledge and visceral knowing in what I call “a lack of attending.” By that I mean that people attend church but don’t attend to church — to singing, prayer, fellowship, the sermon, and the sacraments. Instead, these elements are mediated through familiar cultural touchpoints. We interpret singing through our cultural knowledge of concerts. For example, we interpret preaching through our cultural knowledge of TED talks, leadership seminars, and life-coaching events. We interpret fellowship through office small talk and networking.

A constant state of distraction (or “engagement”) is the new norm, which has tangible effects on how people participate in worship services.

Consequentially, it is very difficult for us to give intentional attention to the liturgy, its significance, and its demands upon us. Which is why it is so easy to walk into a service and leave without ever having to seriously consider that the living God loves you, died for you, and desires your repentance. 

A number of churches have attempted to address the problem by being more attention-grabbing. Meaning well, they accommodate their church services to the media language of society at large. For example, if the aesthetics of concerts are more familiar to people than corporate worship, we can better keep their attention with an attractive, hip worship team. If people are more accustomed to screens and video, as opposed to sermons and physical texts, we can better keep their attention by including short, illustrative clips during the sermon and inviting the congregation to “scroll” to the passage of Scripture on their phones.

We must adapt to different cultures, of course. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” But in this case, I don’t think the problem of attending to worship in a modern age can be solved by capturing more attention, a strategy taken directly from the attention economy that governs social media, advertising, and television. In fact, accommodation can create a feedback loop: Visitors expect a church service to be similar to other cultural events, and when churches accommodate that expectation, it reinforces the idea that Christianity is just another lifestyle, which affirms the original expectation. As a result, people come to assume that there is nothing special or uniquely true about Christianity. People become Christian because of the accident of birth, social pressure, or personal taste — the same reasons people become Muslim, join a gym, or root for a college football team. But if Christianity is merely a lifestyle option, there is no reason for us to die to ourselves. 

Instead of affirming visitors’ cultural expectations, we need liturgies that invite people to attend well, to perceive rightly, and to participate fully. If we do so, our churches will be disruptive witnesses to a lost and desperate world, the kind of witness that can awaken people from the stupor of modern life.

To offer a disruptive witness in our church services, we must first rightly understand contemporary society and the assumptions many visitors and members have when they walk through the sanctuary doors. The two most potent forces shaping the way modern people interpret the Christian faith are secularism and perpetual distraction. 

Conceiving of Secularism

By secularism I do not mean atheism, although it can involve that. Instead, I am using the term as defined by Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who sees secularism not as a kind of belief but as a social condition. In a secular age, most people share certain basic assumptions about the world that are remarkably different from premodern assumptions. 

For one, we see all belief systems as almost hopelessly contested. Whereas in the Middle Ages, for example, there were almost no “worldview” choices available to people, today all we have are choices. Even someone like myself, who has grown up in the church, is hyperaware that there are other options available to me. I could choose to believe differently. And as a result, all beliefs become maybe not equivalent, but certainly flattened into lifestyle preferences, in the same way that an aisle of cereal boxes creates a feeling of sameness among variety. Practically, this means that when I enter a church, my default assumption (even if it is unarticulated) is that I’m going to experience just another sales pitch for a lifestyle. Maybe I find that style aesthetically pleasing, maybe it fits with the image I am cultivating, in which case I’ll come back next Sunday. Or maybe I visit the church for a few months until the pastor preaches something which doesn’t sit well with my internal sense of the world or my image of myself. Either way, in a society of hopelessly contested beliefs, people are thrown back upon their intuition and individual tastes. 

Secularism is also marked by a difficulty conceiving of transcendence. Our default perception of the world is a kind of brute naturalism which Taylor calls the “Immanent Frame.” Most Christians, and even people simply interested in Christianity, will readily affirm that they believe in the supernatural. Belief in God is still quite common in America, so long as we define “belief” as “saying you believe in God on a national survey.” And it is also true that people continue to believe in ghosts and magic and all sorts of phenomena that cannot be entirely explained through modern science. Yet, most of these beliefs are marginal beliefs, the kinds of beliefs we tack on to our more basic (and often unarticulated) perception of the world, which is through the immanent frame. 

The best example I’ve found to illustrate this point is the way we interpret rainbows. Most American Christians respond to rainbows in one of three ways. First, we elbow someone next to us and say, “Look, there’s a rainbow!” Second, we take a picture of the rainbow, post it to Instagram, and write, “Look, here’s a rainbow!” Third, we recall the scientific explanation of rainbows that we learned in grade school. Perhaps, after the first three responses, we might recall the passage in Genesis about how God established the rainbow as a sign that He would never flood the Earth again. But I don’t think most of us get there. And even if we do, we probably reflect on it in a fairly objective way: “I remember that passage in Genesis about rainbows.” Very few of us look at rainbows and first think, “This is literally a sign from God.” Why is that?

The nature of those first three responses tells us a lot about our perception of the world. We tend to see nature as raw material for our enjoyment. We tend to mediate our experience of the world through expressive individualism. And we tend to interpret what is miraculous through scientific explanation. Again, the point here is not that we don’t believe the story in Genesis, but that our more basic, default interpretation of the world is thoroughly naturalistic. And I think the reason for that is we live in a society that focuses on the individual, self-expression, and material accounts of existence. We may say we believe that something exists outside the immanent frame, but if our day-to-day experience emphasizes a world that is only immanent, it is difficult to truly imagine a transcendent God. Is it any wonder, then, that even in church people may struggle to see faith as anything more than a lifestyle?

Finally, secularism involves a move toward individualism. For most modern people, the gravity of meaning has shifted from an external source (God, nature, the church, the state, tradition, the market, culture, community, or family) to an internal source (our intuition, our perspective, our experience). Modern people commonly believe that their internal meaning is at war with various sources of external meaning, which is why we love to read stories of modern heroes who throw off the oppression of tradition or cultural expectations to live true to themselves. Society has taught us to see ourselves at the center of life. All experiences are for us. All products are for us. All ads call out to us. All moral choices come from inside us. And our greatest obligation is to be true to ourselves. 

We may say we believe that something exists outside the immanent frame, but if our day-to-day experience emphasizes a world that is only immanent, it is difficult to truly imagine a transcendent God.

Individualism conditions us to expect certain things from events such as a church service. We expect to be personally addressed (the sermon should speak to me). We expect to be entertained (or at least engaged or appealed to). We expect professionalism. We expect branding and brand differentiation (What is this church? What is it about? How is it different from other churches? Does its identity fit with my identity?). And we expect to have the privacy of a crowd — the service should require only minimal engagement with other people, which brings us to the second challenge of our time: distraction.

Dealing With Distraction 

Modern life is frenetic. Images, videos, texts, and sounds are constantly calling for our attention, reminding us of the interesting and important things we are missing out on (e.g., last time I filled up the tank in my car, a small LCD screen on the gas pump automatically played a specially designed faux-entertainment news channel for gas stations, complete with ads). To make matters worse, technology has made it easier than ever to be perpetually engaged with high-quality content. From the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep we can be listening to music, watching YouTube videos, scrolling through social media streams, answering text messages, listening to podcasts, binge-watching shows on Netflix. The content is endless, incredibly cheap, extremely accessible, and high definition. And for a great number of people, this content is a lot more pleasurable than the reality of day-to-day living.

A constant state of distraction (or “engagement”) is the new norm, which has tangible effects on how people participate in worship services. As previously discussed, many people will enter a sanctuary with the expectation that they will experience something not categorically dissimilar to other social events. They expect to be appealed to, entertained, and left alone. If they want to text during the sermon or live-tweet it, that is their choice. They expect the movement of the service to be brisk and focused, respecting the time and attention span of the audience. When possible, multiple mediums should be used: lights and music and words, sermon and visuals or video clips. Meanwhile, the kind of careful, contemplative, reflective thinking needed for conviction and repentance is crowded out. 

Collectively, the forces of secularism and distraction make it easy for people to attend church without ever having to grapple with the reality that God exists, that He loves us, and He desires our repentance. 

Unsettling Our Secular Assumptions

However, properly ordered and oriented toward God, worship services unsettle many of our most deeply engrained secular assumptions and habits. The liturgy of the Reformed tradition denies individualism, rejects the flattening of all belief into lifestyle choices, radically asserts that we do not live in an Immanent Frame, and calls us to intentional reflection and attending. The beauty of this liturgy is that it does not challenge these modern assumptions merely through propositional claims (although our faith does that, too); liturgy requires us to act. In a liturgical service, we act upon the truth that God exists. This is not to say that traditional liturgy is some kind of magical corrective. Unbelief, skepticism, cultural Christianity, and distraction will continue to be problems for the church. The only question is whether or not the forms of our church services affirm or disrupt these problems.

Instead of affirming cultural expectations, we need liturgies that invite people to attend to singing, prayer, fellowship, and preaching.

By looking at a couple of liturgical elements, we can see how it is inherently disruptive to the secular and distracted culture of our day. For a thorough and compelling treatment of the whole liturgy, read James K.A. Smith’s “Desiring the Kingdom,” where he walks through each element. But just looking at the Lord’s Supper can be very instructive, for in it, every false assumption of the modern age is challenged

In preparation for the sacrament, we are called to repent of our sins collectively and personally. The corporate confession reminds us that the purpose of worship is not primarily for me as an individual to have a certain spiritual experience. It is a fundamentally communal event. Reading the confession aloud has the effect of drawing me out of my head, too.

Charles Taylor warns that one effect of secularism has been a kind of “excarnation,” wherein we live more and more in our heads and less and less in our bodies. And while silent, personal confession is essential, so too is verbal, corporate confession. When confession takes place only in our heads, sin can feel like an entirely private and insubstantial problem, a mind game. Corporate confession reminds us of the weightiness of sin, repentance, and grace. It also reorients us toward God as the lawgiver. Whereas secularism inclines us to locate meaning (including the moral law) within ourselves, confession shifts meaning back to its rightful place in the fount of all truth and goodness. 

The time of silent confession pushes against our tendency for distraction. We are called to intentionally reflect on our spiritual state. Here, if nowhere else, the modern Christian is cut off from diversions and stultifying pleasures and must take account. For many of us, silent confession can be terrifying because it is so unlike our daily experience, but that terror is misplaced. Our confession takes place within the freedom of grace bought by the blood of Christ. Similarly, the assurance of pardon read by the pastor decenters us. Our sins are not private problems that exist primarily in our head and can be fixed by personal discipline. Our sin is cosmic in significance. 

Moving to the Words of Institution, the pastor reads from 1 Corinthians 11, and the congregation is reminded that it is partaking in a sacred, divinely appointed act that is thousands of years old. Far from an exercise in consumerism or self-expression, the Lord’s Supper is indifferent to our preferences. We “do this in remembrance” because we are called to, not because we feel like it or have earned it. It is that indifference to our fitness or personal desire that in part makes the sacrament so powerful. Many times I have approached the table feeling unworthy or disinterested, but as the bread and wine pass my lips, I am drawn from my stupor. I recognize that what I am partaking in has real spiritual power. It is not some empty symbol, but a living sign, a means of grace. 

The sacraments affect me not because of my personal righteousness, but Christ’s imputed righteousness. They affect me not because I feel like it, or because I chose to make them effective, but because Christ uses them as a means of grace. The source of that grace is beyond my head, beyond the material elements, beyond the pastor’s words, and beyond the building. The Lord’s Supper is a practice in denying the immanent frame. And as such, it also resists the flattening of all beliefs, for in it we proclaim the deity of Christ, His creation of the world, not as an idea but a reality. 

Of course, the liturgical power of the Lord’s Supper, like the power of corporate singing and the other elements of the service, can be diluted, diverted, or disguised. Churches can turn communion into a private experience of God. We can sideline the sacrament, treating it as an occasional memorial. We can ignore or deny its power. By rushing through the sacrament, we can trivialize it.

Traditional Reformed liturgy has the capacity to deeply challenge the secular assumptions and distracting practices that plague our culture and hinder people from honestly and accurately participating in worship. The liturgy cannot solve our problems, but properly ordered and solemnly administered, it can serve as a disruptive witness.


Alan Noble is assistant professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and editor of “Christ and Pop Culture.”

Illustration by Zach Meyer

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