A study done a few years ago discovered that today’s “churched” youth suffer from an “inarticulacy of faith.” (See Soul Searching, by Christian Smith and Melinda Denton) Youth do not know how to “speak Christian” – they do not know the language and do not know the story of our faith. And while we may want to blame this on rising ADHD or short-tenured youth ministers, the underlying blame falls on our churches as a whole. You see, inarticulacy of the Christian story is not just a problem for our youth but for congregations in general. In many ways, we have lost the grand story of faith – of creation, turning away, repentance, salvation, redemption, and new creation. Some churches focus heavily on one or two of these aspects but neglect the most and congregations are left with a narrative deficiency. Many Baptist churches fight over style, traditional or contemporary, while both sides have “gutted” the liturgy, the continual shaping of the church by the narrative pattern of our communal life.

 Our postmodern world has no story – no “meta-narrative,” as Emergents like to say. For the majority of Americans, there is no grand story tying us all together, creating community, making us “one.” Followers of the American dream, we fall victim to individualized stories of personal success, growth, or wealth, or national stories of patriotism and heroism. We all desire something to cling to, some grand story to be a part of, and often, our church fails to offer a compelling alternative story for us to fall in love with and pattern our lives after. So we drift, either motivated and energized by the advancement of our self (and maybe our family) or grafted into false communities – country clubs, cyber-communities, or the common thread of nationalism. In short, we have no grand Christian story.

In a post a few weeks ago I reviewed a book on youth ministry by Sarah Arthur, The God-Hungry Imagination. In this book Arthur argues for a retrieval of narrative – through worship liturgy – in our churches. “My contention is that in losing the liturgy,” she writes, “the worshipping community risks losing its narrative shape – which means . . . the community risks losing both the story itself and its meaning. The church no longer inhabits a narratable world” (120).

So, what does all talk about “narrative” mean anyway? This narrative is the story of the scriptures, the living Word of God that fills us, empowers us, and calls us to live in a radically new and different way – to make something new in our world. It is the story that allows us to say that the world is the world, and the church is the church and the world needs to church to be different, to stand out, to be an alternative alien community of hope, faith, and love, to enact a different social ethic than the marginalizing, violent, and cut-throat world, and to inspire the world through the message and life of Jesus. The liturgy shapes us through the “alien Christian language and form of life,” as theologian George Lindbeck says. This narrative is told weekly through the liturgy of the church calendar and the liturgy of worship. Through gathering, welcoming, confession, praising, proclaiming, embodying, and sending forth.

While there are certainly great exceptions, many Baptist churches, whether seeker-friendly or institutional, have lost this liturgy and therefore this story. Most Baptist congregants have no idea what liturgy is, beyond that boring and repetitive stuff Catholics do. And Baptist churches that are liturgical are often boring and repetitive. We have lost the story in the Baptist church. We are not story tellers, nor story-embodyers. We live by the secular, national calendar and celebrate Valentines Day, Mother’s Day, and the Independence Day when many of our congregants do not know what Pentecost means. Jesus forgive a church that emphasizes holidays that celebrate the birth of a nation over holidays that celebrate the birth of your Church!

Whether or not we add more responsive readings to our worship planning or decide to recite the Apostle’s Creed, Baptist churches need to think creatively about how to better tell the story of God in our worship, and subsequently, through our work and mission. Baptist churches need to reclaim the church calendar – our alternative way of understanding time, place, and life. We are aliens and strangers in the world – with our own language and own world-view – and we have our own alien stories – stories of scripture, stories of redemption, stories of unconditional forgiveness, stories that can change lives . . . alien stories that the world needs to hear.