Book Review: Liturgical Mission, Winfield Bevins
The last 3 years as I have made my journey into a historic approach to Christian worship, Winfield Bevins has been one of the most influential writers, especially as I started the journey. His book Liturgical Mission: the Word of the People for the Life of the World does more than just look at the benefits a liturgical approach to faithful Christian worship has, but expounds on the holistic and all-encompassing nature that it has when looking at the role of the Church in the world.
The first major aspect Bevins looks at is how liturgical worship helps the Church recover the big story of Scripture, and applies it to the life of the Christian. Through the rhytms and movements of the liturgical calendar, we are constantly reminded and participating in the story of Jesus as we move from nativity to resurrection. In our bustling world of a million stories and sub-plots we as people are disenchanted and disenfranchised. Whereas the Christian story can give us something better to be apart of, helping us be on task for what Christ has called the Church to be.
Through the movements of gathering, word, table and sending, liturgy provides to Christians an all encompassing time of worship that ensures all part of our being are worshipping God, and that we are being equipped to be sent out to mission in the world.
The next major section is the idea of sacramentality. In a world where many in the west presume a form of scientific naturalism that has invanded the imaginations of many in the church, sacramentality restores the relationship between physical and spiritual, acknowledging that God works through more than just the immaterial, but that He can be and is amongst us. The Eucharist is of course one of the first things you think of when talking about this. But more than that, if we look at the world more of how God is working actively in even physical actions, we can see how we are called to be His actors in the world.
Finally, Bevins calls the Christian not just into orthodoxy, (right belief), but also into orthopraxy (right actions). What liturgy provides is not just a historic and faithful was of worship, but an integration to urging the Christian to not just take, but to also do. We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to go spread the Kingdom, and be an ambassador of Biblical justice in a broken world.