Worship and the reality of God: an Evangelical Theology of Real Presence by John Jefferson Davis

Worship and the reality of God: an Evangelical Theology of Real Presence Reviews

• 
  David Bruyn

  While the case for frequency is strong, I'm not sure the case for real presence has been made without a lot of equivocation on meaning of 'presence' and 'union'. Spiritual presence was held even by Spurgeon, so on that score, nothing here is new for baptistic, Zwinglian memorialists.
  His continuationist statements are more assertions without argument. The remarks about music are just silly.
• 
  John

  John Jefferson Davis is an Episcopalian professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at Gordon-Conwell. Jefferson Davis is concerned about the state of worship in the evangelical church. Worship and the Reality of God is Jefferson Davis’s critique of contemporary worship and a way forward. It is not light sledding, but it is an important book for any evangelical pastor or worship leader to take seriously.
  
  Drawing from 35 visits to evangelical churches in the Denver while on a research sabbatical, Jefferson David believes that the presence of God is missing from most contemporary worship services. This is no small matter, since “worshiping the living God” is “the church’s highest priority.”
  
  Jefferson Davis argues that the evangelical church’s emphasis on preaching has diminished the vibrancy of its worship. He argues that American evangelicalism is deficient in its (1) “importance and priority of worship, (2) understanding of the nature of worship, (3) the participants in worship, (4) the elements of worship, (5) the understanding of how modernity and postmodernity “undermine true worship,” and (6) the need to learn new “doxological skills.”
  
  Jefferson Davis believes that America’s church is shallow, thin, and the same. His heart is that the American evangelical church would “be a church marked by the attributes deep, thick, different: that is, a deep church that is marked by the depth of its encounter with God in worship and the spiritual disciplines, rather than a church oriented toward numerical growth; a thick church characterized by thick relationships and commitments rather than thin personal relationships of consumerist and postmodern culture; and a different church of ‘resident aliens’ (Hauerwas) that is unashamedly distinct from the culture in its ontology, theology, worship and moral behavior.” This is a church that is resistant to the culture, Jefferson Davis asserts.
  
  Jefferson Davis believes this begins with recovering the bigness of God. “Your ‘God’ is too ‘light’; your vision of the church is too low; your view of your self is too high, and consequently, your worship is too shallow.” Consider Isaiah, who responds that he is ruined when he encounters the living God. We are purposed to encounter our huge God and be transformed by him.
  
  The problem is that we’ve neutered the church of God’s presence. While our services are polished, they are empty. Jefferson Davis asks, “Will postmodern seekers be able to find in the worship events of the American churches the sense of the reality and presence of God that the consumerist and entertainment-driven expressions of modernity have failed to provide? Can evangelical churches retrieve from their own theological traditions the elements of mystery, of sacrament, of the immanence of the Spirit in nature, of humanity’s connection with the earth, and the deeper resonances of ritual action to connect with this postmodern sensibility?”
  
  Worship is intended to be that place in which the congregation is caught up between heaven and earth. And yet we’re stuck in the terrestrial. Why is that? Because we have shifted from God-focused worship to celebrity-focused worship. We have exchanged God’s presence for advice. Why has preaching become the centerpiece of worship? For Jefferson Davis, it is a pragmatic move, one that suits our comfort as those in modernity.
  
  How do we re-discover this kind of service? He defends a more traditional liturgical service with a prayer of invocation, the public reading of Scripture (separate from the message), prayers, hymns, offerings, and the benediction. The importance of the real presence in worship: the Eucharist.
  Jefferson Davis believes that the gathering of the saints without the Eucharist is an assembly where Good Friday and Easter Sunday have been forgotten. He offers an explanation of the history of the theological development of the Eucharist.
  
  “The real presence of God is the central element of every worship service,” Jefferson Davis asserts. How do we do that? At the heart of his argument is an argument to place the Eucharist back at the center of our gathering. He says that “…the fundamental reality of New Testament worship is that of a joyful assembly, and Christians have the best of all reasons to rejoice: because Christ has risen from the dead, sin and death have been defeated, and victory is assured! The Communion table is not in a funeral parlor, so to speak, but in the banquet hall of the King of Kings.” Jefferson Davis argues that this is particularly powerful in our moment in part because our culture is driven by images. We have to provide more powerful images. The Eucharist is the central image we offer.
  
  Jefferson Davis is a formidable thinker. He stands in line with many authors who have offered similar critiques of the American church. Two generations ago AW Tozer offered the same critique. Twenty years ago David Wells offered similar critiques. The critique that the evangelical church has hollowed out its services and avoids the presence of God isn’t new, but it ought to be taken seriously. There are many ways that our services droop into the realm of the insipid, into a form that is polished, but empty.
  
  And yet, there were many places that it felt as though Jefferson Davis takes the worst of evangelicalism and pits it against the best of Episcopalian liturgy. Jefferson Davis never deals with the weak points of his own tradition and doesn’t do justice to the strengths of evangelicalism. For instance, there is a credible argument to be made that the evangelical church’s liturgy mirrors the liturgy of the synagogue and roots itself in Jesus’ expository ministry.
  
  His critiques of contemporary evangelical worship music also felt a bit tired. I’ve dealt with that issue on my blog if you want my full response (
  https://www.thebeehive.live/blog/in-d...).
  
  Finally, while Jefferson Davis has plenty of critiques to make about how the evangelical church has shrunk its view of worship, it seems to me that his own view is reduced as well. While Jefferson Davis nods to the fact that worship isn’t just our worship services, but us experiencing the presence of God in all of life, it’s hard to square that with what at times feels like his cure-all to worship in the Eucharist.
  
  Jefferson Davis is a wise and penetrating thinker. We would do well to grapple with his critiques of evangelicalism. I do hope there is an equally thoughtful writer who takes on Jefferson Davis’s challenge and provides a counterpoint. I would sign up for that one.
  
  For more reviews see
  www.thebeehive.live.
• 
  Paul Baggaley

  I hate to say it but I am abandoning this book. The author may have some good points to make but he buries it underneath a huge pile of unnecessary verbosity. Now I'm not dumb, and I appreciate the use of advanced vocabulary when necessary but this guy is so prolix it's not funny. It almost feels like a uni student doing his best to squeeze in as many fancy words as he can in order to impress. I'd be more impressed if he could make his points in a more direct fashion, and could make it through a single page without using the word ontology or a variation thereof. The other aspect of his writing style that irritated me was his making huge lists of examples to prove his knowledge of popular culture - rather than using one or two examples (eg facebook and twitter), he would fill half a page with a list of disparate brands or cultural references. This occurred on numerous occasions. So I'm sorry Mr Davis, although I had an open mind regarding your thoughts on worship, you have defeated me with your writing style. It feels like such a chore to get through this book so I will not persist any longer. What a shame.
• 
  Caroline Abbott

  Read this for my theology class. This man's perspective is that evangelical Christians had lost the feeling of the reality of God in our worship services.
• 
  Bob

  So why did our Christian community gather this morning? For encouragement, for teaching, for fellowship, for mission? John Jefferson Davis would suggest that above all, we gather because we've been called to a meeting with the triune living God who wants to speak to and commune with his people. One of the eye-openers to me was as Davis talked about the elements of worship is that the "call to worship" is literally God's calling us to meet with and honor Him.
  
  In this book, Davis considers what it would mean to our Sunday gatherings to see them in the light of such an encounter with the reality of the living God. It would shape our reading of scripture, in which we are listening to God's speech. It would shape our preaching as we seek to faithfully render and attend to God's speech. And it would effect our communion practices--we would recognize the real presence and communion of the risen Lord Jesus with us.
  
  Davis' chapter on communion was literally worth the price of the book for me. He shows the history of the doctrine of transubstantiation (a late development) and the protestant reaction which often reduces communion to a solemn memorial--funeral like in quality. He explores what it means that communion is participation in the body and blood of Christ--that Christ is present with us in the midst of this celebration in which we experience in ourselves his saving work afresh and know his risen presence and power with us--an occasion for great joy! And because this is the case, it should be no surprise that he argues for frequent, even weekly communion.
  
  Davis concludes with applications to the local church context as well as an annotated bibliography. My only quibble with this book is his usage of analogies from computer gaming and the digital world at various points to illustrate ideas. It felt a bit 'trendy' to me and I'm not sure how far we want to press such analogies. Also, this will likely make the book seem very dated in a short period of time. Aside from this--a very worthwhile book for any who care deeply about why we gather from week to week as Christian communities.
• 
  Cynthia

  If I were an academic, I'd probably give this book a four- or five-star rating. For me, a lay reader, it was a bit dense, though still worth the effort. The basic idea is kind of a no-brainer, yet clearly something that we need to be reminded of: God is the object of our worship. Jesus is in our midst as we worship. The Holy Spirit enables us to worship, revealing God to us. We go to "worship services" for the purpose of meeting with and bowing our knees and hearts to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And one of the ways we do this is through the Lord's Supper. The author argues that many Protestant churches have lost the awe and wonder of this sacrament. They have forgotten that Jesus is present with us at the table. This truth, like a few important others, was thrown out with the baby's bathwater, at the Reformation. We need to bring that "baby" back into the forefront of our worship. The author also talks about art and music as means to cultivate worship. It's a thought-provoking read, though not an easy one.
• 
  Bryan

  A well written and profound book. In a few areas he may have tried to do to much, namely by trying to draw analogies with spiritual realities by using computer technological realities. But if that was a real drawback and not merely my own experience, the majority of the book was so exceptional that it certainly would outweigh any such drawback. The book was a joy to read, positively enlightening in regard to the "real presence" of Christ and the Spirit in the early church, and showing what churches should know if they would be open to "the tradition of the living faith of the dead." (This is not "traditionalism: the dead faith of the living.") The phrases are from Jarislov Pelikan. The book does contain discussions of practical ways to implement it's recommendations, but is mostly valuable because it makes the reader eager know the reality of God in worship.
  
• 
  Adam

  Not really a book I'd recommend.
  I'm just tired of "worship" books that continue to frame themselves in the context of the worship wars. It's old. Get over it. I bought the book based off the title, seemed like a great topic, wish it was what the book was about. Should have read the introduction. That will teach me.
  
  
• 
  Luke Brodine

  I think this may become an important book in the turning point of the war over worship culture. Davis critiques the major streams of worship in the American church, showing how our thinking is couched in modern and postmodern influences. Though its conclusions may not be earth shattering for some readers, it does sound the call for worship that is formative in an age of other interests.
• 
  Carl Holmes

  Interesting book. Really a good overview of the history of Communion, but not really anything new is stated in the book.