Part 6
It is painfully clear that the Protestant order of worship did not originate with the Lord Jesus, the apostles, or New Testament scriptures. It has no Biblical basis for several reasons. First, the Protestant order of worship represses mutual participation and the growth of the body of Christ by silencing its members. There is absolutely no room for you to give a word of exhortation, share an insight, start or introduce a song, or spontaneously lead a prayer. You are forced to be a muted, staid pewholder. Even though open sharing in a church meeting is completely scriptural (1Co 14:
26 What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.) The New Testament teaches that all Christians are to use their gifts as functioning priest to edify one another when they gather together (1Co 12:7; Eph 4:7; Heb 10:24-25). If you acted as scriptures teaches above in your church today, you would be breaking the liturgy. If you dare try something so outrageous, you would be considered “out of order” and asked to behave yourself or leave!
Second, the Protestant worship strangles the headship of Jesus Christ, In the words of Arthur Wallis,
“ liturgies, whether ancient or modern, written or unwritten, are human device to keep the religious wheels turning by doing what is customary, rather than exercising faith in the immediate presence and operation of the spirit.” The entire service is directed by a man. Where is the freedom of our Lord Jesus to speak through His body at will? Where in the liturgy may God give a brother or a sister a word to share with the whole congregation? The order of worship allows for no such thing. Jesus Christ has no freedom to express Himself through his body at His direction. He is held captive by our liturgy! Jesus too is rendered a passive spectator! The Protestant liturgy distorts the body of Christ and turns it into one huge tongue (the pastor) and many little ears (the congregation)! This does violence to Paul's vision of the body of Christ where every member functions in the church meeting for the common good.
Third, for many Christians, the Sunday morning service is shamefully boring. It is without variety or spontaneity. It is highly predictable, highly prefunctory, and highly mechanical. There is little in the way of freshness or innovation. It's the same dog and pony show every week. Some churches have made attempts to fix this problem. They have recognized the sterile nature of the modern church service. In response, they have incorporated a vast array of media and theatrical modernization into the liturgy. It is a sad attempt to market worship to the unchurched. As a result, they have garnered the largest market share of any Protestant tradition. Despite the added entertainment, the movement has been unable to break free from the unmovable, unimaginative, uncreative, inflexible, mindlessly ritualistic, pro-formula Protestant liturgy. The body of Christ is still held captive by the pastor, the threefold "hymns sandwich" remains intact, and the congregants continue to be muted spectators but just a tad more entertained in their spectating.
Fourth, the Protestant liturgy that you quietly sit through every Sunday, year after year, actually hinders spiritual transformation. It does so because: 1) it encourages passivity, 2) it limits functioning, and 3) it implies that putting in one hour per week is the key to the victorious Christian life.
However, the New Testament never links sitting through a ossified ritual that we mislabel "church" as having anything to do with spiritual transformation. We grow by functioning, not by passively watching and listening. Face it, the Protestant order of worship is unscriptural, impractical, and unspiritual. It has no analog in the New Testament. Rather, it finds its roots in the culture of fallen man. The purpose of the first century church meeting was not for evangelism, sermonizing, worship, or fellowship. It was for mutual edification to manifest in Christ corporately. (
Rethinking the Wineskin, chapter 1. Frank Viola).
What is the Sunday Morning Sermon?
In short, the modern Christian mindset equates the sermon with Sunday morning worship. But it does not end there. Most Christians are addicted to the sermon. They come to church with an empty bucket expecting the preacher to fill it up with a "feel-good" message. Remove the sermon and you have eliminated the most important source of spiritual nourishment for most believers (so it is thought) yet a stunning reality is that the sermon has no root in Scripture. Rather, it was borrowed from the pagan culture, nursed and adopted into the Christian faith. Granted, the Scriptures do record men and yes even women preaching. However, there is a world of difference between the spirit inspired preaching described in the Bible and the modern sermon. This difference is virtually always overlooked because we have been unwittingly conditioned to read our modern day practices back into the Scripture. So we mistakenly embraced today's pulpiteerism as being Biblical. Let's contrast the two.
The modern Christian sermon has the following features:
- It is a regular occurrence-delivered faithfully from the pulpit at least once a week.
- It is delivered by the same person, typically the pastor.
- It is delivered to a passive audience; it is essentially a monologue.
- It is a cultivated form of speech, possessing a specific structure. It typically contains an introduction, three to five points, and a conclusion.
Contrast this kind of preaching mentioned in the Bible. In the Old Testament, men of God preached and taught. But their speaking did not map like the modern sermon.
Here are the features of Old Testament preaching and teaching:
- Active participation and interruptions by the audience were common.
- They spoke extemporaneously and out of a present burden, rather than from a set script.
- There is no indication that the Old Testament prophets or priests gave regular speeches to God's people.
Instead, the nature of Old Testament preaching was sporadic, fluid, and open for audience participation. Preaching in the ancient synagogue followed a similar pattern.
Now we come to the New Testament, Lord Jesus did not preach a regular sermon to the same audience. His preaching and teaching took many different forms. He delivered his message is to many different audiences. His disciples follow the same pattern, as the apostolic preaching recorded in Acts possesses the following features.
- It was sporadic.
- It was delivered on special occasions in order to deal with specific problems.
- It was extemporaneous and without rhetorical structure. The spontaneous and non-rhetorical character of the apostolic message delivered in Acts is evident upon inspection. (Acts 2:14-36; 7:1-52; 17:22-34).
- It was most often dialogical (meaning it include feedback and interruptions from the group) rather than monologue (a one-way discourse).
The Greek word often used to describe first century preaching is dialegomai. Our English word "dialogue" is derived from it. In short, apostolic ministry was more dialogue than it was monological sermonics (William Barclay,
Communicating the Gospel Sterling: The Drummond Press, 1968, pp. 34-35).
So, Where Did the Christian Sermon Come From?
This raises a thorny question. If the first century Christians were not noted for their sermonizing, from whom did the post-apostolic Christians pick up the sermon? The answer is telling: The Christian sermon was borrowed straight from the pagan Greek culture. The sophists are credited for inventing rhetoric (the art of persuasive speaking). They recruited disciples and demanded payment for delivering their orations. Edwin Hatch,
The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1895), p. 109. The sophists were expert debaters. They were masters at using emotional appeals, physical appearance, and clever language to "sell" their arguments. In time, the style, form, and oratorical skill of the sophists became more prized than their accuracy. [We get our word "sophistry" and "sophistical" from the sophists. Sophistry refers to suspicious and fallacious ‘bogus’ reasoning used to persuade (
Archtypes of Wisdom, p.57). The Greeks celebrated the orator’s style and form over the accuracy content of his sermon. Thus a good orator could use his sermon to sway his audience to believe what he knew to be false. To the Greek mind, winning an argument was a greater virtue than distilling truth. Unfortunately, an element of sophists has never left the Christian fold (
To Preach or Not to Preach?, pp.21-22); {
The Influence of Greek Ideas, p. 113). The truths they preached were abstract rather than truths that were practiced in their own lives. They were experts at imitating form rather than substance. They even identify themselves by the special clothing they wore. Yes, sometimes the Greek orator would enter his speaking form "already robed in his pulpit-gown." The sophists were the most distinguished men of their time. So much so that some lived at public expense. Others had public statues erected in their honor. (
The Influence of Greek Ideas, pp. 97-98). Indeed, the Greeks were intoxicated with rhetoric. The love of speech was second nature to the Greeks. "They were a nation of talkers" (
The Influence of Greek Ideas, p. 27). This was so fashionable that a "sermonette" from a professional philosopher after dinner was a regular form of entertainment… (
The Influence of Greek Ideas, P.40).
