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RITUAL REVIVAL FOR PLAYFUL PROTESTANT PREACHING
Encounter, Summer 2006 by Blosser, Joseph
Church leaders can shape the format of contemporary revivals around historical practices, but they will need to provide more time for intentional, playful dialogue. There might still be a place in contemporary revivals for members of a church or several churches to prepare themselves individually by fasting on Thursday. On Friday the community can come together in the late afternoon for preparatory preaching and worship. To break people out of their worship routines, leaders may need to utilize interactive exercises and intentional theatrics. The people can then share a meal together and have time to discuss their experiences of the Word, perhaps breaking into small groups. On Saturday the worship services may continue throughout the day. This day of preparation may include community service, music, more shared meals, and time to discuss and reflect. Sunday should begin with a lively worship, active preaching, energetic music, and finally a move into the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, complete with the long, white, cloth-draped tables.57 By this point the community should be ready to celebrate with thanksgiving their renewed relationships with one another and deeper understanding of their faith.
One's language of faith could not help but be transformed through a sacramental revival weekend. Sunday evening should conclude with a worship of thanksgiving, an offering, and time for individual and communal commitment (maybe the community desires to express its faith in a concrete way with the coming year, such as adopting an inner-city elementary school that needs mentors or starting a clothing drive). The revival concludes on Monday morning with a final worship where participants turn their attention from the community to the world.58 In a format such as this, the incarnate Word and sacramental Supper can transform the church into a visible manifestation of God in the world.
Conclusion: A New Awakening?
The unfortunate state of preaching in white mainline Protestant churches could benefit from the power of revivals. This sacrament provides an opportunity to encounter the ineffable. As with other sacraments, its transcendence breaks down socially conditioned roles and languages, and its immanence develops new modes of speech and faith expression. Further, revivals can connect "frontier" Christians with the history of their traditions and facilitate the development of deep human community. They cultivate conversations that allow people to talk about their faith in unguarded terms, struggle with the way others express theirs, and in this dialogical tension become open to the eruption of the Word. These discussions and religious experiences (sometimes one and the same) broaden one's awareness and affirmation of the various moral and theological languages of faith. This knowledge cannot but break open the hegemonic jargon of the pulpit. The preached Word can become a playful process of vocabulary transformation as people seek to understand the creative, dynamic, and disrupting gospel through the rich fragments of varied moral and theological languages. Preaching may not only begin to connect in new and powerful ways with the congregation, but churches may begin to grow as their preaching of the gospel and ritual life define them as subversive, and yet constructive, segments of society.
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