Worship Matters: The Collective Identity of the Church, Part 1

I know this is my “Philosophy and Faith” blog, but today I want to write just from a “faith” perspective. I want to share something that has been on my heart and mind for quite some time now and that has become a driving force in my faith life as well as my academic life.

A little over a week ago, I received a letter of acceptance into a PhD program at Fuller Theological Seminary. This fall, I plan to begin pursuing a PhD in Theological Studies, focusing on Christian Ethics. Of course, this fits perfectly within the realm of the courses that I currently teach, with Ethics being its own branch of philosophy and one of the more popular classes that I teach each semester. More importantly, this stream of study will allow me to pursue research concerning areas of justice and social justice that have become near and dear to me over the last several years. Specifically, I plan to explore the gap between God’s calling for His people to care for the widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor and how the Church acts (or fails to act) in those areas on behalf of Christ in today’s American society.

I believe that the Church’s fulfillment of her calling as the Body of Christ begins with a proper understanding of her identity, God’s goodness, and the Gospel of Jesus, and that the living out of her calling begins with worship that flows out of that proper understanding. And the more time I spend worshiping with various evangelical congregations in my area of the country, the more I am convinced that we are missing the mark.

There are many pieces to this conversation, more than I can make space for in one blog post, so bear with me as I build my argument and my theology over the course of several posts.

The first piece: A Collective Identity.

Because the American church is full of American people who were raised to value American ideals, we are really good individualists. We value privacy and independence. We’re a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” kind of people who don’t need to depend on anyone for anything. Asking for help is not just humbling, it is humiliating and considered only as a last resort. We’re also proud of our achievements and believe credit should be given where credit is due. We want our voices to be heard, and we fight for our worth as individuals.

Yes, we are quite proficient individualists.

Unfortunately, as members of the Church, we were not called to be individualists, but rather we were called to lose our individualism for the sake of the Body of Christ.

Please don’t tune me out.

I am not saying that we are meant to become faceless conformists who lose all sense of individual value and worth. I am saying that we are meant to understand our worth and our identity as part of the collective Body of Christ. The Apostle Paul uses the image of the human body to represent the Church multiple times in his letters, but his description in 1 Corinthians 12 is the most descriptive. In this chapter, he discusses the role and value of the distinct aspects of the body, but also reminds his readers that even with those distinctions, the body functions as a whole.

               Paul uses this collective image of the body to represent the Church in order to move believers’ understanding of their own identity away from one of individual autonomy and toward the reality that they are now part of this wonderful and singular identity. Each individual has value and place within the collective body, but that value is intricately connected to their inclusion in the body. Individual identity is secondary to corporate identity.  Paul exhorts believers to recognize that every element of the body is necessary and desired so that no one part is excluded or cut off by another. Wrapped in this message is an exhortation for today’s Church to understand themselves in light of the whole body and to stop acting in ways that inadvertently amputate themselves from it.

               It is so challenging for us to adopt a collective mindset because the individualist mindset is ingrained in us from birth, it is woven into the fabric of our culture. It feels wrong to relinquish individualism and all that it entails. Who among us has not desired personal validation, a sense of self-worth, and acknowledgement of personal achievement? Who among us has not felt the need to be loved simply for who we are and found comfort in the thought that God provides that personal, relational love? It seems extremely counterintuitive to claim this as false and to abandon wholly any sense of individual place within Christ and the Church. Must the individual identity be cast aside in every sense in order to correctly and completely adopt a collective self-understanding?

               We ask this question because we simply don’t know how to think outside an individualist framework. We don’t know how to operate in any other way. But if we could break free from the confines of individualism, we would find that the value of the individual is found in belonging to the whole. Paul used the imagery of the human body, allow me to use the image of a jigsaw puzzle. A puzzle is only complete when every piece is present, which means each piece is vital. Each piece may have beauty and interest of its own, but it is of little value until it is added to the entire puzzle. Value, then, is found when each piece of the puzzle comes together to form the complete picture contained in the puzzle. This is the collective nature of the Church.

               But why does it matter whether we view ourselves as individuals or as a collective? Does our self-understanding really have that much influence on how we live out our calling as the Church?

               Yes, unequivocally. Our self-understanding has a tremendous influence on how we understand God, the Gospel of Christ, and how we fit into God’s story. And the way we understand those three things determines how we worship, and how we worship directs how we respond to the calling and mission of God.

 

               How we see ourselves matters. How we worship matters.

              

               There is still so much more to talk about concerning the Church’s identity as the particular and set-apart people of God. Next time I’ll dive into 1 Peter and do a comparison between the Church and the people of Israel. From there, I’ll move forward into what it looks like to worship as the collective people of God.

 

Until then, grace and peace to you.