Education and the Liturgical Life of the Church

EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE OF THE CHURCH Robert K. Martin Saint Paul School of Theology Abstract 5 In every faith community, worship and education should be conceived and practiced as interdependent, interpenetrating dimensions of ecclesial life. Too often, however, worship and education are separated and compartmentalized to the detriment of both. This article explores a way to understand the inherent unity of worship and education and proposes a structure of ecclesial life in which each is necessary to the other. Putting education and worship in conversation yields new clarity regarding the liturgical nature of ministry and the micro- and macroscopic perspectives of education. Significant implications are drawn, especially with respect to the important insights that an educational perspective can bring to pastoral leadership in the community. How are worship and education related within the life of Christian churches? When Christian religious educators and worship leaders pose this question to one another they usually address it from the perspective of one or the other professional guilds. Worship leaders and scholars tend to focus on how educative activities augment the worshipping life of the religious community while educators speak to the educational significance of worship. Although there is value in such approaches, they are inherently reductionistic. When either worship or education is framed entirely in terms of the other, it is quite impossible to avoid making one instrumental to the other and reducing the content of one to the categories of the other. I have found it much more fruitful to think about worship and education from an ecclesiological point of view that takes into account the multidimensional and diverse nature of faith communities within an overall framework of that which unifies the diversity. To get at the relationship of worship and education within the larger scope of the church’s life, it will be necessary to have an overall Religious Education 22 Vol. 98 No. 1 Winter 2003 DOI: 10.1080/0034408039006???? 10 15 20 25 30 33 ROBERT K. MARTIN 23 vision of ecclesial life in mind. Yet, much of our thinking about the church separates the different ministries and facets of ecclesial life and keeps them independent of each other. Compartmentalization in ecclesial life ineluctably leads to fragmentation in the church’s ministries and territorial divisiveness among the leadership. We need ways of conceiving the church that reveals its organic unity and yet acknowledges the marvelous plurality within it. To that end, this article explores a multifaceted structure of ecclesial life that illumines the inherent unity of worship and education with each other and with all other facets of ecclesial life. It will be demonstrated that unifying worship and education is not at all an esoteric irrelevancy in the life of the faith community. Recognizing how education and worship are united in the church’s liturgical practices yields significant implications for the entire community, and specifically, for the ecclesial orders of deacon and elder, whose professional responsibilities often depends on the discrete separation of education from worship. CONSTRUCTING A HOLISTIC VISION 5 10 15 20 OF ECCLESIAL LIFE The works of C. Ellis Nelson and Maria Harris are essential building blocks for my conception of the church and its ministries as a unitary whole. C. Ellis Nelson is one of the more prominent figures in pastoral theology who consistently argued against the prevailing compartmentalistic ethos of Protestant ecclesiology. His books, Where Faith Begins and the sequel, How Faith Matures, have over the years called attention to the priority of the faith community in the formation of faith. Contending that faith is most profoundly developed in the relationships and activities that constitute the Christian community, Nelson stands squarely within the tradition of Horace Bushnell, a “father” of the Christian education movement. From Nelson’s important contribution to ecclesiology, two points are particularly germane to our interests here. First, he correctly describes worship as the “first and most fundamental act of a congregation” (1989, 175). That worship is a fundamental aspect of ecclesial life in which all other aspects are directed to their ultimate source and destiny is an assertion that is shared equally among the great Christian traditions— 25 30 35 40 24 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE Anabaptist, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Reformed, Anglican, Pentecostal, and so on. As the bedrock of Christian communal discipleship, worship orients the church’s pastoral and lay ministries—including the educational ministry—beyond mere action to their true origin, source, and goal in the trinitarian life of God. Second, Nelson has argued that the activities of worship and education should be fully interconnected, with the activities of one flowing into the other. In his description of the socialization of faith in religious community, we find an integrative, noncompartmentalized understanding of ecclesial ministry. There is, however, a problem in Nelson’s writings that stands in the way of developing a fully integrative structure of ecclesial life. He conceives of worship as a loosely bound collection of discrete activities (e.g., preaching, singing, etc.) that are indeed related to other activities, but in an external and mechanistic way. The image that comes to mind is a set of billiard balls bouncing off one another on a pool table. Yes, they certainly interact, but they are not inherently bound together by a mutual interdependency. What is needed for the development of an integral structure of ecclesial life is a conceptual framework that allows for greater synthesis among the different processes and activities of a faith community. For such a conceptual framework we turn to Maria Harris. Harris draws upon Nelson but develops an ecclesial structure in which the category of “activity” is subsumed within a larger category of “form.” Her books, Portrait of Youth Ministry and Fashion Me A People, in particular, distinguish between five overlapping “forms” of Christian discipleship by which ecclesial activities are endowed with substance, structure, and continuity: Koinonia (community), Leitourgia (prayer and worship), Didache (instruction), Kerygma (proclamation), and Diakonia (service). As I draw upon Harris and Nelson, I will refer to the various forms of ecclesial life as “dimensions.” Because our thinking of “form” can easily be limited to the concrete and mechanistic images of discrete objects that relate only tangentially, we need an additional metaphor that helps us think about how worship and education are part of one another, and together part of the larger whole of ecclesial life. By speaking of worship and education as dimensions, we can imagine better how worship is always formative and how education, if true to ecclesial life, is oriented as an act of worship. It is less accurate to say that worship and education “overlap,” as if worship is only partially educative and education is only sometimes worshipful. It is more accurate ROBERT K. MARTIN 25 5 10 FIGURE 1. to say that worship and education are mutually constitutive even though they are distinctive dimensions. This is what the graphic below intends to show: An image of overlapping forms is compared to an image of dimensions that interpenetrate each other to constitute a whole (Fig. 1). Within a multidimensional conception of Christian life, it is crucial that we be able to think about how the various aspects of the church’s community and ministry envelop one another interdependently while maintaining their distinctiveness. In Harris’ schema, these five dimensions—koinonia, leitourgia, didache, diaconia, kerygma—together constitute the “curriculum” of the church, broadly construed to mean the “entire course of the church’s life” (1989, 17, 171). As people participate in the forms of Christian life, they are engaged pedagogically; that is, they learn how to be Christian by participating communally in Christian practices. The fashioning or form-ing of people over time as disciples of Christ in and through the forms of the church is what Harris means by “education.” This much more expansive conception of education cannot be equated with “instruction” or “schooling” (Harris 39; cf., Westerhoff 1976, 6). Harris is driving home the fact that people are formed through perhaps unintentional, perhaps informal means. Education must be broadly conceived to include the relatively implicit means by which people learn even without knowing that they are learning. The new framework that Harris is giving education is one in which “the whole community educates the whole community. . .to the pastoral vocation of engaging in ministry in the midst of the world” (50). As church members are, to a greater or lesser extent, involved in ecclesial activi- 15 20 25 30 35 40 26 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE ties, they are more or less shaped in terms of the five dimensions that constitute ecclesial life in faith communities. It is important to recognize that I am not proposing that we should insert the five dimensions into ecclesial life, as if they are absent until we conjure them up. Ecclesial life is already constituted by relationships (koinonia), rituals and patterns of action (leitourgia), individual and corporate knowledge (didache), the ways we serve (diaconia), and the vision and purpose of our life together (kerygma). While it may very well be true that within a particular faith community the ecclesial quality of these dimensions may be completely overshadowed by sin, at least the elemental rudiments are present in any community. If it were otherwise—if there were no binding relations, no overarching purpose, no common practices—there would be no community to speak of. It is important to realize that the primary responsibility of church leadership is to cultivate these hidden and corrupted dimensions of ecclesial life that are already present in congregations. MICROSCOPIC AND MACROSCOPIC PERSPECTIVES IN EDUCATION If education concerns the curriculum of the church, and the curriculum itself is constituted by the interpenetration of the five dimensions of ecclesial life, then education is a complex process irreducible to one dimension. In other words, education cannot be reduced to didache or to any number of pedagogical strategies. Education is more than pedagogy. Rather, education is, as Harris rightly asserts, the fashioning of Christian discipleship in and through the five dimensions of and the worship of God in the community. Education is not one practice or ministry alongside and apart from other ecclesial practices; it is intrinsic to the all practices of Christian faith. By practicing the faith, ecclesial communities and their members, thus, develop and mature. Education is the process by which ecclesial life, in all its dimensions, is quickened and intensified as the members learn how to be disciples of Christ together. As persons participate in faith communities, it is inevitable that their involvement waxes and wanes, rises and falls, over time. The same is true of congregations and all faith communities. There are times when enthusiasm is high, the vision is clear, and ministry is effective, just as there are periods in which the community is fragmented, ROBERT K. MARTIN 27 self-absorbed, and spiritually listless. This is to be expected. Teaching and learning occurs microscopically, in the dynamics of interpersonal learning, and macroscopically, in the ways persons and communities are formed (or deformed) over long periods of time. In addition to observing the teaching and learning that takes place at any moment, that is, microscopically, it is also important for pastoral leaders and especially educators to have a macroscopic perspective. To attend to the quality and substance of ecclesial life over time is to see the members and the community, as it were, through a wide-angle lens. Seeing the congregation as a whole and its members moving through time would mean that we would be attentive to how the activities and processes and relationships are forming ecclesial life in the community. Figure 2 builds on figure 1 by putting the formative process in motion, so to speak. The macroscopic perspective of education is concerned with the formative process whereby people develop faith by participating more fully in the forms of ecclesial life. Macroscopic educational analysis is a vantage point from where educators can more adequately understand and influence the formation of faith personally and communally. For the most part, religious educators are relegated to microscopic ministries in congregations having to do with the church school, confirmation, and specific events. Rarely is their educational expertise brought to bear upon an analysis of the community as a whole as it has progressed/regressed through the years. But religious educators are pastoral leaders who have been trained precisely to assess the stepby-step (pedagogy) movement of people and communities in the learning process. Our faith communities desperately need educators to bring their gifts and training to attend not only to classroom dynamics of teaching and learning but also to the institutional and societal forces and the practices and ideas that have formative power. In order to see what is happening near-at-hand and in the moment as well as far away, educators need to put bifocal lenses in their 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 FIGURE 2. “Progress” in a macroscopic educational perspective. 40 28 5 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE spectacles. To deal more adequately with issues having to do with systems and structures at the macro-level, religious educators will need assistance from disciplines that regularly employ cultural and social analysis such as critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and systems analysis, to name a few.1 Also important are the emerging disciplines of organizational and leadership studies. These disciplines will cultivate in educators critical and creative insight into the institutional dynamics of church life, for example, into the ways people are socialized in faith and the ways church organizations may or may not change. 10 THE BI-LEVEL STRUCTURE OF ECCLESIAL LIFE 15 20 25 30 35 40 So far I have suggested that all the activities and processes of ecclesial life are constituted by five dimensions as they interpenetrate one another. This forms the basic unity of lived Christian faith. It also has been proposed that education names the process, intrinsic to the five ecclesial dimensions, by which the quality and substance of ecclesial life becomes stronger over time. Education is the way in which ecclesial life is intensified as members and the faith communities as a whole participate more intentionally and fully in the practices of Christian discipleship. To more adequately deal with the complexity of learning, we should approach the learning process with both microscopic and macroscopic perspectives. Because the term didache is not sufficient to name the broad scope of faith formation, this article has placed the emphasis on the macroscopic perspective with the hope that the expertise of religious educators will be brought to bear upon the formation of faith in communities as a whole. Now we should concern ourselves with the way the dimensions relate to one another. In Harris’ framework the five forms of ecclesial life are basically equal, occupying the same level, placed side-by-side with no one dimension taking priority over the others. But, if as Nelson has argued, worship is fundamental to the church’s life, this would suggest that there is a difference between worship and the other dimensions as to how they contribute to the whole of ecclesial life. If worship is ascribed a certain priority, that would imply that worship functions on a different level and that somehow the other dimensions 1 Helpful examples of this literature include hooks 1994; Sholle 1994; Giroux et al. 1996; Giroux 1983; Freire 1993; Kanpol 1994 . ROBERT K. MARTIN 29 5 10 FIGURE 3. 15 are united in their common orientation to worship. Figure 3 represents a structure of two fully reciprocal levels in which the other dimensions are oriented by worship and are expressions of worship. As the dimension that orients all other dimensions of ecclesial life, worship exercises at least three indispensable functions. First, worship is the dimension that directs all other dimensions through and beyond the community and its traditions, to the God who transcends every assembly and tradition. This transcendent function of worship provides the church with a critical principle by which all its forms and activities become relative to the divine mystery of revelation. The critical principle of worship undercuts the parochial tendency of every institution to resist its own transformation. Rightly practiced, worship subverts an institution’s proclivity to self-perpetuation, for we encounter the all-pervading Spirit who cannot be contained by any community or tradition. Yet, worship not only destabilizes and negates our efforts to limit God, it is not simply apophatic. Worship is most importantly an encounter with divine Presence. All the elements of a worship service— the celebratory joy of thanksgiving and praise, testimonies of the faithful, and the proclamation of the Word—convoke a sacramental presence in which those assembled may become more fully the Body of Christ. Thus, our worship directs us to some other destination that 20 25 30 35 40 30 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE we see from afar; worship is the journey and the destination. Worship is the pedagogy of actualizing our destiny. Hopefully through worship, the words of the Lord’s prayer—“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”—become to some extent a reality, a presence, a sacramental life. Worship exercises a third function in the community of faith. The substantive, proleptic experience of heaven on earth provides the basic principles for how we are to engage in the rest of the church’s ministries. When communities of faith seek to ascertain how their corporate life should be organized or how they should serve those within and beyond the community, it is to their liturgy of worship they should turn for how God might be worshipped and served through the church’s ministries. In this way, the service/liturgy of worship orients all the other services/liturgies of the church. In the sacramental rituals, the praise and glorification of God, the confession and repentance, and the proclamation of the Word in word, music, and action, each community discovers how it will extend its service to God within and beyond the faith community. As the various ministries of the church are oriented by and ordered within worship, they become more unified. This is the fourth function of worship. All ministries will be more fully integrated with one another and with the congregation as a whole if they are grounded in and guided by the worship of the community. One way to do this is to incorporate the persons, elements, and activities of a particular ministry into the worship service. This can be done through any number of rituals, but the most important connection that should be made is between the ministry itself and the Eucharist. Think of ways that the ministry can be placed on the altar, both literally and figuratively, as a sacrificial offering of our lives that we give to God and to each other. We want the congregants to be able to draw a connection between the bread and wine that we make and offer to one another and the acts of ministry we perform to and for one another that nourish our bodies and spirits. In the Eucharist, the offering of our lives is transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ and extended to all members and to the surrounding community in love. As it becomes clear to congregational members how the diversity of ministries contributes to and flows from the community’s doxology, the fragmentation of the church’s ministries can be more directly addressed and overcome. ROBERT K. MARTIN 31 The Bi-Level Structure of Ecclesial Formation Over Time How is the macroscopic perspective of education related to the bi-leveled structure of ecclesial life? Acknowledging the inadequacy of any graphic to represent a complex reality, Figure 4 put the ecclesial life of a congregation in motion, so to speak. Figure 4 may seem much too optimistic because it shows progressive growth of faith in the community. But, acknowledging the fact that congregational movement can be progressive or regressive, it is important to realize that Christian education is not only responsible for learning in the classrooms, but also for how the community learns how to be more faithful. Christian educators also should be attuned to the formation and transformation of a congregation over time. Recall that education cannot be identified with any single ecclesial form or collection of forms including didache. But neither can education be considered a discrete process set apart from the dimensions and practices of Christian discipleship. Looking at the whole of congregational life, that is, from a macro-level, the emphasis in learning shifts from cognitive apprehension to participation in and practicing the disciplines of the spiritual life. Just as persons learn to read by reading and learn to play the piano by playing the piano, Christians learn to be Christians by participating in the traditions, communities, and practices of Christianity. To ask how we might assist congregants in practicing their faith better is to put education at the center of every activity and event in the community. Approaching the various programs and ministries of congregational life from the perspective of education has the potential to intensify members’ participation by 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 FIGURE 4. The temporal perspective of education. 40 32 5 10 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE making it more intentionally pedagogical. That is to say, an educational perspective would be asking about the ways persons could be encouraged and assisted step-by-step to participate more fully. Thus far, I have been concerned with sketching in broad strokes a general ecclesial structure that shows the central and fundamental roles that worship and education play in ecclesial life. Although much more could be said about how worship and education relate to the other dimensions of Christian discipleship, I have limited the focus of this study to the orientation worship gives to ecclesial life and ways that education capacitates persons and the community to participate more fully in it. But, before too much more can be said about worship, an important clarification needs to be made. WORSHIP AND LITURGY 15 20 25 30 Liturgy and worship has come to mean essentially the same thing, for all practical purposes. Yet, an etymological analysis yields a difference. Webster’s dictionary defines worship as “honor” and “reverence” given to a person or being of greater status. Worship primarily refers to the disposition of the worshipper and the quality of the relation between her and the object of worship. Within a religious context, liturgy certainly has to do with worship, but it is not worship per se. The English word, liturgy, derives from the Greek, leitourgia. Leitourgia combines the Greek words laos (“people”) and ergon (“work” or “activity”). According to sociologist of religion, Gwen Kennedy Neville, most anthropologists refer to liturgy as “the regularized and routinized aspects of daily life or of family and folk rituals and ceremonies.” Liturgy also refers to “work done on behalf of or pertaining to the people,” an active “work of the people,”2 or “the people at work” (Neville 1978, 3). It would be futile to try to determine the original meaning of liturgy, but we might try to weave together the definitions above into a multifaceted notion of liturgy: an activity of the people for the people that creates and sus- 35 2 40 Ian Knox, “Liturgy,” Encyclopedia of Religious Education, eds., Iris V. Cully and Kendig Brubaker Cully, (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), p. 383-4. Cf., Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Reformed Liturgy,” Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition, ed., Donald K. McKim, (Grand Rapides, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1992), pp. 274–75; “Liturgy,” Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). ROBERT K. MARTIN 33 tains a particular structure of social existence. Liturgy is ritual action that generates a common way of life. In a Christian community, the worship of God provides the raison d’être and substance of ecclesial liturgy. Liturgy is the means by which worship is performed. In other words, worship is the what and why of liturgy; liturgy is the how of worship. To use liturgy in this way would mean that many common understandings of liturgy would change. For example, many Christian traditions identify themselves as nonliturgical. However, if a pattern can be discerned in their practices of worship, they are indeed liturgical, regardless of their spontaneity and enthusiasm. Liturgy has also come to refer to worship texts. If, however, liturgy is most accurately understood as a ritual enactment, then texts are liturgical resources for that enactment. The meaning of liturgy can also be wrongly restricted to specific institutional settings such as the typical Sunday morning worship service. However, because the worship of God can and does occur in just about any context, liturgical rituals constitute the patterned worship of God wherever and whenever it occurs. They are the ways the particular being of the church in a specific context is expressed. Yet, the liturgy of a faith community is much more than a simple performance of worship; rituals do more than merely signify. The liturgy is best understood as an epiphany of the reign of God, as a sacramental activity.3 It is an ordinary means by which an extraordinary reality is manifest. Yet, this work of the people is not initiated, performed, or accomplished by themselves alone, but is, according to the first chapters of Acts, constituted by the Spirit who dwells in and works through the people. Therefore, as pastoral theologian and priest, Richard Chiola, has phrased it, liturgy should not just be conceived as a work of the people; rather, it is primarily the public work of the Spirit 5 10 15 20 25 30 3 Many sources are important to an understanding of the ministries of the church as sacramental, as an expression and extension of the congregation’s worship. The following resources have been especially helpful to me: A. Dulles, Models of the Church, (New York: Image Books, 1987), especially the chapter, “The Church as Sacrament”; M. M. Garijo-Guembe, Communion of the Saints: Foundation, Nature, and Structure of the Church, trans., P. Madigan, (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1994); S. Ross, Extravagant Affections: A Feminist Sacramental Theology, (New York: Continuum, 1998); P. McPartlan, Sacrament of Salvation: An Introduction to Eucharistic Ecclesiology, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995); E. A. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets : a Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints, (New York : Continuum, 1998); J. Macquarrie, A Guide to the Sacraments (New York : Continuum, 1997). 35 40 34 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE to bring the Church and world to its completion. The liturgy is a performance that involves those assembled in a particular reality, contends renowned scholar of Christian liturgy, Aidan Kavanagh. Liturgical rites instantiate a theological form of life. He writes, Rite involves creeds and prayers and worship, but it is not any one of these things, nor all of these things together, and it orchestrates more than these things. Rite can be called a whole style of Christian living found in the myriad particularities of worship, of laws called “canonical,” of ascetical and monastic structures, of evangelical and catechetical endeavors, and in particular ways of doing secondary theological reflection. . . A liturgy of Christians is thus nothing less than the way a redeemed world is, so to speak, done. (1984, 100, emphasis added) The liturgies of the church are to generate among a particular community a redeemed existence, and if they do not, they are not ecclesial liturgies. The ultimate purpose of the liturgy is according to Orthodox theologian, Alexander Schmemann, “to actualize and realize the identity of the ecclesia with the new aeon, of the ‘age to come’. . .The leitourgia, therefore, is not a cultic action performed in the Church, on its behalf, and for it; it is the action of the Church itself, or the Church in actu, it is the very expression of its life” (1990, 16–17). Liturgical rituals are most truly patterns of incarnational activity by which a theological reality—the reign of God—is manifest sacramentally, in which people come to share their lives in common for the sake of the whole. The liturgy then refers to the ordinary acts through which an extraordinary Presence is generated. In Schmemann’s view, “[i]n its essence the Church is the presence, the actualization in this world of the ‘world to come,’ in the aeon—of the Kingdom. And the mode of this presence, of this actualization of the new life, the new aeon, is precisely the leitourgia” (1990, 17). If in worship the congregation is moved closer to a sacramental communion, the liturgy wields prophetic judgment on all that is not life enhancing. As the sacramental communion among those assembled foreshadows the eschatological communion of all creation in Christ, the liturgy stands against and denounces all forms of division and dehumanization. To conceive of liturgy in this fashion—as the enactment of worship that structures the life and ministry of the church—means that my description of ecclesial life will require another refinement. The ROBERT K. MARTIN 35 distinctiveness of worship and of liturgy means that they function differently in ecclesial life however much they are inherently related. If worship orients persons and communities to the God who transcends all persons, communities, and traditions, then liturgy can be understood as the connective tissue between worship and the other dimensions of ecclesia. Liturgy is the effluence of worship expressed as diaconal service, instruction and study, proclamation and enactment of the kerygma, and the fellowship of koinonia (see Fig. 5). We should not think that liturgy flows only from worship. Liturgy also can be the vessel by which the different ministries of the church are offered to God as worship. Not long ago, in the congregation my family has joined, a mission team was commissioned in the Sunday worship service to serve in Honduras. The members of the team were called to the front of the sanctuary. After a short blessing was offered, the excited band of neophyte missionaries took their seats, and the service moved on to a celebration of the Eucharist, without any reference whatsoever to the meaning of that team’s Honduran ministry. As I reflected on the rupture between the team’s ministry and the celebration of Eucharist, it seemed that a propitious moment had passed by. It would have been deeply meaningful to the mission team and to the congregation for their ministry to be part of what was placed on the altar as an offering to God, to be transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, and to be offered to and celebrated with both the congregation and Honduran people. One can imagine the many ways that the team’s hopes, skills, and compassion could be literally and 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 FIGURE 5. The liturgical enactment ofecclesial life. 40 36 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE figuratively laid on the altar, the ways in which the team could have been involved as celebrants, the ways in which the congregation could have extended their support to this faithful band even as they will commune with others in a distant land. Connections between the everyday ministries of the people of God and the sacred rituals of tradition must be forged much more clearly if worship is really going to be fundamental to the church’s ministry. It will require that the ministries of the church find expression in the corporate worship of the assembly. Because ministry is too often compartmentalized from worship, and because the ordinary lives of the laity seem remote and disconnected from the rituals of liturgy, it will not be easy to bring the diversity of ministries into the worship service. But this is exactly what must happen if congregants are to understand themselves as bringing into existence a redeemed world. Perhaps this already happens rather tacitly. For example, when members share their experience of compassionate care from other members, diaconia becomes worship through the liturgy of testimony. Much more can and should be done to connect the diversity of ecclesial ministries explicitly to the church’s doxology. But at least we should begin by recognizing the ways in which ministry and worship are already inextricably part of one another, and then we may set out to integrate them more explicitly. ECCLESIAL LITURGY: “THY KINGDOM COME” If ecclesial bodies such as congregations and parishes and denominational bureaucracies are truly living out their faith in Christ, this does not mean that everything will be “perfect,” that there will cease to be failure, conflict, and struggle. However much we are saddened and embarrassed by the flaws of ecclesial bodies, this does not mean that they are any less sacramental. To affirm the sacramentality of the church is to presuppose its limited, fallible, and sinful condition. For it is the nature of a sacrament to be the corruptible means by which the incorruptible is manifest. The finitude and sinfulness of individuals and faith communities demonstrates vividly the fact that human constructions can never be substituted for nor confused with the ineffable majesty of God. Granting our incomplete and sinful condition, nevertheless, ROBERT K. MARTIN 37 ecclesial bodies should strive to be faithful to their sacramental calling: to make present the reign of God. It is in the liturgy of common worship where this calling is held before the community most explicitly. Therefore, the rituals comprising the corporate worship should be the most explicit enactments of the community expressing what is most true of life in Christ. In the liturgy of corporate worship, that which the faith community deems of ultimate worth is rendered most explicit. The worship assembly should be the crystalline moment when the reign of God is most fully incarnated in the practices, dispositions, historical retrievals, and future prospectives of the people of God. As the people assemble and join together in common prayer and praise, they have the sacred responsibility to enact and celebrate the reign of God in that time and place. In worship the assembly gathers around the table, equally sharing their lives such that the members become body and blood of Christ to one another. If the service of worship is true to the ministry of Christ and to the “kin-dom” of God, it will be the moment when the lowly are elevated and the mighty are brought low, wealth is shared commonly in the interests of all, leadership is expressed in servanthood, and people from every area are invited and welcomed to the banquet table. If every ministry and every dimension of the church’s life were liturgically structured and enacted, this would mean that even the administrative, financial, educational, evangelical, and all other institutional structures and practices would be organized and conducted communally. I cannot imagine a more practically radical calling. Yet, this is precisely what the church and its educational ministry is called to do. 5 10 15 20 25 ORIENTING CHRISTIAN EDUCATION LITURGICALLY 30 If ecclesial life is liturgical, then we must be careful to orient ecclesial education liturgically as well. The goal of education takes its starting point in the goal of the liturgy of worship—to encounter and to glorify God and to participate in God’s life. But because education is not worship per se but is liturgically oriented, its goal is slightly different: to edify the body of Christ such that God is encountered and glorified and people participate in God’s life more fully. A liturgical framework of Christian education yields many significant implications, four of which are outlined below. 35 40 38 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE 1. The unitary relation of education and worship is conceived theologically. Given the claim that education and worship are indivisibly united, we should get a better idea of the kind of relationality that unity implies. I have said that education and worship are not tangentially related, nor are they polarities that have to be correlated. Rather, they already are united in the whole of Christian communal life. Worship and education inform and interpenetrate each other. Neither should be conceived in isolation from the other, and one cannot be reduced to the particulars of the other without seriously degrading both. The unity among worship and education is not an ideal nor abstraction. It is arguably the most fundamental type of relationality, and it is evident in all levels of nature. In physics, the integration of two as one without a loss of the distinctiveness of each is called complementarity. Complementarity is a term coined by the physicist, Neils Bohr, to explain the fact that light has wave-like characteristics and particle-like characteristics. He realized that both wave theory and particle theory are necessary to understand the unitary phenomenon of light, even though waves cannot be understood in terms of particles or vice versa.4 Complementarity is similar to an ancient theological term, perichoresis. Perichoresis was used in the early centuries of Christian theology to describe the hypostatic union of divine and human natures to form the unitary personhood of Jesus Christ. Perichoresis also describes the eternal co-relation of the persons of the Holy Trinity whereby each interpenetrates or interweaves the others and in turn is penetrated by the others.5 Although the patristic theologian Hilary of Poitiers did not use the term, nevertheless he poetically described this kind of communal relation: “[The Persons of the Holy Trinity] reciprocally contain One Another, so that One permanently envelops, and is permanently enveloped by, the Other whom he yet envelops.”6 4 For a more detailed explanation of complementarity, see Loder and Neidhardt’s explanation of complementarity vis-a-vis the theory of the “strange loop” of the mobius band, 1992, pp. 2-3, 71-80, and their definition, p. 310. T. F. Torrance compares the conception of complementarity of Bohr and the scientist/philosopher, Michael Polanyi, 1984, pp. 125–131. 5 On the interpersonal perichoretic relations among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, see Torrance 1988, p. 10f.; also Moltmann 1981, pp. 171–178; Boff 1988, pp. 134–154; LaCugna, 1991, chapter 8. 6 De Trinitate, 3.1, cited in the “Agreed Statement on the Holy Trinity,” Torrance 1993, p. 224. ROBERT K. MARTIN 39 Describing the relationship of worship and education in terms of perichoresis means that one is constituted in its relation to the other. Because of the limitations of our minds, it is nearly impossible for us to think about two different things as the same time. We tend to focus on one thing and let the other fade into the background. This tends to be the way we think about education and worship. When we concentrate on teaching and learning, it is easy to forget that the basics of what and how we educate will be found in worship. Conversely, when we are intentionally and most explicitly worshipping, we tend to forget that worship is a step-bystep (pedagogical) journey, the destination of which if a more profound engagement in the divine life. 2. The primary context and means of educational activity is participation in the forms of ecclesial life. Ecclesial education is not a separate form of ecclesial existence apart from any of the forms of ecclesial life. Rather, education concerns the growth of the whole of ecclesial life, and its chief purpose is the edification and intensification of ecclesial life. This means that an educational program in a church cannot begin abstractly with a structure of classroom events (e.g., Sunday school) that need to be filled with programmatic content. The basic program of education occurs within and is predicated upon the primary ecclesial practices and fellowship. Therefore, the educational ministry of a congregation should give greatest priority to engaging people in the fellowship, practices, and ministries of ecclesial life. Secondary forms of education, namely, instruction and other schooling practices, should support and intensify the participation of persons in the primary forms of ecclesial life. One example of an educational approach that involves children in the activities of ecclesial life is the “Catechesis of the Good Shepherd” developed by Sophia Cavaletti. Fostering a playful engagement of the children with the artifacts and rituals of worship is the hallmark of this approach. Cavaletti’s great insight is that Christians should not be merely taught about the dimensions of ecclesial life but should be educated into all the dimensions—to service and outreach, to proclaiming the word of God, to communion in the community, and to more intensive forms of teaching and learning—by engaging in the forms or activities implied by the dimension. Within the curriculum of the “Catechesis,” instruction about activities and objects of worship is important, but the primary emphasis of the approach is to foster a communal assembly among children and adults so that the children may more fully 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 40 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE encounter and know God for themselves through unencumbered exploration (Cavaletti 1992; also Berryman 1991). 3. Education must include a macroscopic perspective if the educational ministry of the church is concerned with the progressive formation of persons and ecclesial organizations in the Spirit of Christ—then From such a vantage point, educators would join with other pastoral leaders (both clerical and lay) to discern how the community of faith might progress toward the following goals: a) orienting the activity liturgically, b) analyzing and reconstructing all activities of church life for their pedagogical value, c) integrating the full variety of ecclesial dimensions in each activity with greater intentionality, d) discerning the progressive and regressive dynamics of the ecclesial body, and e) seeking to engage persons more fully in the forms of Christian discipleship. A word should be said about the third goal, integrating with greater intentionality the full variety of ecclesial dimensions in every activity. It might seem that this goal is overly ambitious and too complex to be practical. And if it were true that these dimensions must be imposed on and inserted into each activity, as if they were not there already, then, yes, it would be immensely burdensome. But the fact is that these dimensions are already present and operative in each activity. We only need the eyes with which to see them. Take any ordinary activity, such as, a committee meeting. In such a completely unremarkable event, all the dimensions of ecclesial life are implicitly there. We need only ask how they are operative. With regard to kerygma: What messages are proclaimed in this gathering? Are the people hearing the Word of God or another type of word in this meeting? Regarding koinonia: How are these people relating to one another? Are they sharing their lives in Christ or are their lives as disconnected after the meeting as before? About worship: What is being worshipped in this space, among these people? To use a Tillichian phrase: What is the committee’s ultimate concern? We should ask these kinds of critical questions about the other dimensions as well. The main point is to realize that the dimensions of ecclesial life about which we have been speaking are particular versions of universal dimensions of human life. In any gathering and in any event, something is being worshipped, people are relating in caring or uncaring ways, messages are proclaimed, and people are teaching and learning. The educational perspective does not impose these ROBERT K. MARTIN 41 dimensions upon a situation; it exposes them. The Latin root of education, educere, conveys the essence of educational analysis: “to bring or draw out” what is actual and what is possible. What is being exposed to the light of day here is the multidimensional nature of every event and activity. Their complexity is something we can either deny or accept. But given the fact of complexity, the pedagogical impulse is to illumine what is already the case so as to encourage greater intentionality about and more responsibility for what is possible. What might be possible, for example, if ecclesial leaders sought to conduct a bible study with all the dimensions in mind? Usually, teachers are so intent on the transmission of information that they do not consider how the study format would be transformed if it were as important to become a communal fellowship that worships and that extends the gifts of their common life to the impoverished and socially marginalized. Of course, this kind of fellowship is nothing new; it has always existed. In my Wesleyan heritage, groups like these were called Methodist Societies. Today, congregations everywhere are forming small covenant groups in which the liturgical rhythm and communal feel of ecclesial life is more immediately experienced. The unity of ecclesial life, I believe, demands that every activity and event should orient people in worship, express itself kerygmatically as the Word of God, constitute the people as a fellowship of koinonia, actualize the Kingdom in diaconal service, and incorporate a dynamic of instruction/reflection that capacitates people to engage more fully in the activity. This is, in part, what is meant by the liturgical structure of ecclesial life. It is the holistic worship of God that reverberates back on the community and constitutes it as an embodied Word of God, a self-conscious and self-reflective communion that serves its members and the world in self-sacrificial agape. 4. That education requires such a panoramic viewpoint implies that the persons who have primary responsibility for overseeing the pedagogical edification of the ecclesial body are the pastors/priests. For this reason, it is unconscionable that ordained clergy eschew educational responsibilities. Moreover, it is a terrible misunderstanding of Christian ordination to differentiate the ecclesial orders of priest and deacon in terms of the professional functions associated with pastoring and teaching. Shepherding and teaching were inextricably wed in the ministry of Jesus Christ and in the history of the church. To distinguish between the orders of priest and deacon by 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 42 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 EDUCATION AND THE LITURGICAL LIFE virtue of a set of professional functions (as is the case in many Protestant denominations) is the equivalent of institutional heresy. When the church’s communion gives way to bureaucracy and the professionalism it fosters, the personhood of the professionals is inevitably subordinated to impersonal tasks, roles, and rules.7 Educational leaders—whether elder, deacon, or laity—should be trained to discern the pedagogical adequacy of the various activities of ecclesial life. They should be skilled in analyzing how faith is developed in the ecclesial institution as a whole. Operating at the macro-level of the educational ministry of the church, we might ask, for example, What are laity and clergy alike learning in the worship service about what it means to be a Christian? How are they coming to understand their responsibilities as members of the civic community? If the service is overly routinized and predictable, what is that teaching the people about the movement of the Spirit among and through them? If the Word of God is explicitly associated only with preaching and the reading of scripture, what are the people learning about their capacity and responsibility to proclaim and embody the Word other than in a professionalized office or through the spoken word? If communion is primarily served to the people as they sit in rows, if the elements are served in individualized, sterling silver vessels, what is that teaching the people about the nature of the Body of Christ in which they share? If during the Eucharist, the assembly gathers around the altar and offers the bread and wine to each other, what are the people learning about how Christ is shared among the members? If the public worship service frequently is taken beyond the church building and conducted on the lawn, or in a natural setting, or in the public square, what might the people learn about the nature of worship? These and other questions about the institutional and corporate aspects of ecclesial life are all within the purview of any and every believer, and most especially of trained pastors and educators. If Christian educators, in particular, will broaden the scope of their discipline beyond the level of the individual, beyond the realm of the classroom, 7 Personhood is one of the main subjects of Zizioulas 1985, especially chapters 1 and 2. For an incisive description of bureaucracy from a nontheological, feminist perspective that is useful in calling the church back to its personal-communal structure of life, consult Ferguson 1984, esp. pp. 6-10. ROBERT K. MARTIN 43 to encompass the whole ecclesial body as it exists over time, they can make an enormous contribution to the creative and critical renewal of their congregations to be more fully incarnational expressions of the Kingdom of God. 5 REFERENCES Berryman, Jerome W. 1991. Godly play: An imaginative approach to religious education. Minneapolis: Augsburg. Boff, Leonardo. 1988. Trinity and society. Paul Burns, trans. Maryknoll: Orbis. Cavaletti, Sofia. 1992. The religious potential of the child: Experiencing scripture and liturgy with young children. Patricia M. Coulter and Julie M. Coulter, trans. Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications. Ferguson, Kathy E. 1984. The feminist case against bureaucracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. *Harris, Maria. 1981. Portrait of youth ministry. Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press. Harris, Maria. 1989. Fashion me a people: Curriculum in the church. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster / John Knox Press. Kavanagh, Aidan. 1984. On liturgical theology. New York: Pueblo Publishing Co. Knox, Ian. “Liturgy.” 1990. Encyclopedia of religious education. Iris V. Cully and Kendig Brubaker Cully, eds. San Francisco: Harper and Row. LaCunga, Catherine Mowry. 1991. God for us: The trinity and Christian life. San Francisco: Harper. “Liturgy.” 1989. Oxford English dictionary, 2nd Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loder, James E. and Neidhardt, W. Jim. 1992. The knights move: The relational logic of the spirit in theology and science. Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard. *Moltmann, Jürgen. 1992. The spirit of life: A universal affirmation. Margaret Kohl, trans. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. *Nelson, C. Ellis. 1952. Where faith begins. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press. Nelson, C. Ellis. 1989. How faith matures. Louisville, Ky: Westminster / John Knox Press. Neville, Gwen Kennedy and John H. Westerhoff, III. 1978. Learning through liturgy. New York: Crossroad. Schmemann, Alexander. 1990. Liturgy and tradition: Theological reflections of Alexander Schmemann. Thomas Fisch, ed. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Torrance, Thomas F. 1984. Transformation and convergence in theology and science: Explorations in the interrelations of scientific and theological enterprise. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans. Torrance, Thomas F. 1988. The trinitarian faith. Edinburgh: T and T Clark. Torrance, Thomas F. 1993. Theological dialogue between orthodox and reformed churches. Vol. 2. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. Westerhoff, John. 1976. Will Our Children Have Faith? New York: Seabury Press. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1992. The reformed liturgy. In Major themes in the reformed tradition. Donald K. McKim, ed. Grand Rapides, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Zizioulas, John D. 1985. Being as communion: Studies in personhood and the church. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. 10 15 20 25 30 35 40