An Anabaptist Theology of Worship

Anabaptists see the church as a radical body of believing disciples. Worship arises out of this community of faith and is simple and egalitarian. It recounts God’s story of redeeming love through the ongoing experience of the community of faith.

Worship says In the beginning God … and worship says, Yes, God’s actions are working out in our history for good. Worship respects and recognizes the various vitalities by which we enjoy life, the various values that govern it, and the various visions which transform it. Anabaptist worshipers respond to such revelations. Worship is therefore the interaction of the revelation of God and the response of the people who follow Jesus. We bring the phenomena of our living into the phenomenon of the living Jesus. We carry our various realities in into the presence of God.

Anabaptists have a faith-vision that calls forth unique worship patterns. The Anabaptist vision is almost five hundred years old and includes Mennonites, Brethren, and various Baptist and Congregationalists with sixteenth-century Anabaptist theological roots. The faith components may look very similar to those of other faith families, but what distinguishes Anabaptism is a combination and a configuration of “ABC’s”:

A. Authority of Scriptures, no t as a creed or code but as our stories and story to be believed and obeyed—that which forms and expresses our identity;
B. Baptism of believers (not infants) whereby one’s own faith in God, much like one’s love for another, evokes a public commitment;
C. Church as a community of the transformed, working out with others who are also a part of the body of Christ, thus a rejection of rugged individualism;
D. Discipleship of life, following Christ in imitation and participation;
E. Ethic of love in all relationships, an agape stance affirming even adversaries, seeking justice, building peace, reconciling relationships, confronting waste, living simply, honoring ecology, giving relief, sharing faith.

In worship, Anabaptists are consciously and communally responding to God. The purpose of worship is, all at once expressing gratitude to God and renewing, reaffirming, and reforming all aspects of life according to the ABCs of faith.

Worship and Liturgy

What does Anabaptist worship include and what does it look like? We’ve already alluded to the two necessary ingredients of divine expression and human experience—revelation and response. Simply put, worship is being present with Presence. We now examine three things that make liturgy happen in Anabaptist worship: experience, expression, and environment.

The Experiences We Have. Worship includes actual settings: It is involvement, taking place in the active and concrete here and now: a blessing for this meal, going to church, a dedication for this child, a consideration of this question and that issue.

Worship has to do with the wholeness of our various separations and sectionings. God gives us his peace, bringing harmony to our various dissonances. The biblical metaphor of the potter is telling: God taking clay and answering our song, “Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me, … mold me, make me, … fill me, use me.” Biblical precedents include the Corinthians’ love feast fiasco, Jacob’s wrestling with the Lord’s angel, Mary’s new vocation, Peter’s awareness that Cornelius is “in.” One cannot discard weekdays and have a weekend, or this pain and have that promise, or that brother and have this sister. Each fragment has a larger view, a larger setting, a greater dimension.

Worship has to do with all of our struggles; it takes them all seriously. Honest worship pays attention to our human conflicts; they are “tools at hand.” Life-stages and life-developments are the stuff that makes for worship. Anabaptist liturgy puts struggle where it belongs—in worship.

The Expressions We Make. With what symbols shall we tell the story—to us, to others, to God? Language comes in word and deed, helping us to praise, confess, commit, speak, and listen. In worship, language is always inclusive. Music both glorifies God and builds the body of Christ through expression in thought and feeling. It uses a variety of styles. Actions can be natural and spontaneous as well as planned, as in the examples of drama and dance. Silence also speaks: it is the still small voice of quietness. Preaching is allowing the Scriptures and the sermon to address us and then to respond to the living God. The sermon also allows for congregational preaching expressing itself as incarnation into today’s life and, therefore, as a redemptive sign and event.

The Environment We Need. The preacher and liturgists do not need “to be up there.” The best liturgical aid is people—seated in a semicircle allowing for a sense of community and communication. Visual aids (banners, paintings, free-standing cross, an open Bible, a candle, a globe, a Communion cup) can powerfully suggest, “We now have met to worship thee.” Biblical liturgy doesn’t occur only in the meetinghouse. Worshipers meet also in Sunday school rooms and in living rooms. A lit candle on the table in business and committee meetings reminds us of our purpose.

Worship and Rituals

The previous section shows that Anabaptist liturgies include the entire range of human experience. Here we see that all of life’s pilgrimage is the stuff of ritual performance—the locus where God is met. Assembling with others on the first day of the week is a repeated action and sign of our worship of God. Each Sunday service proclaims the giving of Christ anew. Sunday worship, like all repeated events, can deepen both revelation and response. Special acts of worship that signify God’s self-giving, and our self-giving in return, are properly called sacraments. Anabaptists are suspicious of this word, however, because of the track record in which sacred things have been exploited—in instances in church history when sacraments have become cultic objects. In Anabaptist worship ordinance has replaced sacrament, a radical and far-reaching switch. Ordinances, rites, and rituals are troublesome words for Anabaptists. “Performances” that God’s people enjoy might be better received.

Baptism is an initiation into the body of Christ, not only by believing in Jesus but in being part of the church. It marks the beginning of a pilgrimage of a lifelong journey of worship and witness. It is ordination into co-ministry with Jesus. It symbolizes cleansing and new life, an outward sign of new birth and new creation. Anabaptists practice believer’s baptism (sometimes referred to as adult baptism)—an experience akin to marriage in that baptism is a service of two parties who have consciously fallen in love with the “ring” (the water) as a sign and seal of that love relation.

The Lord’s Supper engages in living memory; it implies being present for a living memorial. It promises that something more is coming, particularly as one opens oneself to “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” The future is present. Christ is present in the taking of the bread, which includes our “taking.” Our openness to Christ, our attitude of acceptance whereby we hunger and thirst after the brooks of eternal life, make this time of taking a junction where we meet God and where we receive drink that satisfies and food that nourishes. If we eat and drink “all of it,” we accept Christ’s joy and pain, fulfillment, and searching. We accept Christ’s continued purposes for the world, and we enlist in that mission. We fine-tune our motivation; we receive manna to carry on.

Other Performances include ordination, healing, reconciliation, marriage, death, agape meals, foot or handwashing, and the various markings (dedication service of a new home, high school graduation, mortgage burnings, child dedications, and commissioning of teachers and officers).

Worship and Living

It’s a cliché in church bulletins—“Enter to Worship … Depart to Serve”—but a cliché rich in meaning for Anabaptists. Biblical, Anabaptist worship begins at church but does not end there; it pushes us into witness and work and then back again to worship where we can be revived. Liturgy means the work of the people (not, as commonly believed the assembling of the saints). What goes on on weekdays follows what goes on on their weekends—the rhythm of the church gathered and the church scattered. Accordingly, Anabaptist worship underscores the biblical learning that believers bring to the world. For Paul, liturgical worship was an exercise of work and witness (taking offerings to Jerusalem, a hoped-for missionary trip to Spain, witness to the high officials of government) (cf. Rom. 15:9, 24–29, where the actual word “liturgy” is used). Later he designates as worship whatever we do as unto the Lord (1 Cor. 10:31).

Conclusion

Anabaptist faith-vision and Anabaptist worship-practice go together. The faith of a Christian as a disciple—can be analogized as a caravan, a people “banded together to make common cause in seeking a common destination,” whose existence is in a continual becoming, a following of its Lord on the way toward the kingdom. This vision is in contrast to a commissary, which has existence in its own being in maintaining its divinely given essence. The faith of shalom—God uniting and integrating holistically all the details of life’s pilgrimages—is found in human experiences, expressions, environments, and life’s repeated events. A life of faith is a response to the living Word, to the Bible as central, not so much as a message-book but a voice-book, speaking not only about worship but also as worship, giving voice to the presence of the living God. Anabaptists are at worship as they meditate on its words—from Genesis to Revelation—experiencing the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.