Yesterday, as I was sitting in a seminar for 25 pastors from the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, the following question popped into my head:
is a church gathering for therapy or for doxology?
In other words, is the purpose of preaching and worship to help bring healing to the deepest wounds of the soul many people have? Almost like mass group therapy?
Or is the role of a Sunday gathering simply to give honor and praise to God’s name (that’s doxology) and whatever thereapeutic & spiritual benefits emerge from that are icing on the cake?
Should the flashpoint of a pastor’s sermon be a human need or struggle?
Or should it be the greatness and glory of God’s character?
(To be even more specific, should we try to preach like Andy Stanley or like John Piper?!)
Or . . . is it an either/or kind of question anyway? Perhaps by preaching doxology we accomplish divine therapy. And as we design worship experiences that bring healing we are also engaged in praising the God known in Hebrew as El Rophe — the Lord Heals.
What do you think?
There are 7 comments
I think that when YOU preach, your use of praise and worship mixed with the scriptures frees us “me-thinking” people to get outside of ourselves long enough to worship and accept God’s healing powers which he uses YOU to convey to us.
(doxology)
Our faith strenthens, our love deepens and our hope grows. Is that not healing?(therapeutic)
Forgive the run-on sentence, it was random thinking that I did not want to interrupt.
Both/And. Yes and Yes. John Piper goes way too far in one direction and Joel Osteen goes way too far in the other. IMO, of course.
Wow, one of your most provocative posts. This is really cool to ponder. Too many pastors are accused of preaching solely on “contemporary” subjects in an effort to attract today’s shallow church shopper and only meet “surface” needs. Just preach verse by verse, critics lodge. I think Jesus always pointed people to His Father, lifting Him up, but He always took time to teach the Word and to heal the immediate need. But if I had to “err” in one direction, as your question begs us to take a stand, then I’d encourage doxology, which gives way to therapy. That’s how I’d come down.
It both.
But your query reminds me of a passage in “Mere Christianity”:
the devil always sends errors into the world in pairs–pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse….He relies on your extra dislike of one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.”
Lewis then advises us not to be fooled by the devil’s deceptions.
Of course, I’m not calling you the devil, but I do believe that you are picking up on an existing argument floating around the Church that is meant to divide. The most fearsome battles in the church are over worship.
The irony is, can worship as a healing event heal this rift?
Steve — Where is Andy Stanley on that continuum?
Talbot, it’s been a long time since I’ve listened to Andy Stanley, but my recollection is that he’s pretty well-balanced. I picked two polar opposites, because I’m familiar with Piper and Osteen, but not as familiar with Andy Stanley’s latest stuff. The way I hear Andy Stanley now may be dramatically different since my faith has changed so much over the last 5 years.
I think that the point is to touch people’s lives and to point them towards God. The community to which you speak needs neither another Andy Stanley or a John Piper. They do not need a replica or a facsimile of someone else. They need to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying in and through the word of God through you.
When lives are touched with the truth, when ‘we’ come to our senses, ‘we’ turn and praise God, ‘we’ worship God.
The American Church or the Church as it happens in America is a very small part of worship although many call it worship in totality. There is praise offered to God this is true but worship, the worship that God desires goes much deeper and farther. “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1) This spiritual act of worship goes way beyond church.
The question that you might be asking is, “How do we accomplish this?” I believe that the answer is within the story of God and explaining and examining the human condition. The hinge pin to this spiritual act of worship in Romans 12 is “in view of God’s mercy” and the offering comes from that view of His mercy. With that in mind, one needs to understand God’s mercy and the need for it. The worship of God comes in the response to the need for mercy and the illustrations that God has provided and the human condition.
Multiple times in the Gospels Jesus gives this command – “Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.” Mercy is a characteristic that flows from God to those around you when you show compassion and love for your neighbor.
“Come and listen all you who fear God and let me tell you what he has done for me.”
At the same time, God needs to be rightsized. He is not a cosmic vending machine or a genie in bottle nor does he live in a box on a shelf that we pull down every time that we need something. God is God and we are not. He is high and holy, holy holy is He. The image of God on his throne needs to be understood – Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4. This is a place of reverence.
That said one cannot satisfy the repair of the human soul without understanding the greatness and glory of God’s character.
(Last time I checked you are not to become more like Andy Stanley or John Piper but more like Christ in your life and doctrine. 🙂 )