Satellite Churches...

I really have always been uncomfortable with the idea of satellite churches. Some would say its is jealousy...if I were the famous pastor whose sermons were so mightily compelling that people in a different part of the city wanted to be part of my church and were content to stream me in on Sunday in worship...then I would be all for it. I am doubtful...though I recognize the tendency toward thinking we are that important and trust that if it happens you will gently, or not so gently, tell me I am full of #@*!.

One danger of living in a family of bookworms is whatever conversation you have inevitably leads to the discussion of a recently read volume. Authors, I'm sure, appreciate this. Blog readers may not. But I was reading a book recommended by my daughter, the aspiring professor of Worship and Liturgy. Thomas Schattauer gathers a group of colleagues in a discussion of church and the mission of God. He might be surprised to know he inspires me to encourage a bunch of satellite churches.

Schattauer's opening discussion is on the "traditional" separation of worship and mission--translation, what we have been doing for a hundred years or so. Worship (liturgy is his term) is what the people of God do inside the church to be empowered to take up "mission" outside the church, "in the world." He calls this the "inside and out" church. (Mission includes both the evangelistic proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of the world and service to others in the name of Christ.)

Worship serves the purpose of mission, not because it directly accomplishes the tasks of evangelical proclamation and diaconal service but because it offers access to the means of grace that propel the individual and the community as a whole into such activity. Worship and mission, however, remain distinct activities within clearly demarcated spheres of the church's life--inside and out.

Worship, with this mind-set, is really only for those inside the church; mission is what we are called to do outside the church. The second approach Schattauer describes is what many churches do as "contemporary churches," the "outside in" approach. To try and repair the separation of the Christian life into separate realms (church and world), the contemporary church has attempted to "bring the activities of mission directly into the context of worship."

... [Worship] becomes one of two things--either a stage from which to present the gospel and reach out to the unchurched and irreligious, or a platform from which to issue the call to serve the neighbor and rally commitment for social and political action...The tasks of mission become the principal purpose of the church's worship--outside in.

As we, the non-professor reader wonder what, really, is wrong with either scenario, Schattauer offers a third option which rings so true to me that the other two options are no longer possible "as is."

There is a third way, inside out. This approach locates the liturgical assembly 
[worship] , to whitself within the arena of the missio Dei [mission of God]. The focus is on God's mission toward the world, to which the church witnesses and into which it is drawn, rather than on specific activities of the church undertaken in response to the divine saving initiative...The visible act of assembly (in Christ by the power of the Spirit) and the forms of this assembly-what we call liturgy-enact and signify this mission...The [worshipping] assembly is the visible locus of God's reconciling mission toward the world.

I like this. The church gathered to worship is part of the mission of God...and becomes the visible focal point of that mission. (sometimes we can really screw that up!) I have heard the worshipping community, the worship ritual itself, described as a "statement of reality." Who are we really? Consumers? Parents? Stressed worker-bees in an economic machine? The poor? The rich? Cool? Old? Young? Which label are we really? Worship places us in the "real." We are identified, really really, as the people of God, ultimately not under the control of powers and principalities that never have our best interests at heart.

God's mission? The "salvation" of the world. Eugene Peterson puts it this way in Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work:

Salvation is the act of God in which we are rescued from the consequences of our sin (bondage, fragmentation) and put in a position to live in free, open, loving relationships with God and our neighbors...With God's act of salvation we are able to be addressed by a whole series of commands by which we are ordered into live, whole, healthy relationships with God and other persons...[God's] people were saved--they were defined, shaped, and centered not by military, political or environmental forces but by the act of God. (p. 27)

We could so add "economic forces" to that list. But the point is we are defined by God, not by anything  or anyone else. Our participation in worship teaches us that, reminds us of that, and reveals to the world this different, grace-centered reality.

Church can be strange. I give you that. We do all stand at certain times and sing together. We admit aloud to being sinful creatures who struggle mightily to live into whole healthy relationships with God and other persons. We address an Almighty God who spoke the good creation into being and gifted us with life. We celebrate the saving activity of our God who came to us, revealed God's intention for life together, and defeated the powers of sin and death to which we give so much credence. We use strange rituals, say strange words, and enact strange behaviors. But all those strange things become opportunities to understand a new reality...the ultimate reality shaping each of us.

And, if you will excuse one more quote...this is Schattauer's articulation of the reason for the worship celebration. BTW, His "flickering flame in the middle of the night" is the metaphorical position of the church in culture.

This arena [worship] is a highly symbolic one in which the gathering of a local company of the faithful around a flickering flame in the middle of the night is set in relation to choirs of angels, the earth, and the whole church encompassing the peoples, all joined in a joyful eruption of cosmic praise. The liturgical assembly is never just what it appears to be. It always points to the eschatological reality beyond itself, to the purpose of God in Christ for the world and its peoples, for the whole created order...

We are, by this definition, all satellite churches, as communities, but also as individuals in our personal orbits between Sundays. This is God's mission, God's definition, Gods' work, God's purpose for all of creation. God is the one who streams in through the hearing of the Word, the practice of prayer, praise, and the recognition that we are inherently part of God's mission in the world. We don't go do it for God. We exist and act as God's people in the world with God, by the power of God. Worship reshapes us, redefines us, and as this re-created people, we each are satellites of God's message and purpose.

Yeah, go chew on this one for awhile...bunches of little satellites circling around something...sometimes many somethings. But I am again inspired and committed to God's vision of the world, this reality that says we really can, through the power of the Spirit, live whole, healthy, relational lives. That is what I want as the center of my life. The rest seems more and more like space junk.