Liturgy: Habits Shaped by Grace

For several years now, I’ve been told that our Sunday service is fairly liturgical (others would argue that we’re not liturgical enough!) and I think I know what they mean by this comment. What they’re implying is that the order of our service has some early church elements such as a pastoral prayer, weekly communion, or a benediction. Apparently, Roman Catholic churches where Gregorian chants take place can only have this imbedded into their services, but I digress. A liturgy, in the end, is a discipleship tool and the Sunday gathering is more than a weekly service: it’s where the people of God are gathered to be shaped by habits of grace.

So, let me set the record straight. Allow me to address the elephant in the room. Let’s place on the table the real chicharron: all churches are liturgical. Every single church across various denominations have a liturgy.

WHAT IS LITURGY?
For some reason, the word “liturgy” has fueled interesting buzz around many theological camps. It seems as though, 20 years ago the wave of church planting was sexy and stimulating whereas today, the new rave is about liturgy because it promotes familiarity and stability. I have some thoughts about why this is taking place, but that’s for another post.

Concerning the word “liturgy.” It comes from the Greek word, leitourgia, which is a combination of two words: people and work. A liturgy is a “work of the people” and most simply refers to the order of service. Therefore, if your church begins Sunday with only one song, prayer, a sermon, and then a dismissal that is a liturgy. If your church has a call to worship, pastoral prayer, assurance of pardon, sermon, songs, and a benediction then you have a liturgy. If your church has any order of service (ANY order of service), then you have a liturgy.

What I’d like to stress, however, is that in spite of what your liturgical order is, is it intentionally spiritually formative for your congregation?

HABITS OF GRACE
The biggest reason that we have placed so much intention behind our liturgy is because it’s more than an order of service, but habits shaped by grace for weary sinners. Every single element in our liturgy is meant to communicate something about the character of God and when the saints gather weekly, my desire is for them to be spiritually formed by grace-filled order in their lives.

There’s much to consider when people get to church on Sunday. For some, their work week has gone well and their days may have been coated with some rest and enjoyment. Then, there are others who are exhausted and running on fumes from their week. Some may have been encountering one of the most challenging seasons of their life and are battling everything from sin, depression, and spiritual apathy. So when these individuals come to our church, I want to ensure that we’ve done everything possible for them to expericence God’s grace for them the minute they walk through the door.

We place a high value on a culture of hospitality. The first experience someone is going to have when they walk through the door (member or visitor) is one of gospel centered hospitality. Our lobby is warm, inviting, and designed for one to be able to stop and breath, even if it’s for a moment, so their your mind and heart prepare for the rest of the service.

Once in service, each element is an ongoing habit that helps to shape the heart by grace. For instance, the call to worship is designed to grab our intetion of the beauty of God, our pastoral prayer is meant to comfort hearts as we cry out to God, the song selection is not meant to only invoke emotion but the worship of God, the sermon proclaims the goodness of God for sinners and sufferers, communion is a spiritually tangible reminder of God’s grace for weary sinners, and the benediction is both a blessing of dismissal and deployment.

An intentional liturgy should be a thoughtful construction of habits that shape weary sinners by God’s grace in order to continue walking and working faithfully with the Lord throughout the rest of their week.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Every church has a liturgy. The question is whether or not there’s more to it than a simple order of service. For the weary saint, it has to be. For the encouraged saint, it has to be. For the suffering saint, it must be. For the one who doesn’t know Jesus, it needs to be.

Everything else in their life is shaped by something, a habit. Our lives are literally daily liturgies. Therefore, let us seek to create intentional litugries in our churches so that the people are best shaped by habits of grace.

Preparing For Sunday

Every December, my staff and I set aside a day to pray, plan, and reflect. I tried thinking of another word that started with the letter “p,” but I’m not that creative and I feel as though it would come across as too baptistic. During our day of PPR, we discuss and share some of the things we have seen God do in and through our church and we also lay out some of our frustrations over the last year.

One of the frustrations that we all have in common was the commotion of Sunday mornings. And I’m sure we are not the only ones who share in this frustration. When it comes to Sunday, we realized that on paper we are placing a great emphasis on the gathering and communion of the saints while welcoming new visitors to our church, but practically it looks like we are governed and formed by our tasks and responsibilities rather than formed by the gospel itself.

To be clear, Sunday mornings have a lot of moving pieces, tasks, and involve a great deal of volunteers so we can’t just get rid of the tasks at hand and hope that organically things would simply come together; that would be a case of poor stewardship and a great misunderstanding of the word “organic.” So, how does we best approach the Sunday gathering, execute our tasks and responsibilities, and come alongside the saints in worship?

Here are three areas that I think would help address the Sunday morning commotion.

1. SATURDAY
One thing we have to get right before diving into anything else is that the preparation for Sunday begins on Saturday. Whether you’re a pastor, ministry leader, or volunteer it should not be a surprise that Sunday mornings can sometimes have its own surprises for you or that needs with immediate decisions are going to present themselves to you. Therefore, the Sunday morning prep begins on Saturday night.

One of the encouragements that I walked our staff through was setting aside intentional time for prayer on Saturday evening. It doesn’t have to be this entire coffee and the word moment, but it does have to matter. I think that part of the reason that our hearts are so frazzled by Sunday mornings is because of a lack of prayer on Saturday nights. And yes, this means that it may carve into your evening plans, but by setting aside a time of prayer and devotion, we are able to take stock of the condition of our hearts, pray for our ministry teams, pray for those who are attending, and remember that everything is geared toward pointing others to Jesus. Everything.

2. PEOPLE ARE NOT PROJECTS
I get it. On Sunday mornings, many of us who are task-oriented want to get the job done. To be fair, that’s a good thing because the work matters AND that isn’t a sufficient reason for neglecting or using people. Everything that we do on Sunday mornings aims at promoting and presenting Jesus—whether word or deed (Colossians 3:17). And when we use people for the benefit of finishing a task, we are preaching a sermon that says Jesus uses His church rather than faithfully discipling her.

I have heard it from many people who say “I’m a Martha more than I am a Mary.” And while that may be true, in my experience that’s a cop-out to neglect or use people in an effort to complete a task. This doesn’t mean that the job shouldn’t be done or left. Jesus worked as a carpenter which mean he had projects to finish, deadlines to meet, and work that needed to get done. This line of work transferred over into his ministry, but he didn’t neglect or use people, rather he gave them his attention.

3. PEOPLE MATTER
Whether it’s a person on your ministry team or a new visitor, people matter. For many, Sunday’s are going to be one of the best times to follow up with you because of hindered schedules during the week or other things that come up and if you can’t stop for a moment or set aside a few minutes to listen to someone who is seeking you, then you may want to consider serving elsewhere.

Sunday’s matter because it’s the communion of the saints and in addition to the gospel being heralded, it is a time of fellowship where we disciple and encourage one another. Don’t forget that.

PREPARE FOR SUNDAY

I’m sure there are other things that can be said; things that carry a greater influence. But as of now, that’s what I have for you. And personally, I think the most important principle for you to walk away with is how you prepare yourself on Saturday night. In my opinion, that’s the greatest indicator of how well or poorly you will execute Sunday morning.

When you lay it all out before the Lord on Saturday morning, you will have primed and prepped your heart for both the experience and preached word of the gospel so that when things don’t go exactly according to plan, it’s because they simply didn’t go accordingly to plan. Address it, make a decision, and follow-through. At the end of the day, all of this is for His glory and not yours.