A near miss with a fast-moving truck.

A relationship breakdown resolved joyfully.

A surprising reaction to big news.

When drama happens, it’s hard to forget.  Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable.  Sometimes it stirs us, connecting us with the vision for what life could or should be like that is etched deeply somewhere within our spirits.

And church services that are unforgettable, and perhaps both simultaneously uncomfortable and soothing, are not boring.  In fact, they are the sorts of gatherings we long for.  We’ve got enough hum-drum going on in our lives… it’d be nice if church could jolt us back to reality, remind us why we’re alive, show us what really matters.

These are of course the sorts of things that happen when you encounter God. People like Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jesus’ own disciples and the Apostle Paul all encountered God in his glory in some way that changed their lives.  As, of course, did Lot’s wife, Herod the King, Ananias and Sapphira, each of whose encounter with God led to their grim demise.

When we meet together in what we call “church”, we encounter God.  And so do those who join us.  We are called the temple of the Holy Spirit in 1 Cor 3:16 and in Ephesians and 1 Corinthians the church is referred to as Christ’s body.  Both of these images denote our being God’s physical presence in the world.

And it is particularly as we proclaim the word of God when we meet together that people encounter the reality of God.  God’s word is his expressed will.  If you hear him speaking, you had better take it seriously, because it is not the word of the frail, inarticulate soul stuttering away at the microphone, who just happened to be rostered on Bible reading for that week.  It is the eternal and unchangeable word of the sovereign, infinite, Lord of all things, whose word goes out and doesn’t return to him without achieving the purpose for which he sent it.

Going to church should be dramatic.  Because you meet God in his people and through his word.  You don’t just talk about him; you don’t just catch up with friends. You do even more than just learn things.  You meet with God.  And like any dramatic event, it should be hard to forget.

This is part 2 of 4 in this series of blogs entitled “Antidotes for boring services”.  I am essentially asking what is it that makes a church service edifying.  That is, how do gatherings of the church lead to the building of the church?   I’m trying to get back to the essence of what a church service is.  Part 1 focussed on the fact that we gather in worship of God, and when we are expressing the various acts of worship that God calls for and enables, we edify those around us… that is, we build the church.

So what then is the relevance of drama to church?  Well, I think there are several ways in which drama as a concept helpfully guides us in the way we plan, run and participate in church.  Let’s look at 3 ways in particular: drama as gravitas, drama as story, and drama as conversation.

1. Drama as gravitas

Let me start with a question: should a service leader or song leader make jokes from the platform?

Perhaps it’s never occurred to you that there might be a problem with this.  I mean, preachers make jokes all the time.  In fact, sometimes people gain notoriety and popularity as preachers on the strength of their sense of humour!

But if we were at Mount Sinai, would we be cracking one-liners?  If we had just been knocked down by the glory of Jesus on the road to Damascus, would we be doing funny voices or silly accents?

In thinking about the humour issue, I urge you not just to jump to conclusions… there are probably a whole lot of ways we should continually re-evaluate what we do in the name of Jesus.

That is, in the word of God we’re faced with God’s glory.  A certain gravitas is therefore appropriate for the way we handle the contents of the Bible in church.  Gravitas means weightiness, substance or seriousness.  Interestingly the Hebrew word for glory also means “heavy” or “weighty”, so perhaps gravitas isn’t such a bad word.

This is partly a question of the tone of our meetings.  There is so much vanity in Western society that even when we’re at church we implicitly say to those on the platform, “Entertain me!” “Grab me!” “Keep my attention!”  And so, obediently, those of us on the platform give it our best shot.  We try to be dynamic, humorous, upbeat, and interesting.

I’m not actually suggesting that we shouldn’t be dynamic, humorous, upbeat or interesting.  There are times when our services should have a tone of celebration.  Showing people the Lord’s glory is showing them what he is like, and he is certainly not dull, humourless and downbeat.

The benefit of a bit of weightiness in our service is that it reminds us that God is a consuming fire, not a warm blanket. He is the Almighty heavenly father, not a friendly Santa Claus.

But as well as tone, it’s also a question of the content of our meetings, particularly the words that get said from the front.  In my view, we should demonstrate the highest level of reverence for God and his word in absolutely every word we utter from the platform.  We must never trivialise God’s love; we must never apologise for God’s judgement or his holiness; we must not downplay the seriousness of sin; nor reduce anything that makes us uneasy down to palatable morsels that make us feel good.

Three other practices I’ve observed recently that I don’t think are appropriate:

• We should not condone, implicitly or explicitly, a position of unbelief in God or unwillingness to become a Christian, although we should respect people’s right not to believe and we should not persecute people for having doubts.
• We should not suggest that the will of God expressing in his word only applies to those who believe in it, although constantly emphasising to unbelievers the right and wrong way to live can portray a moralism that is just as bad.
• We should not suggest to visitors that what we’re doing in church is weird, although we may acknowledge that it is different.

Our words and our tone should convey a great loathing of the sin within us, but not in a way that would compromise our love of the people who are present.  We must help people to understand the seriousness of the problem of our world’s alienation from God before they’ll have any hope of understanding the wonder of God’s grace.  And we must remind people that we are at war with the forces of evil and the powers of darkness, whom Christ has defeated, but who have not yet been completely done away with.  These powers still rage against him and us, they blind people’s minds, and oppose the Kingdom of God at every turn.

2. Drama as story

Now in case you’re worried about whether humour is appropriate in church, God uses stories all the time in the Bible, and many of them seem to be deliberately funny in the way they make their point.  Think of the reluctant missionary who repents and is rescued by being swallowed by an enormous sea creature and spat up on the land.  What about the account of the mighty god of the Philistines, who keeps falling over in the night, the second time unfortunately with head and hands broken off, found in the somewhat humiliating position of bowing down before the Ark of God in its presence…  Even the conversion of Saul of Tarsus has a humorous side when you think about all his huffing and puffing beforehand and then the dramatic way his life direction is reversed overnight by an encounter with the glorious risen Christ.

But the humour in the stories is secondary to the stories themselves.  Through a range of different narrative styles, from historical account through to fictional parable, the Bible is story from beginning to end.

People get stories.  They affect us.  They carry us along by stirring fear, admiration or contemplation.  They stir empathy, both for foolish and wise characters, because we see these characteristics in ourselves.  They unfold truth in human experience.

So why not follow the Bible’s lead and let our services be as much narrative-driven as they are explanation-driven.  We need both for proper grounding in the word of God.  What about testimonies, dramatic readings, sermons that let a voice speak from within the narrative in addition to the voice outside of the narrative…

Let’s take this a step further… what about letting the whole service be an unfolding narrative?

I wouldn’t suggest this if it wasn’t the exact method used by the Bible.  One of the distinctive features in comparison with other holy books is that the Bible tells a coherent story from beginning to end, and it is through this story that we understand our salvation and our place in the kingdom of God.

A great book on this is A Better Way – Rediscovering the Drama of God Centred Worship by Michael Horton.  He asks the important question, “Do we have a compelling plot”?  Just as in the movies, where, in the absence of a compelling plot you’ll find filmmakers playing to the “lusts of the flesh”, in life we do the same.  Even as Christians we tend to write our own scripts, defining our lives the way we envision them, picking up bits and pieces along the way, maybe:

• A set of values we think are good
• A new hair style we think will suit us
• The spiritual resources we think we’ll need for life
• The newest technological resources to get ourselves organised.

Sometimes our spiritual lives are no less consumerist (and random) than the rest of our lives.  In fact, why would we draw a distinction between our spiritual lives and the rest of our lives?

The Bible tells us that God has written the script and it is indeed compelling.  People who come to church do not need continually to rewrite their own script to get them through life.  They are already part of God’s script, which provides a much better story and a much better ending than anything else.  They need to be reminded of God’s story again and again.

Not only is the plot compelling, it is integrated.  Yet many people think of church (and the reading of the Bible in particular) as being a series of spiritual inputs and perhaps a range of somehow-related stories.  But it is more than this: salvation-history is one long, all encompassing story.

It has a main character and a host of supporting characters; the scene is set very early on with a major relationship breakdown between the main character and all the other characters, a breakdown that is initiated by the other characters.  And those other characters show ongoing disregard for this relationship over centuries and millennia (the Bible is a LONG story).  Yet the main character (we’ll call him the hero) continues to pursue relationship restoration, despite hurdle after hurdle, rejection after rejection.  And the promises of restoration get more and more vivid and ambitious as the likelihood of restoration apparently lessens.  There is real tension in this story!

And the story has such an incredible climax: it all turns on a completely surprising move on the part of the hero.  Rather than heading off into the sunset with dramatic (and justified) defiance, rather than committing some momentous act to bring rightful retribution, the hero shows himself to be the most desirable character in any story ever written.  He pursues those who have become his enemies, not to kill them, but to be killed for them, leaving his enemies forgiven and guilt-free, and the way open for healing, restoration and a new life together.  The main character DEFINES love through this story.  Any other so-called love stories we might have heard merely reflect a fleeting shadow of this ultimate love story.

So, we’re hearing this story, and the hero is turning our values system upside down; he is drawing us to himself, showing us that this wonderful character is the fulfillment of all of our human desires.

But the most powerful and important thing about this story is that it is real, and that we are characters in it.  And… that the story is not yet finished.  The part that we play in it has not yet finally unfolded.

3. Drama as conversation

In other places I’ve written about the 3-way conversation that happens when we are in church.  Here I want to emphasise the way in which the story of the Bible gets played out Sunday by Sunday, literally unfolding as people hear it and realise that they are part of it.

Maybe people are coming in the door just expecting to sit and listen.  They’ll join in at the appropriate parts, but since most of the talking is happening up front, they’re anticipating a fairly passive role.

We tend to call our meetings “services” because there is order and structure to our gatherings.  We don’t just make it up as we go along, like who’s doing the speeches at a poorly organised birthday party.

Contemporary services have tended to have a greater appearance of being freeform, but there is and should still be an agenda that the leader(s) have in mind.  This agenda should be to retell God’s story and to make people aware of their part in it.

You may not know the exact expectation of each individual as you look out to the congregation, but you will know this:

• Some of them are deeply repentant for their part in rejecting the hero and are demonstrating faith in the hero’s restoring act of love
• Some have completely misunderstood the story (it’s just bounced off them) or have never heard it properly – they’re in church for other reasons (they want to be a good person, they’re looking for love or friendship, they’re supporting a friend or family member)
• Some of them have heard the story a thousand times but have either become distracted by the busyness of their lives or are allowing themselves to be pulled away from the hero by alternative interests.

How do we plan and lead a service with such diversity of perspectives?  Very simply, we retell the story.  We have many tools at our disposal for this: song choice, song order, song introductions, prayers, Bible verses, words of exhortation, creeds.  What we have to do is think about the telling.

Ancient prayer book services had a very clear process for the telling of the story.  You would hear verses of Scripture telling of the glory and holiness of God and the failure of humanity.  The congregation would say a general confession.  The minister would reply with a declaration of forgiveness.  There would a thanksgiving or a song of praise. The ministry of the word both through multiple readings and a sermon would teach and exhort, and the Lord’s Supper would give the opportunity to receive Christ by faith as you  eat and drink.

Can you see God’s story in all this? The congregation would be part of it… they weren’t just an audience.   The same must be true this Sunday.  You don’t have to tell the whole story every Sunday, just elements of it, perhaps a fresh angle on it or a reflection on a part of it.  Or use a story within the Bible to make your points.  Think about these headings below as ways of making sure you’re covering a wide breadth of topics within the whole:

Part 1: God creates and treats humanity generously, human reject God and our guilt ensues.

Part 2: God acts to redeem and offers forgiveness and restoration.

Part 3: Humans respond either with repentance and faith, or with further rejection of God.

Part 4: Our future orients our life today, either we living under redemption and its implications or under judgement.

Part 5: God’s judgement will put everything as it should be.

There are any number of ways you could map out the chapters.

Conversation in this drama is not about every person in the room getting their 2 mins on the platform (although in some circumstances this could work well).  It’s primarily about God’s story being retold and every person being made aware of their place in it.  It’s not a “choose your own adventure” because it’s God’s story with really only one ending.  But that ending will lead to an irreversible separation of different people’s destinies.

We all have things we need reminding of, and perhaps things we need to hear for the first time.  We all have sins we need to repent of.  Every day of our lives we make a set of responses to God… often unbelief sneaks back in.  It’s really important that when we sit and hear from him that we realign ourselves to the Spirit’s will for our lives.  If the Christian life should be characterised by faith and repentance, then the Christian gathering should be a heightened and sharpened expression of that faith and repentance.

Conclusion

What can you do to reintroduce drama into your services?  Maybe you’re not a leader – but by active participation, you will play a leadership of sorts, whether it’s loud praise, humble sincerity, or generous love of others (all three, really).  If you are a leader, ask if God’s story will be told this Sunday.  Will this great epic be clear, persuasive and participative, drawing people to respond to the glory of God?