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Overview
Today, as Christendom weakens, worship and mission are poised to reunite after centuries of separation. But this requires the church to rethink both “mission” and “worship.” In post-Christendom mission, God is the main actor and God calls all Christians to participate. In post-Christendom worship, the church tells and celebrates the story of God, enabling members to live in hope and attract outsiders to its many tables of hospitality.
In this passionate and thoughtful study, Alan Kreider and Eleanor Kreider draw upon missiology, liturgiology, biblical studies, church history, and the vast experience of today’s global Christian church-to say nothing of their long tenure as teachers and writers in contemporary England and the United States. Academically responsible but also practical and accessible, Worship and Mission After Christendom is a much-needed guide for people who take seriously God’s call to be the church in a world where institutional religion is no longer taken for granted.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780836197761 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MennoMedia |
| Publication date: | 01/15/2011 |
| Series: | After Christendom |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 328 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Worship After Christendom
From Italy to Britain
Worship: Actions and Emotions
New Testament Words for Worship Imply Mission
Worship: Ascribing Worth to God
Worship Is for All of Life
Worship Services Must Be in Keeping with God's Character and Mission
Worship Services Reveal the Character and Purposes of God
2. Mission Under Christendom
Characteristics of Classical Mission
The Christendom Origins of Classical Mission
Classical Mission in Late Christendom
3. Mission After Christendom: The Missio Dei
Missio Dei: The Bible's Grand Narrative
Wolves and Lambs
A Feast for All People
The Means of God's Mission: Sending
Characteristics of the Missio Dei
Implications of Missio Dei Thinking
Criteria for Discernment
An Exemplar of the Missio Dei
4. Post-Christendom Worship: The Recovery of Narrative
The Power of Story
The Stifling of Story in Christendom
God's Story: A Five-Act Drama
Worshipping God in the Present, Between Past and Future
The Past: Acts of Worship in the Bible Tell the Story of God
Narrative Worship that Tells an Odd Story
Ways of Telling the Story
5. Narrative Resources for Worship: Hoping the Past, Remembering the Future
Hoping the Past
Drawing on the "Gap Years"
Drawing on the Immediate Past: "Reports from the Front"
Remembering the Future
The Loss of Hope
Regaining Hope
Anticipations Little and Big
Long-Sighted Christians
6. Early Christian Worship: Multivoiced Meals
Inculturating the Gospel
Inculturating Worship in Corinth
1 Corinthians 11-14 Is All One Piece
1 Corinthians 11—The Meal
1 Corinthians 14—The After-Dinner Conversation
Paul's Objections: Disorder and Incomprehensibility
Outsiders Are Present
Paul's Vision for Table and Word
7. After Christendom: Multivoiced Worship Returns
1 Corinthians 11-14 as Christendom Dawns
The Disappearance of Multivoiced Table Worship
1 Corinthians 11-14 in Christendom
Multivoiced Worship: Bubbling to the Surface
Churches After Christendom
Paul's Vision of Meal and Word for Today
In Small Churches: Experimental
In Small Churches: Inherited
In Churches that Combine the Small with the Large
In Larger Churches
Testimony: Three Ways
Symposium-like Worship as a "New" Sacrament
Inculturating Worship and Witness in the Post-Christendom West
8. Worship Forms Mission I: Glorifying God, Sanctifying Humans
Worship Edifies Attractive Christians
Glorifying God, Sanctifying Humans
What Christians Do in Worship
9. Worship Forms Mission II: Actions of Worship
We Gather
We Praise God
We Confess that Jesus Is Lord
We Tell the Big Story
We Tell the "Little Stories"
We Perform Rituals
We Make Peace and We Pray
We Sing
Transformations
10. Worship Forms Mission III: Worshipping Christians in the World
Witness
Being
Affections
Actions
Deviance: Individual and Corporate
11. Missional Worship in the Worldwide Church
We Worship the God of All the Nations
The Worldwide Vision of the New Testament
Pre-Christendom: A Worldwide Vision
Christendom: The Vision Narrows
Christianity Becomes Worldwide Again
Post-Christendom: Worldwide Interdependence
Worldwide Christianity: A Transcultural Community
12. Outsiders Come to Worship I: What the Outsiders Experience
Worship and Outsiders in Christian History
Why Outsiders Come
What the Outsiders See: Paul's Concerns
Where the Outsiders Meet Christians: A Liminal Space
The Outsiders in Christian Worship: Inculturation
Five Models of Church: Domestic, Megachurch, Cathedral, Congregation, Outsider-Directed
What the Outsiders See: Actions of Christian Worship
What the Outsiders Intuit: The Church's Ethos
What the Outsiders Intuit: About God
13. Outsiders Come to Worship II: Hospitality and Wholeness
Attending Church by Choice
Hospitality: A Task for All Christians
Hospitality in Worship
Outsiders and the Table: Three Approaches
Worship and Mission in a Body Made Whole
Breathing In, Breathing Out
Appendix: Are Americans in Christendom?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Interviews
Author Interview
Doing Worship and Mission in a Post-Christendom World
What does it mean to be a Christian in a post-Christendom era—a time when society no longer supports or promotes Christianity? How do Christians worship and do mission in this challenging new environment? That's the subject of Worship and Mission After Christendom, a new book from Herald Press by Alan and Eleanor Kreider. In the interview below, they reflect on how Christians today can worship God and reach out to others in a world where religion is marginalized and many people are unfamiliar with the Christian story.
What does it mean to be living in Christendom?
Eleanor: In the Christendom world, governments support Christianity through public holidays like Christmas and Good Friday, Bibles are used in courts, or laws are enacted against shopping or selling of certain items on Sundays.
Alan: Christendom is a society in which Christians run things and pass laws that give advantages to Christians. The symbols of Christianity such as the cross are visible, and in schools Christian hymns and prayers are taught to all students. In Christendom you learn that if you're a Christian you get ahead in business and academics. Everyone assumes that they and other people know the Christian story, what the cross is, and who the infant in the manger is. In Christendom people assume that you ought to go to church, and that Christians are needed to offer prayers and to tell presidents, governors and generals what to do, even though they may not pay attention.
What does it mean to be post-Christendom?
Eleanor: In the post-Christendom world, many people have never heard the story of Jesus. They are unfamiliar with the Bible. They don't know a world where you can't shop on Sunday. Holidays celebrating religious events are empty of religious meaning.
Alan: In post-Christendom, Christians no longer run things, and Christianity isn't favored. Belonging to a church confers no advantages. Laws no longer favor one religion, and in school teachers don't require children to say prayers or learn hymns. Fewer people go to church, and those who do go to church go less often. Above all, people don't know the great story of the Bible. People may have heard about Jesus, but they don't know what he did or said. Some people are spiritual, but they get their inspiration from nature, music or the arts—not religion.
Some people regret this change to a post-Christian world. Is it a bad thing?
Eleanor: It is good, in that we have to think about the choices we make as Christians—we choose to follow Christ and live a certain way not because it's easy, expected or approved by government or society. To be a Christian is to be a nonconformist, a risk-taker, someone who dreams different dreams about new possibilities.
Alan: Post-Christendom is a hard time because a lot of things Christians have assumed about our "Christian" culture have to change, and that's uncomfortable. But it's also a great time to be a Christian. We can decide to be Christians not because we're born one, or because of parental or societal pressure, but because we chose to be one. In other words, post-Christendom may be challenging, but it is a lot less dull than Christendom!
What does this weakening of Christendom mean for the church?
Eleanor: Post-Christendom requires the church to see itself as more than a social club, or just another Sunday morning option. It forces us to define who we are and articulate its values, both to nurture believers and to draw others in.
Alan: Without the supports of a society in which being Christian is admired by everybody, and where fewer and fewer people know the Bible story, the church must be upfront in telling the story of God and alert in asking how God's story is unfolding in our society. Christians need to constantly ask: How, in our new situation, are we to express the life of Jesus? And it means doing more to live and tell the story of God, because people don't know it. Churches that aren't asking these questions will die.
How does post-Christendom differ between the U.S. and Canada?
Alan: We are Americans, so we speak as outsiders to the Canadian situation, but it appears to us that the situation in Canada seems much closer to that in England and Europe than in the U.S.—it is much more secularized and post-Christendom than in the U.S. But even in the U.S. the situation varies. In some places, it is as post-Christendom as anything in England, but in other places it is marked by a fierce attempt to re-impose Christendom in ways the U.S. has never known throughout its history.
Eleanor: A special characteristic of life in the U.S. is "civil religion," a melding of God and nationalism that is distinctively American. But despite that, the tendencies toward post-Christendom are strong in the U.S. Like in other countries, church attendance is declining, and the highest worth, or worship, is being ascribed to economic security—not to God.
Why does the church need to re-think mission and worship in a post-Christendom world?
Eleanor: The post-Christendom era gives us a new chance to re-think how we have separated worship and mission, and find ways to bring them back together again. Doing so will draw us into God's heart, and as we praise, sing, learn, witness, eat together, cry, forgive and encourage each other we will show God's love for the world.
Alan: Post-Christendom tendencies offer us the challenge to rediscover the foundational practices of the Christian church, some of which are very old and need to be rediscovered, and some of which must be newly invented for our time. Both old and new will be ways of expressing the life and character of the God who has made peace through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
What does mission look like in a post-Christendom world?
Eleanor: It looks like neighbors and strangers gazing in the windows of the Christian community, longing for the invitation to join the bounteous meal spread on the generous table. Christians look out those same windows, looking for ways to serve and listening for the heartbeat of the world.
Alan: In Christendom mission was what missionaries did; in post-Christendom mission is what God is doing. Christians need be alert to what God is doing and to enter in. Whatever that mission will be, it will look like Jesus Christ, who embodied the mission of God like nobody else.
What will worship look like in a post-Christendom world?
Alan: Worship after Christendom will have many expressions. Some will look traditional, and some will take place in pubs or auditoriums. Christians will rediscover the table; the Eucharist will become more important. Worship will both be at home in that culture, using its styles and expressions, but also raise questions that critique its false securities and values.
Eleanor: In worship we offer praise and ascribe worth to God. When we encounter God by retelling the story of God's gracious acts and by attuning ourselves to God's character and purpose, we are changed into the image of Christ, whom we worship and follow. And that can lead outsiders to ask why we have hope—why do we do the things we do? And then we will invite them to worship God with us, so they can find out.