A Trinitarian Vision for Theocommunicology
It has become imperative that the church develop a robust theology of communications. Everyday life for the average person is entirely inundated with technology, every piece of it competing for your attention, seeking to profit from your very person. The simple fact of the matter is that whatever time and energy is expended in these mediums for simple pleasures is time and energy not given to Christ.
As we seek to lay a theological foundation for communications, it must be established what the nature of communications is. This is a question of communications theory. According to G2, “communication theory studies the scientific process of sending and receiving information.” MSG says that “the universal law of communication theory says that all living beings whether they are plants, animals, human beings communicate through sound, speech, visible changes, body movements, gestures or in the best possible way to make the others aware of their thoughts, feelings, problems, happiness or any other information.” Most simply, Merriam Webster defines communications theory as “a theory that deals with the technology of the transmission of information (as through the written word or a computer) between people, people and machines, or machines and machines.”
Brian Kammerzelt presents what is called the Common Model of communications. The Common Model proposes that people gather and form communities around what they have in common, and their communications are expressions of that common center as it is lived out in their communities. There is a pretty clear theme here: that root comm-, meaning “together” or “with.” Kammerzelt say that being “rooted in fundamental theological, anthropological, biological, sociological, and psychological observations about human cultures and messages, the Common Model works broadly in any context, culture, or belief system.” He goes further, saying, “However, this model is completely theological in its function (as any good theory should be).” The model can be illustrated by a concentric circle with what people share in common at the center. From there the model is as follows:
Common -> Community -> Commune ->
Communications -> Commission
Let’s take Kammerzelt’s example: two men crashed a plane in the woods. Whoever these two people are, friends or enemies, is irrelevant. They share something in common: the need to survive. From there they establish their community: just two men trying to make it in the wilderness. Their communing is coming together to hunt, gather, build, whatever they need to do to survive. Communing is what they do when they gather, their reason for being together. Communications, then, is how they interact with one another in order to accomplish their commission.
It seems to me that certain strands of the Common Model’s stated roots are better served than others. Sociology and anthropology take center stage, as this is a model that examines and analyzes a community’s interactions. Kammerzelt says that we can use the common root to build a framework that flows from Christ, with that framework being:
Common (Christ) -> Community (Church) ->
Commune (Worship) -> Communications (Media) ->
Commission (Evangelism)
It is at this point that I diverge Kammerzelt’s fold. I am not convinced of the aforementioned proposition that this model is completely theological in function. The Common Model works well to analyze any given community, that much is clear. After all, having things in common is itself something that all humans share. For this reason, it cannot be said that this is a distinctly Christian model of communications theory. The model certainly can be useful within the church and is not something to be rejected simply for the sake of it. Yet in order for us as the church to be able to boldly declare our theology of communications, it cannot be based upon gleanings from a tool which suits any given collection of image-bearers, but rather must be founded completely and entirely within the Being of God and the life of the church.
My goal for this article is to propose a model that serves theology and theological anthropology, or at least lay a theological foundation that will hopefully aid others in building a true theology of communications, or to borrow the term which Kammerzelt coined, a theocommunicology. Theology of communications has not been something often in the limelight of Evangelical theological reflection, so it is still a mewling babe yet searching for its first steps nearly sixty years after the dawn of mass media and globalism. I do not presume to be the one to give legs to this beast, but I earnestly desire to see the church grow in her expression of God’s truth in a rapidly changing environment of communication. Mediums for communication have infiltrated nearly the whole of life, all giving messages and mantras that find their source in the things of the world, a sinful, wicked, depraved world marred by sin. The church must have an answer to the growing enemy that seeks to destroy her and the kingdom of her Lord.
The Trinitarian-Ecclesial Model for Theocommunicology
Trinitarian-Ecclesial Model for Theocommunicology may be a mouthful, but I believe it is rather straight forward and self-explanatory when broken into more bit sized pieces. In order to provide a definition that will set the framework, let’s do just that.
Trinitarian
All theology that is Christian is theology that is Trinitarian. God is the Holy Trinity, and put most simply theology is knowledge of God. That God which we know is the triune God, and to say anything else is less than Christian. In that sense, it goes without saying that a theological model of communications (or theological model of anything, for that matter) is inherently Trinitarian. For my purposes, however, I argue that a truly Trinitarian theology of communications must be based more so upon the relational life of the Trinity, rather than upon the brute fact of God’s triune existence.
Concerning this fact, Douglas Kelly writes, “God is. The profound truth expressed by this simple sentence is the source and meaning of every kind of reality. It is the basis of all theology; it is that which gives meaning to every aspect of life and the world; it is the potential illumination ‘of all things, visible and invisible.’”[1] It almost feels unnecessary to write as it is so painfully self-evident: you simply cannot have any proper understanding of anything unless it is in reference to the almighty creator, God himself. This needs no further elaboration, but what of the Trinity? What role must the Trinity play in our understanding of reality, and therefore of communications?
Earlier, Kelly states that “the relationship of the three divine Persons within the Godhead constitutes the benediction and supreme ‘happiness’ of God, as God; the one who is ‘the blessed and only [Sovereign], the King of kings and Lord of lords…’ (1 Tim. 6:15).”[2] This relational life of God will be the foundation of a theology of communication, and the substance of all relation within God is that which has often been called the chief attribute of God: love.
So much could be said about why the God’s love has historically been spoken of in this way, but in brief it could be summarized by paragraph 221 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “God’s very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of love in the fullness of time, God had revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.” Rome defines it very well as a mutual exchange of love. Another expression of this same truth can be found in the great Orthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae.
Staniloae writes in The Experience of God concerning the love of God in the Trinity: “In perfect love persons do not merely engage in a reciprocal exchange of self; they also affirm themselves reciprocally and personally, and establish themselves in existence through giving and receiving. But the divine love is all efficacious. The Father therefore establishes the Son from all eternity by his integral self-giving, while the Son continually affirms the Father as Father from all eternity by the fact that he both accepts his own coming into existence through the Father and also gives himself to the Father as Son… If God needed to relate to something outside himself, this would imply that he lacked something distinct from himself. Divine relations must take place in God himself, although between distinct ‘I’s, so that the relation and hence the love may be real.”[3]
Staniloae is complex, but rich and immensely helpful. He is articulating the classical doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, but that is not the subject of this article. In brief, though, what can be gleaned as pertinent to this topic is that the very existence of the Son is by being loved of the Father. Naturally following from this is the fact that the Father cannot be Father without the Son; by love, the Father begets the Son giving him life, and that giving of life to the Son from the Father in turn gives Fatherhood to the Father. Paradoxically, this is the self-existence of God, coeternal yet possessing distinction in persons.
Brace yourself, because Staniloae dives deeper into the glorious mystery. Having answered the relationship of Fatherhood and Sonship in the Trinity, the question remains of the Spirit. Why three? “A single person might be taken to be merely a process of intellection; two persons immersed in their exclusive communion can have the impression that they have departed from reality. Only a third person assures them that they are within an objective reality and that in this reality they surpass their own dual subjectivity… The third fulfils the role of ‘object’ or horizon, assuring the sense of objectivity for the two by the fact that he keeps the two from becoming confused within an indistinct unity because of the exclusiveness of their love, an exclusiveness which can flow from the conviction that nothing worthy of love exists outside the other… In the three persons there is full confirmed the ‘truth’ of God’s existence, a truth which, in the case of the two, would be confirmed only in part, and in the case of one alone would remain uncertain. Hence in a special way the Holy Spirit is named ‘the Spirit of truth’ (John 15:26, 16:13), and has as his task to strengthen in truth.”[4]
Alright, this admittedly seems at first glance rather speculative and analytic. However, Staniloae is right on point and gives us a basis by which we can understand real communication. As cited earlier, many secular entities understand communication and communications theory as simple exchanges of information or as some sort of cheap anthropology. Rather, as Staniloae points out, there is more to communication than simple “reciprocal exchange of self.” As he says, existence is established through giving and receiving; not merely the passing of data or platitudes but true giving and receiving of oneself for the whole. This is what life in the church is: dying to self, being made alive in Christ, born again into the covenant family of God thought engrafting into Christ himself. If we are to be truly Christian about our communications theory and theology, it must be as Staniloae says. After the life of the Holy Trinity we have our existence in the church and model our communications.
A Trinitarian theology that fully expresses the love between persons and therefore giving credence to true unity as one God and true diversity as three distinct persons is in one sense the easy part. What is difficult for this task is making the Triune life of God the foundation for a theology of communications. But this model is not simply one that is Trinitarian. There is no 1:1 correlation between God and man, so we cannot say that as God exists, so too must we in our communities. So how, then, can there be a theology of communications from the life of God? It can only be found in the wonder and mystery of the incarnation, God and man joined inseparably in the person of Jesus Christ, and consequently within the life of the church, who is Christ’s body.
Ecclesial
Like with the love of God, there is much that could be said about what gives the church its identity, and there is no end to the Scriptural teaching and illumination into what it means to be born again into Christ. Like we discussed earlier, the Common Model can be applied to any group of people anywhere, which is why there is a need for a communications theory that is robustly Christian. Herman Bavinck, the great Dutch defender of reformational theology, touches on the subject of believing and non-believing communities and the nature of their communing.
“The believer, therefore, never stands apart by himself; he is never alone. In the natural world every human being is born in the fellowship of his parents, and he is therefore without any effort on his own part a member of a family, a people, and also of the whole of mankind. So it is also in the spiritual sphere. The believer is born from above, out of God, but he receives the new life only in the fellowship of the covenant of grace of which Christ is the Head and at the same time the content. If by virtue of this regeneration God is his Father, the church may in a good sense be called his mother.”[5]
This new creation identity is core to understanding the church and the Christian’s role in in the life of God. 2 Peter 1:4 says, “For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature.” These promises and fits, all the benefits of salvation are ours in Christ. According to Calvin, “Therefore, that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts—in short, that mystical union—are accorded us by the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed.”[6]
Through Christ we partake of the life of God. “For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us,” says St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:20. By our union with Christ and participation in the life of God, we really, truly do have a new identity as one who is of Christ, born from heaven. Bavinck remarked that by one’s birth they are essentially a part of whatever community they are born into, and he proceeds to rightly claim that for the Christian, God is Father and church is mother. By this new and second birth, we are born into a new community. It is for this reason that Jesus tells his apostles, “For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” To the eyes of the world, those on the outside, radical does not even begin to describe this. Christ is not saying literally that your parents must be your enemies and find themselves at the end of your sword. He is saying that our new birth into his own glorious person is a real new birth, an actual new existence that we have in the body of Christ. You must lose your life for Christ, that you may find life in the God-man.
For this reason, Paul continues in 2 Corinthians to say, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” A new creature is not meant as a fun and intensive platitude; it is a new reality for the Christian.
Theocommunicology
So what? Rebirth as a new creation in Christ is the nature of life for the believer; everything about who we are is determined by our union to the Incarnate Word. Therefore, being the center of the life of the believer and the substance of the communion within the church, Christ and his presence is to be the center of all communications, being informed by the mutual, self-authenticating love within the life of God. We have truly become partakers of the divine nature, and communications (which is not to exclude the rest of life) must be informed by the love which the Father and Son share in the Spirit. “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are,” Jesus prays. That union the community of Christ’s body shares is given its life and identity by the love of the Father and Son.
This thesis is the theocommunicology. Kammerzelt coined this term, so the definition is rather loose and open for elaboration, elaboration to which I am happy to contribute. It is worth stating again that for the most part, theology of communications is relatively recent. Twenty or thirty years of somewhat solid study is not very much in the grand scheme of things. After all, the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, under which Calvin became the father of the Reformed tradition and published his final edition of the Institutes in 1559. The Reformed tradition arguably did not become solidly established until the Westminster Confession of Faith in 1647 or even the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. It is over 170 years from the dawn of the Reformation until the finalization of a Reformed Baptist theology.
It might seem like apples to oranges to compare a development of an entire systematic theology to a theology of communication. However, I do not believe that the gap in significance is as large as initially seems. So much of everyday life has drastically changed in such an incredibly short period of time; I know pastors who needed to lug typewriters from their dorm to the library while they were in seminary. The ‘change,’ as it were, in our theology should be similarly as drastic, which is to say that there needs to be development enough in a theology of communications at least to match the development of technology. Ideally, our theology would surpass any ideological influence that might yet come from future technological developments so that our theology is not reactionary, but provides a framework by which all new things can be rightly understand and made subservient to the call of Christ. But that is tragically not the case, and the church’s theology has lagged behind the religion of secularism.
Hopefully helpful tangent aside, I do not presume to give the answer that the church needs, simply to add to the discussion and posit that the best way to understand communications properly is to look first to our theology proper: that of God himself in his triune life, to our Christology and how we understand our union with the God-man. From there, I propose, theocommunicology should be thought of in the language of one word as it is fleshed out by scripture and tradition: presence. Christ’s presence in his church, Christ’s presence in the preaching of the word, and the church’s presence both in their worship and in the commission to evangelism provide the framework for theocommunicology.
An Invitation to Participate
We might summarize the whole of the Christian life as an invitation to participate. That is, after all, not much else besides a rephrasing of 2 Peter 1:4 and the call of the gospel. There is so much to participation in Christ theologically and therefore there is so much that could be said, so many areas where this can be applied. Chiefly, that application is in the sacraments: the Lord’s Supper and baptism. I will stick to one aspect of each for the sake of time, but I would also invite you the reader to consider where else participation in the life of God through Christ is seen in the church and where there might be areas upon which Christ must be brought to bear.
Cultivating memory: “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Memory is vital to the survival of the covenant people of God, not in a manner in which we pass away out of our new life in Christ, but in that it is one of the primary means that God keeps us in his fold. After forty long years of wandering in the desert that the disobedient might suffer the wages of their sin, Joshua led Israel into the Promised Land by the miraculous crossing through the waters of the Jordan. Joshua instructed the tribes of Israel to take stones and build what is called in 1 Samuel 7:12 Even h’ezer, the stone of help, as a concrete reminder of what God did for the people.
A vital truth is seen in this. God created man from dust, breathing life into inanimate creation. Similarly, meaning is given to mere stones to stir up affection for and devotion to God unto life via remembrance. To a much greater degree Christ instituted the sacrament of communion to a similar end. There is real power and real life in the sacrament, I do not intend to deny or diminish that, merely to highlight the very present aspect of remembrance.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 reads: “The Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” In the institution of the sacrament, Christ has given meaning and real power to mere bread and wine. As often as his church takes part, there is 1) remembrance of Christ’s body broken and blood poured out for the atoning of sins and 2) proclamation of the gospel.
We can, and certainly must, model our communication after this reality. Just as in communion we partake of Christ, being reminded of his suffering and proclaiming the gospel, our own communications must cultivate remembrance lest we drift from the truth of Christ, and it must proclaim the gospel, delivering it as of first importance.
Shared Identity: “…Buried with him in baptism, raised to walk in newness of life.”
Baptism is the primary sign of entrance into the church. Paul writes in the great epistle to the Romans concerning baptism, “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old [c]self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.” Having already touched on this subject, let me reiterate the reality of new life and identity in Christ.
Herman Bavinck also says concerning our election unto salvation that the purpose is not for the individual as an end, but for an individual to become part of something greater: the church. He writes, “Election comprises a very great multitude out of all generations, languages, people, and nations. True, it is personal and individual also and has specific human beings know to God by name as its object, but it selects these in such a way and combines them in such a way that they altogether can form the temple of God, the body and bride of Christ. The purpose of the election is the creation of an organism, that is, the redemption, renewal, and glorification of a regenerated mankind which proclaims the excellences of God and bears his name upon its forehead.”[7]
The purpose of our salvation in Christ is to be something new, so let our theocommunicology be just that: something new. Christian communication is not to be determined by secular means or best practices in media arts, but by the gospel. How does Christ communicate? How does he challenge people to see kingdom realities and manifest them on the earth through the church? What is true holiness and how is that displayed in our lives, and consequently in our communication? All of the church’s communication must be distinctly Christian, however that may play out in various circumstances.
Conclusion
Conclusions sometimes feel redundant, often being nothing more than a repetition of what has been previously stated, but in this case a summary is certainly beneficial. What is best, I think, is to revisit the newly proposed model: the Trinitarian-Ecclesial Model of Theocommunicology. First comes the Trinity, the entirely other-focused, eternally loving, and creative relation of persons with the Godhead. This life of God is that in which we participate through the church’s identity as the body of Christ, the God-man in whom the fulness of deity dwells. Therefore, communication is to be modeled after the authentic love of God, the humility of Christ, and the church’s rebirth as new creations in Christ, thereby being given a truly Christian theology of communications.
I also would like to revisit and perhaps expound upon my earlier disclaimer that I do not claim to be proposing the robust theology of communications that is robust. If given the space I would love to explore further how our theology determines and gives identity to communications, but as of yet I have only been able to produce a few bricks that hopefully could find their place in the coming ecology of authentically Christian communications. To think again in terms of Kammerzelt’s Common Model, we could say that I believe this article has presented what we have in common (the Triune God) our community (the Church, those united to Christ and made partakers of the divine nature), and our communing (sharing in that love as saints brought into the life of the Triune God in Christ).
Now please allow me to make a truncated attempt at extending this into communications.
Exemplification
The theological ramifications of the axiom “everything communicates” is sometimes better explained through demonstration or exemplification than it is through propositions or description, reminiscent of the lived reality of the Christian faith. Let’s take two examples to see how theology affects communication, one concerning the church more broadly and another that deals specifically with one church.
The Communication of Sexuality
Modern society has changed drastically in the metanarratives surrounding sexuality. “Sexual liberation” has become an ideal that people strive for: to be free to find sexual gratification with whomever you wish whenever you wish. People must be free from sexual repression as it goes against individual expression, which is of course the greatest form human existence. Consequently, anything that furthers repression must be destroyed for the sake of expression.
The church has become a casualty of this movement, and today Christianity is largely considered archaic, domineering, and afraid of sex, even going so far as to deem certain sexual acts as “taboo” (a concept which merits its own article to examine the theological significance) or outright prohibiting others. How backwards are Christians that they are opposed to homosexuality or premarital sex or open marriages?
The gospel is of course resolutely opposed to all of these things, and any message that is for these things cannot under any circumstances claim to have its origin from the Triune God of the Bible. To be more precise, the issue at hand is not whether the questions brought up by the sexual revolution merit discussion or if their criticisms of the church are valid (neither are), but what really is the truth and the theology behind such movements? Modern society claims that the church is backward and hateful for opposing gay marriage, for example. “What two consenting adults do in their bedroom is of no concern to you,” the pundits cry. Sexual identity is determined entirely by the individual, open for interpretation to every person within their own being. It is almost comical how self-defeating this idea of sexuality is.
“Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” The claim of the sexual revolution is that all along people have been repressed in their innate desires by whatever powers that be, often times the church. Therefore, people must free themselves to be who they are, which is nothing more than their sexual desires. Contrary to their claim of giving expression to an individual, this in fact does the exact opposite. Just as believers have their true identity as authentic human beings by their rebirth into Christ, nothing anywhere can have true meaning unless brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ, the logic and reason of creation in whom all things hold together. In stripping sexuality from the bounds set by the church, those seeking to do so have stripped all meaning away from sex.
Really, we should say that premarital sex does not exist, nor do homosexuality or open marriages. The Bible has a word for premarital sex: fornication. Homosexuality is a lie from the pit of hell that your body and your will are not as they obviously and truly are, but instead you belong sexually to the same gender. An “open marriage” is no marriage at all, and it is entirely in opposition to holy matrimony. Separated from Christ, all these things have lost their meaning.
One aspect of the role of communications is to bring meaning to things that otherwise might not have it. A five-note melody can make someone’s mouth water at the thought of hamburgers and say to themselves “I’m lovin’ it.” When someone in Minnesota sees purple and gold together, they immediately think of football and the Vikings. Diamonds, simple stones, are associated with lifelong commitments and love, because that is the meaning society has given to them.
Christian communications, then has the commission to bring the true, biblical, godly meaning to things as the Creator intended and is as he is redeeming. “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” Sex, separated from Christ and practiced according to the sinful desires of the flesh, does not give meaning to a person’s life. It does not liberate from the oppression by repression, but rather, as Paul also says in Romans 1, serves to condemn them as they are given over increasingly to depraved desires and a reprobate mind. No, it is in the church, which is to say in union with Christ as his bride, that sex and sexuality is given its true meaning.
Sex is only something that is practiced between man and wife; anything else is either fornication or adultery. An “open” marriage is not a marriage at all, but a filthy nest of adultery. And really, these marriage commitments mean nothing due to the prevalence of no-fault divorce. Where is the meaning in these secular practices, this sexual revolution? Where is the substance that gives life and authenticity to what we say and do? There is none, for that can only be found in Christ. The desire for true meaning behind these things is obvious, since people try so desperately to find their identity in something bigger than themselves by creating “communities” of people with the same perverse proclivities. Gay couples try and adopt, needing to go to biologically normative couples to bear a child for them. Despite their rejection of the created order, they must still submit to it in order to have that thing which they desire. In sin, pagans hate so much the God that gives meaning to everything, yet they bear God’s image and consequently cannot escape the desire for their Creator.
The church must give true meaning to such things. Sexuality is a gift of God, “male and female He created them.” It is a good thing that humans are sexed beings, as it is through this gift that we can experience an analogy of the inter-Trinitarian life of God. Individualism has no place, since holy matrimony is the joining of two to become one flesh. Only then can sex have any true meaning. Nowhere more clearly can the one-flesh reality be seen that in that of the natural and godly end of sex; procreation. Through sexual intimacy, God works a miracle to conceive a child in the woman, and in the womb the two truly have become one. A child is the proof of a marriage. What a good and holy gift marriage and sex are! The task of the church must be to reconcile these things, bringing the gospel of God to bear upon sexuality. What we believe about sexuality communicates, and it affects the way in which we communicate. Preaching the truth of what sex and marriage mean is good and holy thing for the church, and the union of man and wife without voluntary self-sterilization is a good thing. Our theology what we believe, and what we communicate must be determined by our beliefs on any given subject.
Church Architecture and Interior Design
I was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church, New Life Church, in Wanamingo, Minnesota. It is a truly amazing church. By no means perfect, the people still are godly people who love Jesus, they love God’s word, and they love the gospel and desire to see it preached both in church and through evangelism. However, there has historically not been too much thought put into why we make the decisions we do within the church building.
Our pastor of thirteen years has just retired, and a new pastor came in from St. Cloud. I recently spoke with Pastor Colin Reuter and asked about the coming remodeling/redesign choices, and I now submit it to you for your consideration, and I will offer my own theological reflections on the communicative aspects of these changes.
I was pleasantly surprised and seriously impressed when I read this. It feels like often pastors have never considered things like Colin discusses or the points he makes, favoring simple pragmatism over true meaning and thoughtful reflection. However, this read like Colin had studied communications before, so I asked, and he in fact did spend two years as a comm major before changing to pastoral ministry. I’m very thankful for what he is trying to do at my church, and I am excited for how this will foster more growth in faith and conformity into the image of Christ through the formative practices of liturgy.
This first paragraph reads like it’s a summary of James Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, but I asked him about that as well and he had never read it before. This matters not, however, since it true independent of Smith that liturgies are formative practices that shape who we are, and it is only natural and yet vital that the church should have well thought out liturgies in order to best shape her members into conformity to Christ that they be best prepared for ministry for his kingdom.
His addressing of a more thoughtful service is order is very pleasing, and that is something I would have suggested if he was not already considering it. The gathering of the people of the gospel should be something that is modelled after the gospel. I recently got engaged and as my fiancée and I are planning the service order for that, we are hoping it can be a very eschatological wedding, one that draws attention to the future consummation of the church with her Groom. I was hoping that we could have Come Ye Sinners for a processional, since we come as sinners and are joined to Jesus, thereby becoming his bride, but one listen to the song will make it clear why Abi does not want that.
This sort of theological consideration is what the church needs. While likely unfit for a wedding processional, Come Ye Sinners is perfect as a call to worship in a church service. We truly do come to Jesus as sinners, and the lyrics of this hymn artfully present the call to come to Jesus for forgiveness and cleansing. What Colin phrased as “using specific songs and order the gospel story” is, in my opinion, the most important part of the worship service order planning. Congregants are more likely to remember the songs sung than they are the key points of a sermon, so let that be an avenue to preach the gospel through music, and do not waste it by picking songs that simply illicit a desired emotional response.
Similarly, the use of written prayers is a great way to bring the individual church into the grander life of the universal church. Truly, if we sing songs from a songbook, why not read prayers from a prayerbook? (One could, and perhaps should, take this point the other direction and say that if we improvise prayers, why not improvise songs as well?)
Along similar lines to prayers from a prayerbook, something that I would add to Colin’s list would be to read from a catechism, and I would recommend specifically the Heidelberg Catechism. Where musical worship implicitly affect transformation in the lives of believers, catechesis does so explicitly, and is therefore the natural partner to accompany song. Furthermore, songs can even be chosen to accord with the weekly questions and answers, such as singing Christ Our Hope in Life and Death on Lord’s Day 1 Q 1, which reads:
"Q: What is your only comfort in life and death?
"A: That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
"He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
He also watches over me in such a way
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven;
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
"Because I belong to him,
Christ, by his Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him.
"The beauty, worship, and theological depth speaks for itself. Catechesis is essential to formation of the body of Christ, and it something that has been lacking in the American Protestant church at large, and I believe it is something that must be included in Lord’s Day worship."
The beauty, worship, and theological depth speaks for itself. Catechesis is essential to formation of the body of Christ, and it something that has been lacking in the American Protestant church at large, and I believe it is something that must be included in Lord’s Day worship.
The auditorium remodel is a much larger task than changing the service order liturgy. Not only is it a bigger task as a fact of construction, but also that most people do not like change. I appreciate and commend the desire by Pastor Colin to change this, and I agree with his points. Below are pictures of the auditorium.
It’s certainly not a bad auditorium, but I have always thought that it lacked a lot of character or beauty. That is likely by design, since my fundamentalist church has never wanted anything flashy. In fact, in our more recent membership meetings people have made points to say that we want to avoid making anything ostentatious and instead giving our money to outreach and evangelism as much as we possibly can. That in itself is a thing of beauty, and I am very grateful for my church's passion for the gospel.
However, we are communicating something by how the auditorium is designed. After all, everything communicates. The first thing someone notices is the drum set. Not any art declaring the gospel, not the banner of scripture, not a pulpit signifying the preached word or a table to signify the consumed Word. The cross is prominent, yet tucked off to the side in order to make room for the band. New Life’s stage is certainly far from the worst, but that does not make it acceptable. Setting the band center stage with, as Colin mentions, draws attention to them more than one would like. Rather, like he says, the words sung should be the focus. I would go further and phrase it a bit differently that the purpose is the theological content of the music, and that can be accomplished by likewise shifting the words from the projector screen that drops from the center to the two monitors that Colin mentions. Having the cross of Christ central is key, and the preached word should likewise be the center of focus.
Colin’s addendum at the end really captures well what a theology of communications put into practice should be like. This brief letter was an email he wrote for me that I’m sure did not take him more than five or ten minutes, so the shortness in explanation can be excused. His statement, “We want to be intentional and helpful in all things pertaining to our service and facility without making them idols,” is about as good as you can get in one sentence. Both the service order and the facility should do everything we can possibly make them, from our own creative calling as image bearers, to glorify God and direct focus away from themselves and toward the Creator of all things. At the same time, these things and processes cannot themselves become idolatrous, where we might place the liturgy itself over the one worshipped through it. The love of God and his glory is top be the subject of worship, the content of worship, and the lingering thoughts in the minds of believers for the six days following worship until they meet again, and a robust and practiced theology of communications can and will serve the church greatly to that end.
[1] Douglas Kelly, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, 277.
[2] Ibid, 274.
[3] Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God, cited in Kelly
[4] Ibid 268, 269 as cited in Kelly
[5] Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God, (Philadelphia: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019) 495.
[6] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J.T. McNeill, trans. F.L. Battles (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1960.) 3.11.10.
[7] Bavinck, 496.