In this post I want to focus on two chapters written by Jason Clark in the book Church in the Present Tense: A Candid Look at What’s Emerging. First, in chapter three of the book Jason exposes Consumer Liturgies and Their Corrosive Effects on Christian Identity. Second, in chapter five of the book he provides the reader with an example of how the church can provide the space for a Christian formation process that builds up and strengthens the Christian identity. His chapter is titled, The Renewals of Liturgy in the Emerging Church. Both of these chapters are meant to be read together.
What is important to know about Jason is that he is not someone who sits in his study all day long and comes up with abstract ideas about “being” or “doing” church. Jason’s theological reflections and prescription for the contemporary church have arisen out of his work as a church planter in London. As a missional practitioner he has identified that one of the major issues that the church in the West faces today is the formational impact of consumer liturgies in people’s lives. Jason labels the consumerist liturgy a “perverted liturgy” that leads us to embody values that are contrary to our Christian identity. We come to order our life around “the consumer imagination of what life is really about.” Often we are unaware of this formational power of consumerism in our life and it has shaped our practice of “being” and “doing” church.
Jason does not stop by explicating the damaging effect of the consumer liturgy on the Christian identity. In chapter five he proposes a counter liturgy and gives an example of how the church can create spaces for a liturgy that builds and strengthens the Christian identity. This chapter was of particular relevance to my own personal research interests. I am studying the spaces that churches create for youth conversions. One of the problems that I am finding in my research is that the conversion narratives that exist in the church are often very limited. The stories are too narrow for a lot of people to find themselves in. For example, second generation Christians are often only presented with “missionary conversions narratives”. The stories that these second generation Christians are given by the church often don’t help them to make sense out of their own experience – a conversion process that is often more gradual and not as dramatic as that of a person who did not grow up Christian.
Another problem of evangelical ways of thinking about conversion is that it is separated from church – it is an individual thing. Let me explain what I mean by that. The church is not seen in the evangelical way of thinking and practicing conversion as playing an important role in the conversion process. What evangelicals focus on is the moment of conversion. The problem that often exists is that the new converts are not strengthened by the church’s formation process in their Christian identity. Once they prayed the sinner’s prayer “the work is done.” Often youth are left to figure out their Christian identity by themselves. Often there are no liturgies (or only very weak ones) that strengthen the youth in their formation of their Christian identity. Thus the short-term catechism – Flow – that Jason describes has caught my interest. The short term-catechism seems to have the potential to create a Christian liturgy that helps us experience what it means to be shaped by God’s values and priorities as revealed to us in Scripture and experienced in community.
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