WORSHIP: FORMATION AND DISCERNMENT
A Wesleyan Dialogue Between Worship and Christian Education
by
Dean Blevins
Traditionally most Wesleyan/Holiness and Evangelical parishioners perceive the roles of Christian education and worship to be quite different. Usually the presumed difference lies in the tacit understanding of Sunday School (or small group discipleship) in contrast to corporate worship. But is this understanding a truly appropriate approach from a Wesleyan perspective? If not, what is the relationship of these two functions of the church?
In actuality, there is or ought to be a vital relationship between worship and Christian education, particularly as worship contributes to an educational approach conceived within a framework of formation and discernment. "Formation" and "Discernment" are terms which describe two necessary yet interdependent educational methods which operate together as a larger approach to Christian education, and which find an affinity with Wesleyan thought. This approach to Christian education not only challenges one's understanding of worship styles, but also affirms the necessity for an intentional understanding of Wesleyan Christian education that both draws from worship and informs worship.
To develop these assertions, we will first review how worship informs educational efforts through the thought of religious educators John Westerhoff and Craig Dykstra. I will posit that their approaches constitute the educational movement known as "Formation." We will also investigate how education can impact the church's understanding of worship through an examination of Tom Groome and James Loder's educational method, which collectively will be understood as the practice of "Discernment." We will then explore how this dialogue between worship and education, Formation and Discernment, is indicative of Wesley's theological method and his educational approach derived from his description of the "Means of Grace." Finally, we will posit certain implications that this form of Wesleyan Christian education has for implementing worship styles in Wesleyan/Holiness churches of our day.
Worship's Influence On Education
Enculturation and Encounter Models. Two prominent religious educators, John Westerhoff (formerly Professor of Theology and Christian Nurture at Duke Divinity School) and Craig Dykstra (Vice President for Religion at Lilly Endowment and former Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary), have been well known for their promoting worship as a powerful method of Christian education. These theorists, however, do take somewhat different approaches to how worship functions in Christian education. Westerhoff, following the thought of other educators such as C. Ellis Nelson, asserts that Christians learn primarily through an enculturation or socialization process.[1] This approach has been identified in various places as the faith community approach in which Christians are educated as they are socialized into the community of faith.[2] Westerhoff himself believes that the community enculturation approach is imperative since the traditional "schooling" approach to Christian education has proven itself to be ineffective for long- term discipleship.[3]
Westerhoff's overall model of religious education, which he terms "catechesis," embraces three large movements: instruction (acquiring knowledge and skills considered necessary and useful to Christian life), education (reflection on experience in light of Christian faith and life), and enculturation or formation (experiencing or being enculturated into Christian faith and life).[4] Westerhoff also anticipates that a firm understanding of the Christian gospel will provide an impetus for Christians to work for social change[5] and to resist "turning the Gospel into an opiate of personal piety and ignoring its call to social liberation."[6] Thus Westerhoff anticipates that authentic enculturation will yield a genuine commitment to social change for the Kingdom of God.
John Westerhoff, however, has chosen to champion one aspect of his triadic model more than others, that of formation.[7] His model calls for an intentional assimilation into the Christian worldview through what he believes to be the eight aspects of congregational life: communal rites (repetitive, symbolic and social acts which express and manifest the community's sacred narrative along with its implied faith and life), church environment (including architectural space and artifacts), time (particularly the Christian calendar), communal life (polity, programs and economic life as well as support behaviors), discipline (structured practices within the community), social interaction (interpersonal relations and motivations), role models (exemplars and mentors) and language (which name and describe behavior).[8] Through the intentional employment of these aspects in distinctly Christian ways, Westerhoff believes we can induct children into a primary Christian community and culture which is the basic form of discipleship for Christians.[9] At the heart of Westerhoff's approach is worship and he has written a number of texts which seek to combine liturgy with his enculturation or formational approach.[10] Ultimately for Westerhoff our practices in worship shape our identity as Christians as we orient our world around the worldview (symbols, rhythm, stories, and language) embedded in worship.
Craig Dykstra takes a different approach in which worship is grounded in a transformative encounter with God. Dykstra sees worship not so much a living into a particular worldview (enculturation) as a place where we are encountered by God's redemptive activity (transformation) in spite of our own self-destructive tendencies.[11] This transformation occurs primarily through what Dykstra refers to as the three disciplines of the Christian life: repentance, prayer, and service. Through these disciplines we remove self-centered concerns so that God may encounter us from within. "We get ourselves into a condition in which our imaginations may be transformed so that we can come to see, think, feel, and act as reformed selves."[12]
While Dykstra may seek a transformative "event" through these disciplines, he does believe that this event occurs through the traditional structures found in worship. Dykstra emphasizes that worship is a paradigmic of these forms.
In worship our disciplines take on liturgical form, but they are the same disciplines nonetheless. When we come to worship, we come to put ourselves in a position to receive revelation. Worship is repentance, prayer, and service carried out in the context of a hearing of God's Word.[13]
These liturgical forms, as they are repeated, become formative as they shape our preconscious minds into perceiving all of life in the same manner. For Dykstra these formative patterns become the very heart of the possibility of transformation even outside of worship.[14]
Worship is the core of congregational life, and provides the paradigm for its peculiar form of life. In worship, the congregation is the congregation. Through worship, patterns of mutual self-destruction become redemptively transformed.[15]
Formation as a Synthesis. While Dykstra's emphasis on encounter is different from Westerhoff's enculturation model, these forms of Formation are not mutually exclusive. Westerhoff seems to be advocating an ongoing living into God's redemptive message (the gospel) by the church's practices in worship. What believers do in worship is a part of the overall enculturation process. Our character as Christians, how we understand time and our social calendar, how we view other people, the language we use to describe the world, all of these elements are shaped by our worship practices. Dykstra, for all of his emphasis on transformation, also endorses this formational living into the gospel, if only to free us for the opportunity of transformation. When practiced in worship, these liturgical events hold together the logic of transformation. For both educators, Formation is extremely important as it shapes the character of the lives of Christian believers and leads them to transformation.
Education's Contribution To Worship
Shared Praxis and Imagination. Possibly the best way to understand how Christian education can enhance worship is through the work of Thomas Groome and James Loder. Groome, of Boston College, has posited a rather powerful and prominent model of Christian education known as "Shared Praxis."[16] Groome claims that this model draws from a number of sources including Jurgen Habermas and Paulo Freire's liberative pedagogy.[17] The educational method is designed in five movements. First, we name a present activity in our lives, such as the style of worship that our congregation is using. Secondly, we then critically reflect on that practice to understand ourselves in light of the activity. After this critical reflection on our contemporary experience, Groome establishes his third movement which is to bring our experience (in our example, worship) to a deep understanding of the Christian Story, which for Groome includes both Scripture and church tradition (dogma and doxology, lex orandi, lex credendi).[18] In the fourth movement we engage in a mutual dialogue between contemporary experience and the Christian Story. In our example, since the earliest forms of worship (the eucharist) basically re-enacted the passion of Christ, we might ask how contemporary practices reflect the original intent of worship to re-enact the gospel "story" as well as foster praise to God.[19] Finally, in the fifth step, we posit a future based on any new insight that comes from the dialogue. We envision a form of worship that is authentic to the Christian Story in our day.[20] It is Groome's belief that authentic worship carries within its liturgical forms a process that resonates with the shared praxis approach, particularly in dialogue with the Christian Story.[21]
It is in Groome's final step that James Loder of Princeton Theological Seminary is most helpful. The bulk of Groome's work seems more focused on the critical investigation of contemporary experience and a critical dialogue between that experience and the Christian Story. Groome does not seem to provide as great a detail for imagining an alternative future as does Loder.[22] Loder's work, similar to Dykstra, posits that this imaginative new "vision" of the future is where authentic transformation occurs.[23] Loder believes that true learning always occurs in a phenomenal leap of the imagination and the following search to authenticate this new knowledge in community. This ongoing search becomes reminiscent of Groome's method.[24] Loder's emphasis on the sudden imaginative move adds an expanded view of authentic constructive creativity to Groome's educational method. This view allows for a greater emphasis on constructive as well as critical investigation.[25]
Discernment as a Synthesis. Combining Groome's method with the possibilities provided by Loder yields an educational approach that can be both critical and constructive (or creative). An appropriate term to describe this educational process (and "event") is "Discernment." Discernment is more than a critical investigation of contemporary practice and Christian thought. Discernment allows for a sense of creativity or constructive thought that might come suddenly from God in the midst of the analytical process. Discernment, following Loder, also implies that the creative process will seek confirmation in community, including the Christian tradition. The search for confirmation means that critical reflection will continue after Groome's fifth movement or new "vision" of the Kingdom of God. Insights are constantly examined to see how they correspond to existing beliefs (including the Christian Story) and with community. For example, worship would be critiqued in light of the intent of early Christian worship to re-enact the gospel itself. One, however, would also have to be open to a fifth movement where perhaps a new way of expressing the gospel might be made in today's worship, but even this new expression would be open to re-examination.
Wesleyan Intersections With Formation And Discernment
Theological Method as Formation and Discernment. The double movement of Formation and Discernment does seem to have Wesleyan tendencies. In dialogue with Randy Maddox's research, this double movement seems to embrace the theological method of Wesley's day.
At the most basic level, theology was the (usually implicit) basic worldview that frames the temperament and practice of believer's lives. This worldview is not simply bestowed with conversion, it must be developed. This need gave rise to the next major dimension of theology: the disciplined concern to form and norm the Christian worldview of believers. Given the communal nature of Christian discipleship, this concern took most direct expression in such "first-order" theological activities as pastoral shepherding and the production of catechisms, liturgies, and spiritual discipline manuals.[26]
These "first-order" exercises seem indicative of the process of Formation, as indicated in Westerhoff's and Dykstra's writings. Maddox stresses that this form of theological reflection was primary in Wesley's own practical theology:
In keeping with its defining task, the primary (or first-order) literary forms of "real" theological activity for Wesley were not Systematic Theologies or Apologetics; they were carefully-crafted liturgies, catechisms, hymns, sermons, and the like.[27]
The intent of such theological activity apparently was to form Christians.
There was another, complementary theological movement that accompanied these first-order activities:
These activities in turn frequently sparked "second-order" theological reflection on such issues as the grounding for, or interrelationships and consistency of, various theological commitments. But even at this second-order level theology remained a practical discipline, ultimately basing the most metaphysical reflections about God on the life of faith and drawing from these reflections ethical and soteriological implications.[28]
This second-order approach is similar to the practice of Discernment. Discernment may be understood particularly as a critical and constructive exercise or dialogue between the practices of Wesley's day and Wesley's theological orienting principle or metaphor of "Responsible Grace."[29] A metaphor or orienting concern in lieu of a fixed set of theological propositions resonates with Groome's emphasis on the broader, open, category of the Christian Story which includes what Groome indicates as a Vision of the Kingdom of God.[30] What might be more important is that the use of metaphor also places more emphasis on the use of imagination as a constructive application when the orienting concern "Responsible Grace" is applied to old and new practices. Sharon Parks, following Loder, notes that it is through metaphor that imaginative acts can occur.[31] Maddox's description of Wesley's method could be interpreted as implying that Wesley seemed to busy himself in both "first order" theological activities which could be understood as Formation activities and "second order" theological reflection that might also be reinterpreted as Discernment.
The Means of Grace as Formation and Discernment. John Wesley's educational method has often been maligned because of his use of educational theory prominent in his day.[32] Perhaps a better way to understand his approach to Christian education would also be through another "orienting concern" understood as his interpretation of the Means of Grace.[33] Wesley's interpretive approach seems to also indicate a double movement of Formation and Discernment.
By "means of grace" I understand outward signs, words, or actions, ordained of God, and appointed for this end, to be the ordinary channels whereby he [God] might convey to men, preventing, lefting or sanctifying grace.[34]
This quote comes from Wesley's sermon "The Means of Grace" and emerges in part during Wesley's dispute with certain Moravians at the Fetter Lane Society and his assertion of the value of participating with God's redemptive work.[35] Wesley would also interchange the word "means" with the word "ordinances" on occasion as an indicator that this participation was expected by God.[36] The "means," however, were not an end in themselves:
But we allow that the whole value of the means depends on their actual subservience to the end of religion; that, consequently, all these means, when separate from the end, are less than nothing and vanity; that if they do not actually conduce to the knowledge and love of God, they are not acceptable in his sight.[37]
While the Means of Grace themselves had no intrinsic worth, they were channels by which the Holy Spirit worked to communicate grace for the full work of salvation. Jesus Christ is the ground of this grace, particularly through the act of the atonement: "the merit is that of the Son."[38] The means, like grace, were available to all, even to those who did not yet experience what Wesley would call "salvation" (or the witness of the Spirit). As grace was a dynamic, so were the Means of Grace. The result was that there were many different forms which Wesley categorized as either Instituted or Prudential Means of Grace.
Wesley believed that there were five means of grace, the Instituted means that had been evident in the life of Jesus: The Lord's Supper; Prayer; Fasting; Scripture; and Christian Conference or Conversation.[39] These means form a constellation of practices that were interdependent yet individually important as well. These same practices, particularly in their corporate expressions, seemed to mirror the intended and ongoing sacramental life of the church.
The Prudential Means of Grace were designed to meet the person at his or her point of need. "Prudential means may vary according to the person's needs and the circumstances, thus showing Wesley's simple concern for man's particular historical situation."[40] The Prudential Means of Grace spanned those activities found in the instituted and the general means of grace. They also included Christian social praxis.[41] They were contextual.
The instituted means belong to the universal church in all eras of history and in all cultures. In contrast, the prudential means of grace vary from age to age, culture to culture, and person to person; they reflect God's ability to use any means in addition to those instituted in accordance with different times and circumstances.[42]
Henry Knight lists several prudential means:
1. Particular rules or acts of Holy Living.
2. Class and Band Meetings.
3. Prayer meetings, covenant services, watch night services, love feasts.
4. Visiting the sick.
5. Doing all the good one can, doing no harm.
6. Reading devotional classics and all edifying literature.[43]
Wesley would also include several metaphors for living the Christian life. Knight places these under the "General Means of Grace."[44] These metaphors were "watching, denying ourselves, taking up our cross, exercise of the presence of God."[45]
Wesley also understood that it was prudential to utilize the Instituted Means of Grace. The replication of Christian Conference in some instances as both Instituted and Prudential Means of Grace meant that all ordinances were to have some form of "contextual" meaning and some correspondence to historical practice.
Intersections with Formation and Discernment. The Instituted Means of Grace were primarily those practices (public and private) that were formative in the Christian life. Wesley seemed to believe that believers could faithfully practice these Instituted Means with some anticipation of the activity of the Holy Spirit (though Wesley cautioned that the practices were not ends in themselves). These practices find a correspondence in the practice of Formation, particularly since many of them include corporate expressions found in worship.
The Prudential Means of Grace, on the other hand, were activities and attitudes that often had to be discerned in the everyday life of believers. To practice the Prudential Means was to participate in an ongoing process of trying to determine how such practices could truly be used of God, to see how grace was manifested in the practices. This exploration, I contend, would include a tacit if not explicit process very close to our description of Discernment since such investigation included critical analysis and a constructive connection with the activity of the Holy Spirit. Here the orienting principle of the "Means of Grace" would have a Christian educational function similar to Maddox's "Responsible Grace." To participate in both Instituted and Prudential Means of Grace would be to participate in both Formation and Discernment.
Formation And Discernment:
Implications For Today
The Interplay of Formation and Discernment. The Christian education approaches of Formation and Discernment have points of commonality. As observed by Groome, the very structure of liturgy may provide a formative pattern that will encourage discernment. The critical and constructive process of Discernment is also an influence in how we have been formed by the Christian Story. Our formative base of experience (those structures that have shaped our understanding of Christianity) may provide both the subject of Discernment, yet Formation may also influence the perspective from which our judgements are made. In addition, transformative "events" may take place in either approach: in Formation if our understanding of Dykstra is correct and in Discernment if our interpretation of Loder is accurate. The potential of these transformative events are important. In the process of Formation this potential opens up the possibility of fresh encounters with God through established practices. This same potential also serves as a reminder that Discernment is more than a critical exercise; it should also include a constructive or creative process as well.
Formation and Discernment, however, are also distinct in that they serve different yet necessary functions within this Christian education approach. Formation is primarily concerned with the creation of a Christian "way of being" in the world. Formation asks how the structures of our lives might be so disciplined or shaped so that we adopt a particular approach to life that is in harmony with the Christian Story. Discernment is a means by which we can inquire about how authentically Christian are the very structures and disciplines that we employ, along with other practices that impact our lives outside the Christian domain.
Ultimately these two methods, Formation and Discernment, are interdependent. Without Discernment, Formation may include the tacit reification of certain practices that are inappropriate to the Christian Story. Formation becomes a type of ritual fundamentalism that no longer questions the reason for its own practices. Without Formation, however, Discernment may be impaired in that it provides no embodiment of the Christian Story, no concrete referent within history to provide some perspective. Discernment, without Formation, often results in an ideological dialogue, logically coherent perhaps, but removed from life.
Implications for Worship in the Wesleyan/Holiness Tradition. Once one adopts a Wesleyan Christian education approach centered around the methods of Formation and Discernment, one approaches worship with a certain perspective. Worship can then be seen as a primary educational influence on Christians within the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition. Christians, as they worship, are formed into the character of Christianity through set patterns that not only establish a particular Christian worldview and conduct, but also the potential for transformation.[46] For those within the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition, there may well be certain worship patterns which "form" Christians into the character of holiness and prepare them for certain transformative events, including entire sanctification. This notion should come as no surprise since the various elements of worship would be included in Wesley's "first-order" theological reflections. The formative power of worship would then challenge liturgists to give careful consideration to how worship would be structured or changed to accommodate current contemporary preferences. The removal of certain symbols or symbolic practices might mitigate against the minister's very desire to shape holiness of character or to encourage entire sanctification within the congregation.
Christian educator Mark York once wrote an article challenging Wesleyan/Holiness pastors to be aware of the Sunday School curriculum at work in their churches. York's thesis was that Sunday School teachers, using independent or "generic" literature, may well be teaching concepts that are theologically antithetical to the holiness emphasis within a pastor's sermon. York argued that much of what lies behind "generic" evangelical literature is actually Calvinist in orientation, causing the lesson ultimately to negate the overall intent of the sermon.[47] Following this notion, it might well be that the very structure of worship, if not reflected on, might be equally antithetical. Contemporary styles of worship might be forming Christians into a language and conduct that mirrors something other than a Wesleyan/Holiness ethos. In addition, these worship styles may be neglecting those tacit structures that, according to Dykstra, provide a model for transformation. The danger would then lie in the fact that, while the content of the worship service might allude to holiness, the very structure of the service would not provide an opportunity for the worshiper to subjectively be open to the transformative impact of the holiness message. For instance, worship styles that focus on therapeutic, "needs-based," or consumer oriented liturgies would rarely promote Dykstra's themes of repentance, prayer, or service. Developing a worship service oriented primarily to addressing a contemporary American suburban culture would call for careful consideration of the structures that would dominate the worship style.[48] There would exist the danger that such a service might not actually prepare people for transformation, or enculturate them into the heart of the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition.
How might pastors recognize both positive and destructive styles of worship? The process of Discernment might provide a solution. Pastors, following Groome, might first critically reflect on their pattern of worship and then ask how that style truly dialogues with the Christian "Story" concerning Scriptural holiness (both in the Bible and in liturgical interpretations of the biblical message). Serious consideration would be given to the relationship between current worship styles and the worship practiced by the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition, particularly in John Wesley's day. Additional study might be given to understanding the nature of the symbols (as artifacts, hymns, rites, or even worship space) that embody and promote the holiness message. This intensive educational dialogue might actually take place throughout the church as a form of communal Discernment.
Such Discernment would be critical in that it would challenge the assumptions of contemporary worship styles located in either a consumer or therapeutic orientation. This method might also find new, constructive ways of re-interpreting the Christian holiness tradition today, but always in light of the original intent of Christian worship, to tell and re-tell the gospel so as to be shaped by an authentic understanding of Christlikeness. As with Groome, pastors might even ask how contemporary worship styles actually promote this critical and constructive act during worship.
It is hopefully obvious by now that Formation and Discernment are not isolated, independent categories of educational method. Their interrelatedness are evident historically in Wesley's theological framework and in the practices of the means of grace. Collectively, Formation and Discernment in a Wesleyan framework form an effective approach of interrelated and interdependent educational approaches by which to embody, evaluate, and envision authentic Christian worship. In this approach, worship becomes, for the sake of holiness, both a corporate expression to God and a communal approach to personal formation. Any changes to worship demand careful consideration.
It is small wonder that Wesley's theological method and educational approach focused on developing patterns that shaped Christians. It is also understandable why Wesley practiced and encouraged an approach that discerned critically and constructively those Formational practices. Perhaps by using a Wesleyan Christian education orienting principle, the Means of Grace, worship leaders and educators in the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition will understand better how congregations are both formed and transformed by worship; and they will discern what authentic worship may both be and become in the future.
Endnotes:
