Why Confessional Liturgy?

I once met a guy who told me that his father read from the family Bible each night at the dinner table. He was of dutch reformed stock so this didn’t surprise me much. But he also told me that his father read whole chapters at a time. His appetite for a stout textual unit seemed to surpass even his mashed taters. I had no category for this. Growing up, my greatest hope at the dinner table was for my mom to allow us to keep the Simpsons on while we ate. She never let us, but my mom’s puritanical TV rules are beside the point. Curious, I asked my friend what happened when his father came across a large chapter in the Bible; let's say Psalm 119. To my utter amazement he said he read the whole thing. Ooof. I feel my own family wince when I initiate “let’s pray” because they all know my 4 year old is going to pray for every individual item on the table. But even if she itemizes each piece of steamed broccoli our prayers still clock in well ahead of a reverent reading of all 176 verses of Psalm 119. At least the taters stay hot. I can’t even imagine. And I’m a pastor for Calvin’s sake. 

But that had me thinking about the peculiar practice of confessional liturgy. Or of anything traditionally Christian for that matter. Why would a gathered congregation subject itself to the soul crushing boredom of a pre-written prayer, the humdrum of an old song (older than the Gettys), or the awkwardness of a creed, particularly the one that makes protestant sphincters constrict at the word “catholic.” Why are we doing this to ourselves? 

After all, coming of age during the heat of the church growth movement I always assumed that doing anything traditional was to be avoided at all costs. Not just avoided. It seemed to me that you ought not do anything old and boring unless you want people to stop tithing and go across the street to the other less boring church. Nobody actually said that. But in the name of something less boring and more “authentic,” I’ve seen well worn pews thrown away, light catching stained glass covered with blackout curtains, and 1000 year old liturgies replaced with 5 songs and a message sandwich. I’m not saying this is all bad. Sometimes this is a genuine improvement to the fussy architectural styles of the past. But sometimes it’s just not helpful. All I’m saying is the desire for something less boring and more “authentic” has a tendency to be a fraudulent justifier for whimsical behavior. And my own whimsical behavior is proof enough. I used to think Ovation guitars were cool. However, when I was 20 I just wasn’t at all concerned with approaching this stuff with wisdom. I just thought you had to unhitch from the past to have life in the future. But over the years of throwing out the old bathwater of tradition, I suspect there have been some babies in our pails.

And yet, here I am. Planting a new church. And finding myself regularly digging into grandpa's old tool chest and dusting off 1000 year old hymns and 2000 year old prayers. Yeesh. Won’t people checking out our new church bump off down the road in search of something, say, fresher, if they hear us read a prayer off the screen? Maybe. But I’m not planting a career as a Tik Tok influencer. I’m organizing a Christian congregation. There’s a fidelity to the guild I sense is required of me; a sense of being connected to an ancient root; a continuationist mindset that I cannot shake as I go about my business of starting a new congregation. I can’t seem to shake the traditional remnants of the faith. So I constantly find myself asking why? Why am I self consciously steering into tradition.

I guess I’m writing this because I feel a bit defensive. Not that I feel attacked by others. We’re still in the honeymoon season of planting. People aren’t arguing about the color of the drapes just yet. If I feel the need to take up arms it's against my own modern bias toward novelty.  

I recognize that I am a product of my generation. I’m one of the weirdos that self consciously scrutinizes that. And one of the hallmark’s of my generation, rather, scourges of my generation, is the abject refusal to recognize our historical inheritance—our Christian tradition. As Chesterton once put it, “Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” And submit we have, and arrogant we are. 

This of course is partly fueled by our technology. Why ask grandpa how to change a spark-plug when you can pull father google out of your back pocket and have a look. Technology alienates. As Wendell Berry put it, the highway brought people who were farther apart closer together, but people who were close together the highway brought farther apart. Think how that analogy relates to the internet. Much of the technology we use on a daily basis encourages a kind of disposition that alienates us, cuts us off from a sense of historical continuity. 

And as it relates to congregational alienation just take hymns as an example. The church has all but completely alienated itself from 2000 years of hymnody, largely because we’ve rushed for the accessibility of top 40 CCM. But like all other consumer driven products, they become quickly obsolete and we are encouraged to discard the old and reach for the brand new.

And hear me. I’m not saying popular always means bad. I’ll bang a Maverick City or Bethel track. Man, I’ll still bang some DC talk if push comes to shove. But I am saying that as a worship leader I recognize that I reach for new songs over old hymns largely because they are more accessible to me and the congregation. And because I can’t read music. 

And here’s my point. For a variety of reasons, mostly related to the convenience of consuming popular music, I have been alienated from much of Christian hymnody. To the point that if I wanted to teach my congregation hymns from the hymnal I would either need to learn how to read music, create my own melodies, or befriend a Lutheran. Only two of those sound appealing to me. 

Hymns are just one example of a piece of the Christian tradition that has been ejected from modern church practice. And look, I’m not at all interested in tradition for tradition’s sake. I’m interested in tradition like a sea captain is interested in the tradition of cartography. I doubt the captain is interested in what font family the map is written in. He just wants to know that when the seas rage he’s not going to die needlessly in uncharted waters. I want this ship and all those on it to live. If it really is true what the old preacher said, that there is “nothing new under the sun” (Ecc 1:9), than there seems to be a great deal of wisdom and experience that we are leaving behind when we pull our anchor from tradition.

The way I see it is that the ancient practice of confessional liturgy is a particular form of tradition that we would be wise to maintain in some form fitting to our time. At risk of sounding like a grumpy old presbyterian (no offense to grumpies. Or old presbyterians) I’d like to continue to prattle on and offer two specific reasons why I am committee to some form of confessional liturgy during our Sunday morning worship service. 

And just as a reminder, when I say confessional I mean written statements of our common confession of faith in Christ Jesus. The stuff we all should be unified on. Like the virgin birth. The incarnation of the Son of God. The salvation of sinners through the substitutionary death of Christ. The bodily resurrection. That kind of stuff. 

First, I think confession liturgy trains our affections to love the Jesus of the Bible. I say train with the verse from 1 Timothy 4:8 in mind. The Greek word for train is where we get our English word “gymnasium” from. Christian worship is a discipline a lot like going to the gym. And I don’t know many people who walk into a gym and in the name of authenticity wait for a spontaneous impulse to punish their body. Instead, I see a lot of people, at least the ones who get results, going to the gym and intentionally submitting their bodies to the habits and disciplines of bodily formation. In a similar way the Bible encourages us to enter the Christian worship service with a posture of eager submission to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. The shape of the liturgy helps give concrete texture to our worship by putting prayers on the lips of people who desperately need help to remember the gospel and to be transformed by the power of God’s grace.  

And I say that this disciplined practice helps us love the Jesus of the Bible because oftentimes what passes for Christian worship is just vague superstition. The measure of faithful Christian worship is not how hard the bridge dropped during the third song and how high it made our hair stand up on the back of our head. The most accurate measure of faithful Christian worship is to know God. And we can only know God by understanding the word of God, which is his authoritative self revelation. So accuracy in our prayers, our songs, our sermons, all matter. We can’t just say things like “well my God doesn’t act like that.” Or, “my God would never say that.” Frankly, that’s not for us to decide. So we stick close to the Word of God in worship. Confessional liturgy helps us to do that. 

Along these lines I have been very influenced by the writings of James K.A. Smith. One of the ideas that I have found especially helpful over the years is what he calls “thick practices.” Thick practices are habits that train our deepest longings, our deepest loves. So think about brushing your teeth. That is a habit, but not a thick practice. Probably not a lot of soul formation going on while you scrub Crest on those gums. But think of a habit like watching pornography on your phone every time you go to the bathroom. That might have made you wince, but it illustrates the point. That habit reroutes pleasure pathways in your brain and shapes, rather distorts, the longings of your hearts into a deeply perverted shape. That habit is going to affect you to the core of who you are and it will bend the shape of your daily life. 

Or think of a woman who has muttered the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday of her entire life. She is now in her 90’s, and even as the horrors of dementia ravage her mind she is still able to pray ‘Lord Jesus deliver us from evil.’

This is a thick practice. And this is what a thick practice is for. To use an old traditional word, a thick practice is a habit that cultivates virtue in a person. And a virtuous person acts in a virtuous way when they face adversity. That’s the point. So in a similar way Christian worship serves the purpose of cultivating habits in Christ followers that shape them to be steadfast Christ followers in the face of adversity. Christian worship should train resilient disciples. I see this as confession liturgy's main function. To shape the souls of Christ followers to be Christ followers on the battlefield of a hostile world. 

It’s also important to recognize that in a fallen world the default mode of every heart is unbelief. That means confessional liturgy is an act of counter formation. It is an act of protest. Confessing the Apostles' Creed or praying the Lord’s prayer is punk rock. It rages against the devil’s machine. 

The second reason I am committed to confessional liturgy is admittedly a selfish one. I like the practice because the liturgy gets the attention off my personality. Maybe it has something to do with being an introvert. Or maybe it demonstrates some insecurities on my part. But regardless I know my place in the worship service. It’s to get out of the way and point the congregation to Christ. 

This is needed in a day when churches act less like families and more like brands; when pastors act more like instagram influencers and less like soul shepherds. I recognize that one of the most powerful tools in the church planters tool box is his personality. After all, there is only one of me. So I should hammer my strengths and win friends and influence people with my charisma (the little I have). I should play to my idiosyncrasies as a leader and build a unique church based on that. But that’s brand thinking. If I were Elon Musk that might work. But I have a sacred responsibility to roll up my sleeves and not only build an organization; I am to join my congregation in building Christ’s church, and he is the cornerstone not me. 

So it is just downright comforting to see someone muddle through our statement of faith on Sunday morning. Or fire into “Be Thou My Vision” for the second time this month. I can breathe a little easier knowing that I am simply leading people down the well worn path to the river of covenantal continuity. Christ promised to build his church. He’s doing it just fine. He doesn’t need another financially anxious, egotistical pastor flailing his arms acting as an air traffic controller directing people to himself. 

And there really is no solid ground in that method anyway. The personality of the preacher is important and beautiful, just as the personality of the congregants are important and beautiful. But a lost world does not need another church grounding their identity in the personality of their pastor. What a fragile position that is. Moral failure, job change, stylistic differences, any number of things can knock that church off its fragile foundation. But a church that roots itself in the word of God, in the historical orthodoxy passed down through the ages, what Jude called “the faith,” won’t be easily toppled by our increasingly secular age. Christ promised to build his church on the solid rock and the gates of hell won’t stand against it (Mt 16:18). And I think confessional liturgy is one goodly sized brick mortared into that foundation. At least, traditionally that has been the case.