Language is not always about communicating ideas. Language is often performance. We indicate who we are, to which tribes we belong, and what sorts of values we hold. We often do this by how we say something, rather than what we say. We connote, rather than denote. What we imply, what we allude to, often has more power than the “content” of whatever we say.

We clergy have a set of stock phrases, sayings, and stories that we share with the congregations we lead in worship. Each one of us has a set that reflects our own theological understanding and personality. Sometimes it’s involuntary and just emerges from our speech patterns. This includes the ways we address God (Father, Creator, Mother, or God), the use of inclusive or exclusive language, phrases that appear in multiple sermons and prayers, and idiosyncratic ways of speaking.

Over time, through repetition, our congregations learn, modify, and repeat these phrases back to us, and what began as a pithy statement or a theological theme becomes implicit liturgy. I think every church has an implicit liturgy that reflects their implicit theology. Sometimes this means public prayers sound like, “Lord we just praise you this morning, Father, and we just want to ask, Lord, to just send your healing power on Aunt Mary, and we just praise and thank you…”

Now, I don’t really care for the phrase “Lord we just,” but I find it linguistically fascinating. It isn’t mere filler, like “um” or “er,” but actually a performance that indicates a set of values and beliefs about the speaker’s own humility and authenticity. It rejects rehearsed prayer and high-falutin’ language in favor of language that sounds more intimate and unrehearsed.

I have tried to become more aware of the stock phrases I use and my idiosyncratic ways of speaking by listening to my recorded sermons, so that my “involuntary liturgy” can become voluntary, and our implicit liturgy can become explicit. Not only has it taught me a lot about my own theology, it has helped me deliberately tie what we’re doing in worship to the mission and vision of our church. So, in addition to common call-and-response liturgy like, “Peace be with you—and also with you,” or “God is good—all the time,” we have the following:

“The Bible is not a monologue. It is a dialogue.”
“The Bible is not a book. It is a library.”

or

“Just because two things contradict each other doesn’t mean that they can’t both be true.”

or “God shows no partiality.”

The goal of our new church is to reach people who have been hurt or burned by church, or who may have intellectual problems with the version(s) of Christianity that dominates the Southeast United States. And while I find the ideas behind these sayings compelling myself, their real power lies in uniting a group of people who have often felt marginalized by the surrounding Christian culture. When they say these words together as a group, they experience healing and transformation. It makes me think of what the liturgy of the early church must have been like as they huddled in hidden catacombs and said, “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.”

For our folks, saying these things together allows them to belong, and the power and joy of knowing Christ through the Bible that has been denied to them can be reclaimed. I know that this call-and-response would not work in many churches, and some readers may have problems with these phrases. But the fact is, the people we’re reaching wouldn’t be going to those other churches anyway. This liturgy reflects their indigenous theology.

By listening to the conversation of our own communities and talking about shared values, we can craft local liturgies that have special meaning in our own communities. These don’t replace the liturgies we share with the global church, but they complement them and highlight the way our local congregation is an expression of what God is doing through the global church.

The process of planting a new church and developing first this implicit liturgy, then making it explicit and intentional has changed the way I think about liturgy and its role in building community. I’ve come to believe these kinds of shared statements are ways we can teach scripture and remind folks to live out their unique Christian identity in the world.