Why Church Matters

In the book, Why Church Matters, author Jonathan R. Wilson invites us to “practice church” through the formation “of a people whose life together witnesses to God’s redemption of creation” (4). This is vital because the witness of God’s redemptive work “is possible only in a community sustained by the power of the Holy Spirit” (4).

Participating in God’s Telos

As a community chosen by God to bear witness to the gospel, the church possesses a divinely given telos. “Telos is a bit like ‘purpose’ or ‘goal.’ It is that toward which something is oriented, toward which it is moving. Or it is that for which something is made, its purpose” (12). The church does not choose its telos – it is given by God.

This commitment to telos is challenging in our contemporary culture. Our culture has

abandoned most convictions about the telos (the “good,” the created purpose) of human life and human activities. This abandonment of telos drains our actions of any real meaning and significance. As a result, we cannot give any compelling reason for doing the things that we do, except “What I do makes me feel good” or “I do what I do because this is what I have chosen to do.” (14)

In spite of our culture’s general disdain for telos, the concept is understood and applauded when expressed on a smaller scale. For example, think “of athletes who get up early every morning, follow a strict diet, devote several hours each week to physical exercise. Why? Because they have a goal in mind that can be achieved only by such activities” (14).

Like the athlete’s actions, our own actions witness to our telos. Thus, what we do witnesses of what we ultimately value – what we embrace as good. Wilson challenges us in this regard:

If someone observed your life for a week—the use you make of time, the activities that you engage in, the people you relate to, the settings in which you pursue those relationships, the way you spend your money—what would that observer conclude is important to you. From observing your life, what would that person conclude about your conception of the good? (15)

Wilson argues that the practices of the church should correspond to and witness of the divine telos. This spurs the question: “Are the activities of the church – of your congregation – oriented toward convictions about the telos of the church?” (15) These activities and practices form “a people whose life together witnesses to God’s redemption of creation” (4).

And this is where organization and institutions (two words that, sadly, many contemporary folk – believers and unbelievers alike – find more offensive than the traditional four-letter words) come in: “Practices cannot be sustained apart from institutional structures.

At a minimal level, a basketball team needs to know when and where it is meeting for practice, who the coach is, who has the keys to the gym, who will pump up the balls to the proper pressure, when and where the games will be played, who will play which position. And much more.

Similarly, “churching” requires some institutional form. The question for the church is not how much institution, as if there were some magic threshold for size and complexity of ecclesiastical institutions; nor is it what shape, as if the New Testament enjoined one clear, well-developed organization for the church. Rather, the questions for the institution(s) of the church are whether it is enabling or disabling the practices of the church, whether it embodies the good, whether it serves internal goods, whether it extends our conception of the good, and whether it faithfully participates in the telos given by God. The institutions of the church are to serve the practices of the church. (22-23)

The Work and Witness of Worship

“[T]he activity of worship – glorifying and enjoying God – is the central practice of the church” (24). Liturgy is the work of the people in worship to God (laos = people and ergy = work or energy).

Worship is a practice that must be learned. It is a mistake to think “that worship of God comes naturally and can be learned ‘spontaneously,’ without instruction” (26). “[T]he Bible is filled with instructions in proper worship. And the history of Israel is filled with their failure to worship properly” (26). Unguided worship can easily fall prey to idolatry – a sin still alive and well in contemporary culture. Idolatry does not need wooden or stone statues to exist. It is found when “[w]e organize our lives around affluence, success, comfort, security, health, and entertainment. We worship these idols in the cathedrals of today: shopping malls, gymnasiums, hospitals, cineplexes, auto showrooms, and health spas” (26). True worship assists us in learning “to discern the false goods for which we live and the practices by which we pursue them” (26). It does not capitulate to what “our society has taught us to want and to expect” in our worship, that is, “entertainment, distraction, illusions” (28). Instead, the truth of God “calls us to responsibility, demands our attention, and exposes our illusions” (28).

Everyone worships something. Our world is a vast marketplace of false gods. In order to counter false worship supported and sustained by a human community, the church must offer an alternative that is also experienced in community: “Worship is the work of the people because the practice of worship cannot be learned alone. False worship is learned in community, and it must be unlearned in community. And the only way to counter the weight of the community that is constantly teaching us false worship is through the weight of an alternative community” (26).

The church’s work of worship is a witness to God and to a watching world. God is the audience and recipient of our worship. Therefore, when it comes to evaluating our liturgy, “[w]e should not ask whether we liked our worship as if we were consumers whose return business must be earned; we should ask whether God is pleased by our worship” (32). The church must also remain aware that as we worship before a watching world, we bear witness to the good news: “The work of worship is itself witness, because in worship we are called to declare who God is, who we are before God, and how we are related to the rest of creation” (32).

Worship as True, Good, and Beautiful

Our desire to please God in our worship and through it to authentically witness of the good news of the gospel raises the following questions: “[H]ow are we to evaluate our worship? How are we to know when our worship has been pleasing to God and faithful to the gospel?” (36)

Wilson suggests the use of the three ideals of Greek philosophy – truth, goodness, and beauty – as criteria. We should think of these three criteria “as three strands of a rope rather than three stages or three pillars” (37). They are interwoven together and cannot be separated from one another. “One is not more important than another, except when one is missing and needs special attention for its recovery. Nor is one more foundational than the others” (37).

These three criteria allow us not only to positively assess our worship, but also to discern when our worship has become distorted.

These three criteria are roughly equivalent to the standards by which the worship of the people of God was deemed barren by the prophets of the first testament. There, worship was condemned for being idolatrous, immoral, and impure (though I am using the last term in a way slightly different from the Old Testament’s). Idolatrous worship is not true worship because it is directed toward a false god. Immoral worship is not good worship because it does not participate in or form us in goodness. Impure worship is not beautiful worship because it falls short of the excellence appropriate to the worship of God. (37-38)

True worship is “directed toward the one true God” and aligns with God’s one telos. When worship is not oriented toward its proper end it is untrue.

Good worship advocates justice for all, and not just a privileged few. It must not be egocentric or even ethnocentric – it must be worldcentric. Wilson warns,

When the worship of God becomes significantly intertwined with affirmation of race, nation, or economic status, we have taken a giant step toward untrue and immoral worship. When we tie worship to the protection and prosperity of a race. Nation, or class, we have abandoned the internal goods of worship for external goods. (42)

Beautiful worship calls us to excellence. Though Israel was forbidden to represent God with images, this did not exclude the use of visual arts in worship. The creation of beauty included the holy space created by many skilled craftsmen and artists.

This call to excellence is further expressed in God’s requirement that the sacrifices come from the best of the flock. “This requirement should have taught the Israelites to love God alone and to look to God for their lives. But they often turned from this requirement, offering God something less than the best because the best would bring them the highest price at the market or the tastiest meal at home” (45). Israel was called to be a blessing to the nations. Hoarding their possessions for themselves did not witness of God’s desire to bless the world through them.

Wilson exposes one more contemporary way we fail to give God our best in worship:

One of the most pervasive ways we fail the test of beauty today is when we are not rested and relaxed for worship. Our schedule and lifestyle can be so hectic that by the usual time of worship, Sunday morning, all we can do is stay awake. We have little energy, and we are distracted by the morning news, the sales flyers, lunch plans, or anticipation of the big game on TV. (46)

Wilson concludes by reminding us that the “question for worship is not Did I like it? but Is it true to God’s character and will? Does it transform us by God’s grace? Is God getting our best?” (48, italics his)

The Witness and Work of the Kingdom

The church gathers for worship and then scatters for witness. “The church is not incidental to the salvation of individuals, nor is it merely the instrument of salvation for individuals. Rather, the church is integral to the ultimate intention of God to redeem creation” (79).

God’s intention to redeem creation is summarized in the term, kingdom. It is important to understand the relationship between the church and the kingdom. The church is not the kingdom. The church witnesses to and serves God’s kingdom. Wilson explains,

The church participates in the kingdom and anticipates the kingdom, but the kingdom is larger than the church and is not yet fully present in the church or the world. The kingdom is larger than the church because the kingdom is the redemption of all creation…. The kingdom is also larger than the church because the kingdom is already present but not yet fully present. (80)

As agents of God’s kingdom we call people to participate in God’s telos. In our present cultural context which “is marked by an absence and active denial of any telos for human life” discipleship can serve as a recovery of humanity’s innate value and worth. We do not achieve or create telos through human effort.

Rather, telos means that purpose and meaning are given in the very nature of who we are as human beings. But the gospel goes beyond that, to declare that we can know our telos only by the gift of knowledge that comes to us through Jesus Christ. That is why it is gospel: good news. It is news because it tells us something that we otherwise do not know; it is good because it tells us who we are made to be and how to be that which we are made to be. So for the church telos is not something we find but something we receive; not something we create but something for which we are created. (88)

The message of the gospel does not tell us something we already know. It does not speak of what we can achieve through human power alone. It is good news, precisely because it is God’s news – news that is only available because of God’s revelation. The language is the language of grace, not merit. The “contrast is between the activity of achievement and the activity of participation” (20).

Baptism is a practice that accords with God’s telos, and thus, a means of grace. Through baptism, the church witnesses of the gift of new life in Christ. It is initiation into the life of discipleship rooted in the Triune life of God and “in the disciple community, to whom and through whom God gives the Holy Spirit” (107). This “unfolds the reason for baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). The Father is the font of our life, the Son is the form of our life, and the Spirit is the power of our life in the kingdom” (107).

If baptism is an initiating practice of the church, the Lord’s Supper is its sustaining practice: “To claim that the Lord’s Supper is the sustaining practice of the church is to say that it is the ongoing practice of the community that enables us to participate (through memory, real presence, con- or trans-substantiation) in God’s continual provision of new life for God’s people” (109).

Wilson adds a third practice, that of footwashing: “If baptism is the initiating practice of the disciple community, and Eucharist is our sustaining practice, footwashing is our guiding practice. It teaches us to take all that we have been given by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit and serve the world as an act of witness to the kingdom” (115).

Wilson has put together a powerful and compelling picture “of a people whose life together witnesses to God’s redemption of creation” (4). No matter how much people deny it, no matter how difficult the task to create and sustain it, the church truly matters – to God and to the world. It is our privilege and responsibility to participate with God and one another in embodying redemptive practices that witness to God’s telos.

Quotes excerpted from Why Church Matters: Worship, Ministry, and Mission in Practice by Jonathan R. Wilson
© Richard J. Vincent, 2007