“Being a disciple of Jesus is not primarily a matter of getting the right ideas and doctrines and beliefs into your head in order to guarantee proper behavior; rather, it’s a matter of being the kind of person who loves rightly–who loves God and neighbor and is oriented to the world by the primacy of that love. We are made to be such people by our immersion in the material practices of Christian worship–through affective impact, over time, of sights and smell in water and wine.”
― James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation
We could hardly have a better modern guide to Augustinian spirituality than James K.A. Smith. His entire project orbits the thought and heart of the ancient Bishop of Hippo, and I think he’s talking about St. Augustine even when he’s not talking about St. Augustine.
One of the things I think he does that is urgently needed in some circles of thought that I swim in is to connect Discipleship with Worship.
Some thinkers, being rightly compelled to help the church reinvigorate intentional discipleship practices, wrongly dissociate dissociate what happens in worship from discipleship. Smith helps illuminate the formative power of worship—particularly in a world where alternative worship practices relentlessly sculpt us to be people whose capacity to love well and rightly is degraded and corrupted.
Setting up a dichotomy between “worship churches” and “discipleship churches” takes what must be a “both/and” situation and makes it not just “either/or” but “neither”.
There is not worship without discipleship. Nor is their discipleship without worship. Both are about love. Loving God and others well is the point of both discipleship and worship.
Or to put it in Augustinian terms, both worship and discipleship are about a rightly ordered life of love.
Steven Hovater 