The way worship works in mission: Proposing an alternative to the standard account

Abstract

This article examines the relationship of worship to mission in the life of the church. How does worship shape the Christian for mission and the work of God’s justice in the world? The article sketches what the author contends to be “the standard account” of how worship works within North American mainstream evangelical Protestantism, drawing on several authors who write on spiritual formation, liturgy, and cultural engagement. Exemplary of this standard account is the influential theology of church and culture found within neo-Calvinism. By parsing the social architecture of these authors, this article reveals its strengths and weaknesses—an analysis that can be applied more widely to Protestantism as a whole in North America. Then, the article moves on to propose an alternative account for the relationship of worship to mission that overcomes the weaknesses of the standard account. This alternative approach is labeled “faithful presence,” an approach which has affinities with an Anabaptist approach to worship and mission.