Opportunities for the Baptist Church Resulting from the Pandemic

The issue of Liturgy entitled “Future Renewals: Looking Toward the Next Fifty Years of Worship Scholarship and Practice,” was co-edited by Andrew Wymer, vice-president of the Liturgical Conference board and professor of worship at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and me.

We solicited essays from a range of members of the North American Academy of Liturgy (NAAL) looking at what has changed in liturgical scholarship and liturgical practice in the years since NAAL was founded in response to the Second Vatican Council.

Here is an excerpt from an essay by Lisa Weaver discussing how worship adjustments during the pandemic have called into question assumptions long held about pastoral authority, the roles people are allowed to take in service to the church, and the pressures of learning new technologies. –– Melinda Quivik

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Baptists have traditionally held firm boundaries between what ordained people can “do” and what laity can “do.” There is historical and theological grounding, understanding, and significance to this. One of the earliest New Testament accounts that provides an understanding of responsibilities that come as a result of “ordination” can be found in Acts 6:1–7 with the “setting apart” of Stephen and six other men by “the laying on of hands and prayer.” One of the challenges that the pandemic presented the church regards the distinction between what ordained people can “do” and what laity can “do.”

One of the distinctions that emerged for Baptists during the pandemic has concerned the Lord’s Supper: understandings regarding “who” can “do” “what” with respect to the elements (preparation and distribution) and prayer (who says it). In some communities, pastors lead the Lord’s Supper liturgy (either at home or in the sanctuary) as congregants follow along via Zoom (or some other virtual platform) and receive elements that they have prepared in their homes. In other communities, congregants are encouraged to observe the Lord’s Supper on their own until they can gather again as a community. What these differences in practice highlight are differences in the understanding of the dimensions of authority that ordination invests in a person: who has the authority to handle the elements and who has the authority to pray over the elements. . .

How pastors and congregants understand the priesthood of believers and the distinctions between the ministry of the baptismal priesthood and the (specific) works of the ordained priesthood inform how communities are managing the administration of this ordinance. The pandemic has invited the church to consider what the ministry of the whole people of God (the baptized priesthood of all believers) is and not what categories of people (the “ordained”) can “do.” When the baptismal priesthood is understood and embraced as the people who perform Christ’s ministry in the church and the world, who serve in tandem with the ordained priesthood (those who were set apart from among the baptismal priesthood), then the people of God, the whole people of God, understand the broadness of their divine authority as “priests of God through Jesus Christ.” Service in and outside of the church is then more robust because it is the whole body of Christ in ministry. . .

The pandemic also presented the opportunity to reimagine what formation might look like: formation of the clergy and formation of the laity. On the one hand, the formation of pastors took place in an age vastly different from this current one. What happens when the practices of one’s formation do not fit “this present age?” . . . Technology and the different communications platforms that engage younger generations are often intimidating and even threatening to elder pastors and clergy. The results are reticence and resistance on the part of the elder pastors. . . Forgotten, then, in these scenarios is what both sides have in common: a theology, an ecclesiology, and an understanding of the economy of worship, although the ways in which those theologies get expressed are generationally different.

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The full essay including references is available now in the digital and print editions of Liturgy. All of the essays in Liturgy 38, no. 1 are available by personal subscription and through many libraries.

Lisa M. Weaver is assistant professor of worship at Columbia Theological Seminary, in Decatur, Georgia. She serves as a board member on the worship grants advisory board for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, serves on the executive committee of The Hymn Society in the U.S. and Canada, and works as a liturgical consultant.

Lisa Weaver, “‘To Serve This Present Age’: The Future of Worship in the Baptist Church,” Liturgy 38, no. 1 (2023): 59–65