"What do you want?"

"That's the question. It is the first, last and most fundamental question of Christian discipleship" (p.1). The premise of the book is that human beings are lovers, aka "we are what we want. Our wants and longings and desires are at the core of our identity, the wellspring from which our actions and behavior flow" (p.2). Therefore Christian discipleship "is a way to curate your heart, to be attentive and intentional about what you love. [It] is more a matter of hungering and thirsting than of knowing and believing. Jesus's command to follow Him is a command to align our loves and longings with His" (p.2).

Smith's proposition is then: "What if instead of starting from the assumption that human beings are thinking things, we started from the conviction that human beings are first and foremost lovers? What if you are defined not by what you know but by what you desire? What if the center and seat of the human person is found not in the heady regions of the intellect but in the gut-level regions of the heart? How would that change our approach to discipleship and Christian formation?" (p.7). Smith will unpack and answer this question with an extensive consideration of the rhythms and rituals of our worship. "The practices of Christian worship train our love - they are practice for the coming kingdom, habituating us as citizens of the kingdom of God. Christian worship, we should recognize, is essentially a counter-formation to those rival liturgies we are often immersed in, cultural practices that covertly capture our loves and longings, miscalibrating them, orienting us to rival versions of the good life. This is why worship is at the heart of discipleship. We can't counter the power of cultural liturgies with didactic information poured into our intellects. We can't recalibrate the heart from the top down, through merely informational measures. The orientation of the heart happens from the bottom up, through the formation of our habits of desire. Learning to love (God) takes practice" (p.25).

The Power of Habit

"Do you ever experience a gap between what you know and what you do? Have you ever found that new knowledge and information don't seem to translate into a new way of life?... It seems we can't think our way to holiness... What if it's because you aren't just a thinking thing? What if the problem here is precisely the implicit model of the human person we've been working with in this whole approach to discipleship?" (p.5)

"To question thinking-thingism is not the same as rejecting thinking. To recognize the limits of knowledge is not to embrace ignorance. We don't need less than knowledge; we need more. We need to recognize the power of habit.

That's why we need to reject the reductionistic picture we've unwittingly absorbed in the modern era, one that treats us as if we're only and fundamentally thinking things. Instead we need to embrace a more holistic, biblical model of human persons that situates our thinking and knowing in relation to other, more fundamental aspects of the human person. We've become too used to reading the Bible with Cartesian eyes - seeing the world through Descartes's 'I think, therefore I am' lens - that we see it confirming our intellectualism and thinking-thingism. But on a closer reading, when we set aside those uniquely modern blinders, we'll find a very different model assumed in the Scriptures" (p.6).

This idea has been rocking my world lately. Here are some additional resources that articulate a similar view of the complexity and integration of the human person in spiritual formation.

Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Christians

"This ancient, biblical model of the human person is just the prescription for a church that has swallowed the bait of modern thinking-thingism... Christian wisdom for a postmodern world can be found in a return to ancient voices who never fell prey to modern reductionism" (p.7).

Smith seems to say that what the Church needs most is a return to ancient forms of worship and faith that better reflect a biblical understanding of the human person. He quotes Augustine from his Confessions, and unpacks this idea.

"You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You." - Augustine

"Packed into this one line is wisdom that should radically change how we approach worship, discipleship, and Christian formation. Several themes can be discerned in this compact insight" (p.8). Smith will describe three things:

1. Design claim. "Augustine opens with a design claim, a conviction about what human beings are made for. This is significant for a couple of reasons. First, it recognizes that human being are made by and for the Creator who is known in Jesus Christ. In other words, to be truly and fully human, we need to 'find' ourselves in relationship to the One who made us and for whom we are made" (p.8). The design claim is foundational. It is axiomatic. All perspectives, philosophies and/or strategies flow from such an axiom. What is true about God and the nature of human beings? This will shape everything. In a point that could be considered 1.5, Smith says, "the implicit picture of being human is dynamic. To be human is to be for something, directed toward something, oriented toward something. To be human is to be on the move, pursuing something, after something... We are not just static containers for ideas; we are dynamic creatures directed toward some end" (p.8). This is where Smith introduces the concept of telos: an ultimate object or aim. Human beings are teleological creatures.

2. The heart. Augustine locates "the center or 'organ' of this teleological orientation in the heart, the seat of our longings and desires... think of the heart as the fulcrum of your most fundamental longings - a visceral, subconscious orientation to the world... So in this picture, the center of gravity of the human person is located not in the intellect, but in the heart. Why? Because the heart is the existential chamber of our love, and it is our loves that orient us toward some ultimate end or telos. It's not just that I 'know' some end or 'believe' in some telos. More than that, I long for some end. I want something, and want it ultimately. It is my desires that define me. In short, you are what you love" (p.8-9).

3. Rest or Restless. "Because we are made to love the One who made and loves us... we will find 'rest' when our loves are rightly ordered to this ultimate end. But Augustine also notes the alternative; since our hearts are made to find their end in God, we will experience a besetting anxiety and restlessness when we try to love substitutes... You can't not love. So the question isn't whether you will love something as ultimate; the question is what you will love as ultimate. And you are what you love" (p.10).

"This brief foray into the Scriptures and the ancient wisdom of St. Augustine reveals a very different model of the human person than we typically assume. This model provides a framework for thinking about the task of discipleship, the nature of sanctification, and the role of worship" (p.10).

• A framework for discipleship.

• The nature of sanctification.

• The role of worship.

Orienting Desire: The Quest to Be Human

"To be human is to be on a quest. To live is to be embarked on a kind of unconscious journey toward a destination of your dreams" (p.10).

This section is central to the premise of the book. The claim that we are what we love is based on the reality that as humans we pursue what we desire most.

"We live leaning forward, bent on arriving at the place we long for" (p.10). This place we long for can be understood as our telos.

"[O]ur telos is what we want, what we long for, what we crave. It is less an ideal that we have ideas about and more a vision of 'the good life' that we desire. It is a picture of flourishing that we imagine in a visceral, often-unarticulated way - a vague yet attractive sense of where we think true happiness is found" (p.11).

My pursuits in life, ministry, family, etc. are and always have been described as desires, visions, pictures, longings, hopes. These types of words are the language of the heart. It's difficult to articulate intellectually or even sometimes logically. There is simply something that I love and want, and therefore I go after it. I am realizing that I am an intense lover. My life is driven by what I love and long for.

"[T]here is something ultimate about this vision: to be oriented toward some sense of the good life is to pursue some vision of how the world ought to be.

To be human is to be animated and oriented by some vision of the good life, some picture of what we think counts as 'flourishing.' And we want that. We crave it. We desire it. That is why our most fundamental mode of orientation to the world is love. We are oriented by our longings, directed by our desires. We adopt ways of life that are indexed to such visions of the good life, not usually because we 'think through' our options but rather because some picture captures our imagination" (p.11).

There is indeed a picture of the good life that I imagine and I think of it constantly. I desire it so much. When I feel like I am not on my way to that vision, I am utterly restless. Horribly restless.

"Such a telos works on us, not by convincing the intellect, but by allure" (p.12).

"You are what you love because you live toward what you want."

As the book unfolds, Smith will go on to say that because humans are this way, discipleship and spiritual formation are primarily a reorientation and curation of our loves and desires.

Personal note:

• As I have tried to navigate this last 6 months of my life in FCA Talent Advancement in Texas, this book has been significant. I have often felt in my heart that this position in not where I want to be. I keep saying, "This is not how I envision my life and ministry". It is nearly impossible for me to fully articulate this. It is so intensely visceral and cardiac, if I could say it that way. I cannot explain how much I love discipleship ministry, especially on campus. It is my telos, my vision, my longing, my love. I feel I cannot rest until I am there, or I at least until I feel like I am on my way.

An Erotic Compass: Love Is a Habit

"In this alternative model of the human person, the center of gravity of our identity is located in the heart - the visceral region of our longings and desires, the gut-level region of kardia (Greek for heart). It is our desires that orient and direct us toward some ultimate telos we take to be the good life, the version of the kingdom we live toward. To be human is to be a lover and to love something ultimate" (p.14-15).

Smith proposes that "love is a habit". This unfolds by first understanding that "such love is a kind of subconscious desire that operates without our thinking about it... love as our most fundamental orientation to the world - is less a conscious choice and more like a baseline inclination, a default orientation that generates the choices we make" (p.15-16).

Smith refers to passages from Colossians 3 and Romans 13 to illustrate how the attributes of Christlike character are virtues. A simple definition of virtue is "behavior showing high moral standards". But the identification of the attributes of Christlike character as virtues is critical and central to Smith's premise. "[N]otice how Paul describes all of these Christlike character traits: they are virtues. While we have a vague sense that virtue is an ethical category, we don't have a classical understanding of the concept anymore, and so we miss some of the force of what Paul is saying here. So let me briefly unpack the basics of virtue so we can then consider the implications of Paul's exhortation with respect to love" (p.16). A key to understanding virtue is understanding that they are "internal dispositions to the good - they are character traits that become woven into who you are so that you are the kind of person who is inclined to be compassionate, forgiving, and so forth" (p.16). A virtue is an intricate part of your character, woven into who you are. This is also true of vices, or bad moral habits. "You don't have to think about it; it's who you are" (p.17).

"A key question then: How do I acquire such virtues? I can't just think my way into virtue" (p.17) (another proponent for anti-thinking-thingism). "Education in virtue is a kind of formation, a retraining of our dispositions... Learning here isn't just information acquisition; it's more like inscribing something into the very fiber of your being" (p.18). This is a critical point to understanding Smith's discipleship and spiritual formation philosophy.

So what is the process of virtue acquisition? Smith describes two aspects:

1. Imitation. "[W]e learn to be virtuous by imitating exemplars" (p.18). The New Testament places a high emphasis on this. For example, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:1, "Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ". "[W]e learn to 'put on' the virtues by imitating those who model the Christlike life. This is part of the formative power of our teachers who model the Christian life for us" (p.18).

2. Practice. "Such moral, kingdom-reflecting dispositions are inscribed into your character through rhythms and routines and rituals, enacted over and over again, that implant in you a disposition to an end (telos) that becomes a character trait - a sort of learned, second-nature default orientation that you tend toward 'without thinking about it'... Virtues are learned and acquired, through imitation and practice" (p.19).

"Now why is all of this important for our project of sketching an alternative model of the human person? Because if you are what you love and if love is a virtue, then love is a habit. This means that our most fundamental orientation to the world - the longings and desires that orient us toward some version of the good life - is shaped and configured by imitation and practice. This has important implications for how we approach Christian formation and discipleship" (p.19).

Calibrating the Heart: Love Takes Practice

"In short, if you are what you love, and love is a habit, then discipleship is a re-habituation of your loves" (p.19).

"How does my love get aimed and directed?" Smith asks. "God has created us for Himself and our hearts are designed to find their end in Him, yet many spend their days restlessly craving rival gods, frenetically pursuing rival kingdoms. The subconscious longings of our hearts are aimed and directed elsewhere; our orientation is askew; our erotic compass malfunctions, giving us false bearings" (p.20). Our sin and idolatry is misdirected love.

Smith tells a story of a sea captain with a slightly misoriented compass. His ship ends up crashing into another ship and killing over 40 sailors. It is a story of "the tragic consequences of misorientation" (p.20).

"The reminder for us is this: if the heart is like a compass, an erotic homing device, then we need to (regularly) calibrate our hearts, tuning them to be directed to the Creator, our magnetic north" (p.20). We must learn to love the right thing; learn to set our hearts in the right direction. I'm going to quote this next section at length because it's a central thesis:

"Now here's the crucial insight for Christian formation and discipleship: not only is this learning-by-practice the way our hearts are correctly calibrated, but it is also the way our loves and longings are misdirected and miscalibrated - not because our intellect has been hijacked by bad ideas but because our desires have been captivated by rival visions of flourishing. And that happens through practices, not propaganda. Our desires are caught more than they are taught. All kinds of cultural rhythms and routines are, in fact, rituals that function as pedagogies of desire precisely because they tacitly and covertly train us to love a certain version of the kingdom, teach us to long for some rendition of the good life. These aren't just things we do; they do something to us.

This means that Spirit-led formation of our loves is a recalibration of the heart, a reorientation of our loves by unlearning all the tacit bearings we've absorbed from other cultural practices. We need to recognize how such rituals can be love-shaping practices that form and deform our desires - and then be intentional about countermeasures" (p.21-22).

Personal note:

• I came across this article recently. It claims that humans are innately narrative creatures. Even in "objective science" we see and need narrative to make sense of things. We take in information and process it in a direction, like an unfolding story. Our conclusions, judgment, decision-making and worldview are inseparable from the narrative nature of humans. Intellect, ideas, and thinking only make sense when they are attached to a narrative. According to Smith, that narrative is ultimately oriented toward our vision of flourishing (telos), which is the magnetic north of our heart.

You Are What You Worship

"If you are what you love, and your ultimate loves are formed and aimed by your immersion in practices and cultural rituals, then such practices fundamentally shape who you are. At stake here is your very identity, your fundamental allegiances, your core convictions and passions that center both your self-understanding and your way of life. In other words, this contest of cultural practices is a competition for your heart" (p.22).

Here Smith will introduce the concept of liturgy, and explore its meaning and implications. "In order to appreciate the spiritual significance of such cultural practices, let's call these sorts of formative, love-shaping rituals 'liturgies.' It's a bit of an old, churchy word, but I want to both revive and expand it because it crystallizes a final aspect of this model of the human person: to say 'you are what you love' is synonymous with saying 'you are what you worship'" (p.22-23).

Love... worship... idolatry... These concepts all aim at the same thing. They all diagnose and describe the human heart. "We can't not worship because we can't not love something as ultimate" (p.23). Our idolatry is "the fruit of disordered wants" (p.23). We face rival cultural liturgies everywhere and they are competing for our desires. They are "rival modes of worship" (p.23).

What implications does this have for discipleship and spiritual formation, and what does it mean to worship well? "A more holistic response is to intentionally recalibrate the unconscious, to worship well, to immerse ourselves in liturgies that are indexed to the kingdom of God precisely so that even our unconscious desires and longings - the affective, under-the-hood ways we intend the world - are indexed to God and what God wants for His world... The practices of Christian worship train our love - they are practice for the coming kingdom, habituating us as citizens of the kingdom of God."

"Christian worship, we should recognize, is essentially a counter-formation to those rival liturgies we are often immersed in, cultural practices that covertly capture our loves and longings, miscalibrating them, orienting us to rival versions of the good life. This is why worship is at the heart of discipleship... The orientation of the heart happens from the bottom up, through the formation of our habits of desire. Learning to love (God) takes practice" (p.24-25).

Moving Pictures: Two Cinematic Explorations of Desire

"Your deepest desire is the one manifested by your daily life and habits." - Geoff Dyer, Zona

Smith reflects on a scene from a movie called Stalker. There is a scene in the film where the characters are lead to a room where they will be shown exactly what they want. "The Room reveals all: what you get is not what you think you wish for but what you most deeply wish for." The characters hesitate. "What if they don't want what they think?" (p.29).

"Many of us can identify. If I ask you, a Christian, to tell me what you really want, what you most deeply long for, what you ultimately love - well, of course you know the right answer. You know what you ought to say. And what you state could be entirely genuine and authentic, a true expression of your intellectual conviction. But would you want to step into the Room? Are you confident that what you think you love aligns with your innermost longings?" (p.29).

The quote from Dyer above is particularly relevant. Smith says, "This is because our action - our doing - bubbles up from our loves, which, as we've observed, are habits we've acquired through the practices we're immersed in. That means the formation of my loves and desires can be happening 'under the hood' of consciousness. I might be learning to love a telos that I'm not even aware of and that nonetheless governs by life in unconscious ways" (p.29).

Confession is a practice of Christian worship that addresses the reality that there is often a gap between what we should love and what we actually love. Consider this confession from the Book of Common Prayer:

"Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts."

"The practices of Christian worship are a tangible, practices, re-formative way to address this tension and gap" (p.30).

Under the Radar: Our Unconscious Loves

[This is one of my favorite sections in the whole book, and is central to Smith's argument.]

"[H]ow we think about discipleship depends on how we understand the nature of the human person" (p.33).

"We have seen that love is a habit. This means that our love is like second nature: it directs and propels us, often under the radar of conscious awareness, like breathing and blinking. It also means that our loves acquire direction and orientation because we are immersed over time in practices and rituals - what we've called 'liturgies' - that affectively and viscerally train our desires" (p.32).

Humans are complex and multi-faceted. Therefore, the formation and development of a person is complex and multi-faceted. Any attempt to define human development and formation that does not address this complexity or is too reductionistic will fall short. "The problem is, this (thinking-thing-ism) is a very stunted view of human persons that generates a simplistic understanding of action and a reductionistic approach to discipleship... In short, it underestimates the power of habit. The truth is that, for the most part, we make our way in the world by means of under-the-radar intuition and attunement (how reactive a person is to another's emotional needs and moods), a kind of know-how that we carry in our bones" (p.33).

How should we understand the unconscious? Smith considers how "ancient wisdom about spiritual disciplines intersects with contemporary psychological insight into consciousness" (p.33). Modern psychologists describe the "adaptive unconscious". "Over the past twenty years psychology has come to appreciate the overwhelming influence of 'nonconscious' or 'automatic' operations that shape our behavior - confirming, in many ways, the ancient wisdom of philosophers like Aristotle and Aquinas" (p.33-34).

"Psychologists refer to these acquired, unconscious habits as 'automaticities,' for the same reason Aristotle called them 'second nature': because these are ways that we move in the world without thinking about it. The language of automaticity isn't meant to reduce us to machines or robots; it's meant to describe how we acquire ways of navigating the world that become built in, so to speak" (p.35).

Over time, we are a product of our habits. Or what could also be understood as the rituals and liturgies of our lives. Not only are we doing them, but they are doing something to us. Character development and virtue acquisition are operations that are delegated and ingrained in the unconscious through habit and practice.

"'The person with good character has taught herself, or been taught by those around her, to see situations in the right way. When she sees something in the right way, she's rigged the game. She's triggered a whole network of unconscious judgments and responses in her mind, biasing her to act in a certain manner'" (David Brooks, The Social Animal). It is in this sense that 'character is destiny': your character is the web of dispositions you've acquired (virtues and vices) that work as automaticities, disposing you to act in certain ways. Your love or desire - aimed at a vision of the good life that shapes how you see the world while also moving and motivating you - is operative on a largely nonconscious level. Your love is a kind of automaticity. That's why we need to be aware of how it is acquired" (p.36).

We can acquire automaticities intentionally through "frequent and consistent pairing", or unintentionally "if we regularly repeat routines and rituals that we fail to recognize as formative 'practices'" (p.37).

"Now consider the implications of this for what you love. If you think of love-shaping practices as 'liturgies,' this means you could be worshiping other gods without even knowing it. That's because such cultural liturgies are not just one-off events that you unwittingly do; more significantly, they are formative practices that do something to you, unconsciously but effectively tuning your heart so the songs of Babylon rather that the songs of Zion" (p.37, emphasis added).

"in short, we unconsciously learn to love rival kingdoms because we don't realize we're participating in rival liturgies. This partly stems from failing to appreciate the dynamics of the whole person..." (p.37).

"This is the shortcoming of thinking-thingist approaches to Christian discipleship. This reductionistic view of the human person is then mirrored by a failure to see cultural practices as liturgies - as habit-forming, love-shaping rituals that get a hold of our hearts and aim our loves... our loves and imaginations are conscripted by all sorts of liturgies that are loaded with a vision of the good life. To be immersed in those 'secular' liturgies is to be habituated to long for what they promise" (p.38).

What is habituating me?

Practicing Apocalypse: Recognizing Rival Liturgies

"Christian discipleship that is going to be intentional and formative needs to be attentive to all the rival formations we are immersed in" (p.38).

To this, Smith says, there are two key aspects:

• We must be aware of the whole person. "We need to recognize the power and significance of the preintellectual aspects of who we are... the importance of the adaptive unconscious that governs our action" (p.38).

• We must see cultural practices as liturgies, and wake up to their formative/deformative power. We must see the power that cultural institutions and rituals have to do something to us.

Scripture has a way of doing this in what we understand as apocalyptic literature. "The point of apocalyptic literature is not prediction but unmasking - unveiling the realities around us for what they really are" (p.39). "What we need...is a kind of contemporary apocalyptic - a language and genre that sees through the spin and unveils the religious (and idolatrous) character of the contemporary institutions that constitute our own milieu (a persons social environment)" (p.40).

"This means we need to read the practices that surround us. We have to learn to exegete the rituals we're immersed in. We need to become anthropologists who try, in some way, to see our familiar surroundings with apocalyptic eyes so we can recognize the liturgical power of cultural rituals we take for granted as just 'things we do'. Pastors need to be ethnographers of the everyday, helping parishioners see their own environment as one that is formative, and all too often deformative" (p.40, emphasis added).

Smith then launches into "a case study of sorts" - the shopping mall. "The mall doesn't care what you think, but it is very much interested in what you love" (p.41).

"The point of all this is to try to appreciate how a worldview (or 'social imaginary' according to philosopher Charles Taylor) is 'carried' in everyday rituals and practices... I'm covertly conscripted into a way of life because I have been formed by cultural practices that are nothing less than secular liturgies. My loves have been automated by rituals I didn't even realize were liturgies. These tangible, visceral, repeated practices carry a story about human flourishing that we learn in unconscious ways. These practices are loaded with their own teleological orientation toward a particular vision of the good life, a rival version of the kingdom, and by our immersion in them we are - albeit unwittingly - being taught what and how to love" (p.45-46).

How to Read Secular Liturgies: An Exegesis of the Consumer Gospel

"'Liturgy,' as I'm using the word, is a shorthand term for those rituals that are loaded with an ultimate Story about who we are and what we're for... But when such liturgies are disordered, aimed at rival kingdoms, they are pointing us away from our magnetic north in Christ... Our loves and longings are steered wrong, not because we've been hoodwinked by bad ideas, but because we've been immersed in de-formative liturgies and not realized it. As a result, we absorb a very different Story about the telos of being human and the norms of flourishing. We start to live toward a rival understanding of the good life" (p.46-47).

Smith further diagnoses, or exegetes, the liturgy of the mall and the corresponding telos or "good life" that it is oriented towards. "By our immersion in this liturgy of consumption, we are being trained to both overvalue and undervalue things: we're being trained to invest them with a meaning and significance as objects of love and desire in which we place disproportionate hopes (Augustine would say we are hoping to enjoy them when we should only be using them) while at the same time treating them (as well as the labor and raw materials that go into them) as easily discarded" (p.52).

Becoming aware of the liturgies all around us and the formative effect they have should cause us to take a liturgical audit of our lives...

Take a Liturgical Audit of Your Life

"[T]he tenets of a consumer gospel are caught rather than taught... The same is true for other cultural liturgies... This is why pastors need to be ethnographers, helping their congregation name and 'exegete' their local liturgies" (p.54).

The pastor must take care to shepherd his sheep in a way that knows the threats to the flock, and guards them against harm. The pastor must have a particular strength against the influence of the world. He must be a man so deeply influenced by the word of God, that he is fortified against contradictory messages.

"To recognize this is to appreciate something about the mechanics of temptation... temptation isn't just about bad ideas or wrong decisions; it's often a factor of de-formation and wrongly ordered habits. In other words, our sins aren't just discrete, wrong actions and bad decisions; they reflect vices. And overcoming them requires more than just knowledge; it requires rehabituation, a re-formation of our loves" (p.54).

Fighting sin and temptation requires that I remodel my habits, not just think differently. This is because my habits teach me. My habits cause me to think in certain ways. My habits cause me to love certain things. This may be happening unconsciously. It may be happening in ways that I don't realize. Smith issues a challenge, do a careful and diligent audit of your habits, routines and rituals and see the ways in which they may be forming you, for better or for worse.

"[R]ealize that what you want has probably been inscribed in the habits you've learned..."

Hungry Hearts and Acquired Tastes: Rehabituating Our Hungers

"Our hearts, we've said are like existential compasses and embodied homing beacons: our loves are pulled magnetically to some north toward which our hearts have been calibrated. Our actions and behavior - indeed, a whole way of life - are pulled out of us by this attraction to some vision of the good life. Liturgies, then, are calibration technologies. They train our loves by aiming them toward a certain telos. But not all liturgies are created equal: some miscalibrate our hearts, pointing us off course toward pseudo or rival norths. But fixing such disoriented heart-compasses requires recalibration. If our loves can be disordered by secular liturgies, it's also true that our loves need to be reordered (recalibrated) by counterliturgies - embodied, communal practices that are 'loaded' with the gospel and indexed to God and His kingdom" (p.57-58).

Hunger is a creaturely quality that extends far deeper than the appetite for food. "Scripture suggests this hunger metaphor... picturing our deepest longings as a kind of hunger or craving or thirst" (p.58).

"But over the past generation we have learned more and more about the nature of our hungers and how incredibly malleable they are... our hungers are learned" (p.58).

Smith describes how our food habits are shaped by the surrounding culture and food industry. "[E]ating is one of those human activities that is overwhelmingly governed by the power of habit" (p.59). Engineered foods that contain things like high-fructose corn syrup create "a vicious cycle of hunger that is the product of 'engineered' tastes" (p.59). Melissa Hartwig would affirm this in her book "It Starts With Food". The direction and pattern of our physical appetites and cravings are learned, more than we realize. So it is with our spiritual appetites and cravings. "The same is true for our deepest existential hungers, our loves: we might not realize the ways we're being covertly trained to hunger and thirst for idols that can never satisfy" (p.59).

"You can't just think your way to new hungers... Such rehabituation was going to require a whole new set of practices. And while... arguments could be intellectual catalysts... unlearning those habits would require counter-formative practices, different rhythms and routines that would retrain my hunger" (p.61).

"The way my hungers have been reformed might be a kind of allegory for our spiritual reformation, I think..." (p.61-63):

• A new covenantal community

• New disciplines, practices, and regimens.

• Leading to new cravings.

"I hope the upshot of this analogy is fairly obvious. If love is both habit and hunger, then our tastes and cravings for what's ultimate will be changed in the same way. Reflection is important - indeed, I hope this book can serve as a catalyst for your thinking about the liturgical formation (and deformation) of your loves. But reflection should propel us into new practices that will reform our hungers by inscribing new habits..."

"The church - the body of Christ - is the place where God invites us to renew our loves, reorient our desires, and retrain our appetites."

"Our sanctification - the process of becoming holy and Christlike - is more like a Weight Watchers program than listening to a book on tape. If sanctification is tantamount to closing the gap between that I know and what I do... it means changing what I want. And that requires submitting ourselves to disciplines and regimens that reach down into our deepest habits. The Spirit of God meets us in that space - in that gap - not with lightning bolts of magic but with the concrete practices of the body of Christ that conscript our bodily habits. If we think of sanctification as learning to 'put on' or 'clothe' ourselves with Christ (Rom.13:14; Col.3:14), this is intimately bound up with becoming incorporated (see below) into His body, the corpus (collection, body, or whole) Christi.

Discipleship is a kind of immigration, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God's beloved Son (Col.1:13). In Christ we are given a heavenly passport; in His body we learn how to live like 'locals' of His kingdom. Such an immigration to a new kingdom isn't just a matter of being teleported into a different realm; we need to be acclimated to a new way of life, learn a new language, acquire new habits - and unlearn the habits of that rival dominion. Christian worship is our enculturation as citizens of heaven, subjects of kingdom come (Phil.3:20)" (p.65-66).

Habituations of the Spirit

How are we formed and reformed? God provides "ordinary" means of His transforming grace. "If you are a creature of habit whose loves have been deformed by disordered secular liturgies, then the best gift God could give you is Spirit-infused practices that will reform and retrain your loves... [This] might be a counterintuitive thesis in our 'millennial' moment: that the most potent, charged, transformative site of the Spirit's work is found in the most unlikely of places - the church!" (p.68).

This is essential. Discipleship happens in the incorporation of the life of the church. Smith's argument or thesis "is the very opposite of novel; it's ancient:

the church's worship is the heart of discipleship.

"...Christian formation is a life-encompassing, Monday through Saturday, week in and week out project; but it radiates from, and is nourished by, the worship life of the congregation gathered around Word and Table. There is no sanctification without the church, not because some building holds a superstitious magic, but rather because the church is the very body of Christ, animated by the Spirit of God and composed of Spirited practices" (p.68).

"The life of Christian faith is the practice of many practices." - Craig Dykstra

"[God] meets us where we are, as creatures of habit who are shaped by practices, and invites us into a community of practice that is the very body of His Son. Liturgy is the way we learn to 'put on' Christ (Col.3:12-16)" (p.69).

Whose Worship? Who's Acting?

What we often think of when we think of worship in the church is reduced to music. "So if we are going to properly understand how and why worship is the heart of discipleship, we need to stretch, expand, and, frankly, correct our understanding of worship" (p.69).

Smith encourages us to embrace liturgy. But don't get confused about what it is. It's not the stiff and heartless routine that you might think of. "What's interesting is that the Protestant Reformers had exactly those kinds of reservations about medieval Roman Catholic worship. But their response, rather than being anti-liturgical, was to be properly liturgical" (p.69).

Worship is material and natural, but it is not only material and natural. It is not mere human effort. "Christian worship is nothing less than an invitation to participate in the life of the Triune God... the Spirit meets, nourishes, transforms, and empowers us just through and in such material practices. The church's worship is a uniquely intense site of the Spirit's transformative presence" (p.70).

Who is the acting agent in worship? "[I]t is an emphasis on action, and particularly God's action in worship, that Wolterstorff distills as the 'genius' of Reformed and Protestant worship... 'the Reformers saw the liturgy as God's action and our faithful reception of that action'" (p.71).

"So worship is a site of God's action, not just God's presence. The emphasis - in accordance with Calvin's theology of grace - is on the primacy of God's gracious initiation. God is the first and primary actor in worship... this emphasis on God's action in worship includes a picture of graced interaction between God and His people" (p.71).

"Let's return from the Reformation to our contemporary context: Might these historical insights about liturgical renewal be relevant today? Do we need another reformation of our worship? Has contemporary evangelical worship ended up - ironically - mimicking the scripted naturalism and spectatorish passivity that occasioned the Protestant Reformation?" Contemporary worship has become mostly man-centered.

"I simply invite us to recognize that the very form of our songs, in their grammatical structure, can implicitly say - and hence teach us - something about who we think is active in worship. And when our songs attribute the action of worship to us, then worship is understood as fundamentally an expression of human will, a Pelagian endeavor of self-assertion. If that's how we tacitly think of worship, then the claim that worship is the heart of discipleship will seem odd.

But if we recover a sense of the primacy of God's action in worship - that worship is a site of gracious, divine initiative - then we might better understand how and why worship is the center of discipleship. We should approach the sanctuary with a different set of expectations - that we will be met and remade by a living, active Lord" (p.74).

From Expression to Formation

"[C]ome meet Jesus in the sanctified experience of a coffee shop; come hear the gospel in a place that should feel familiar since we've modeled it after the mall" (p.76).

The slope of this contemporary paradigm of worship is slippery. If worship is thought of a primarily a bottom-up expression where we are the primary agents, then worship is basically an "expressive endeavor" (p.74). "When we think of worship in this way, then we also assume that the most important characteristic of our worship is that it should be sincere... But this creates an interesting challenge because sincerity and authenticity tend to generate a penchant for novelty... The concrete shape and practices of Christian worship... can and should be discarded in order to communicate the gospel 'message' in ways that are contemporary, attractive, and relevant. So we remake the church in order to 'speak to' contemporary culture... We distill 'Jesus' out of the inherited, ancient forms of historic worship (which we'll discard as 'traditional') in order to present Jesus in forms that are both fresh and familiar" (p.74-76). Therefore we end up with the sanctified coffee shop experience.

I simply must capture this next section at length because I find it so profound:

The problem, of course, is that these "forms" are not just neutral containers or discardable conduits for a message. As we've seen already, what are embraced as merely fresh forms are, in fact, practices that are already oriented to a certain telos, a tacit vision of the good life. Indeed, I've tried to show that these cultural practices are liturgies in their own right precisely because they are oriented to a telos and are bent on shaping my loves and longings. The forms themselves are pedagogies of desire that teach us to construe and relate to the world in a loaded way. So when we distill the gospel message and embed it in the form of the mall, while we might think we are finding a fresh way for people to encounter Christ, in fact the very form of the practice is already loaded with a way of construing the world. The liturgy of the mall is a heart-level education in consumerism that construes everything as a commodity available to make me happy. When I encounter "Jesus" in such a liturgy, rather than encountering the living Lord of history, I am implicitly being taught that Jesus is one more commodity available to make me happy. And while I might eagerly want to add him to my shelf of stuff, we shouldn't confuse this appropriation with discipleship (p.76).

It makes sense then that the the bottom-up "Expressivist" paradigm of worship views traditional or historic ritual as lifeless, legalistic, heartless "religion". "But that is to look at liturgical forms of worship from an expressivist paradigm they don't share. Expressivists assume theirs is the only way to understand worship, and so they impose their expressivism on historic Christian worship and see only insincerity and rote repetition. But the irony is that this stems from the fact that the worship-as-expression paradigm makes us the primary actors in worship. In other words, expressivism breeds its own kind of bottom-up valoraization of human striving that slides closer to works righteousness" (p.77).

The practices of historic Christian worship "are rooted in a fundamentally different understanding of what worship is, a fundamentally different paradigm of the primary agent of Christian worship. Instead of the bottom-up emphasis on worship as our expression of devotion and praise, historic Christian worship is rooted in the conviction that God is the primary actor or agent in the worship encounter" (p.77).

"Worship isn't just something we do; it is where God does something to us. Worship is the heart of discipleship because it is the gymnasium in which God retrains our hearts" (p.77).

Form Matters

"To the extent that we recover a biblical sense of the primacy of God's action in worship, we will also recover and appreciation for why the form of worship matters" (p.77).

Important words and concepts to grasp as Smith uses them are liturgical formalism and ritualism. How do you respond to these concepts? It reveals your worship paradigm.

"When we realize that worship is also about formation, we will begin to appreciate why form matters..."

"The practices we submit ourselves to in Christian worship are God's way of re-habituating our loves toward the kingdom, so we need to be intentional about the Story that is carried in those practices" (p.78).

What does Smith mean by form?

1. The overall narrative arc of a service of Christian worship.

2. The concrete, received practices that constitute elements of that enacted narrative.

Smith will expand on these later, but the important general point he is making here is: "Worship is not primarily a venue for innovative creativity but a place for discerning reception and faithful repetition. That doesn't mean there's no room for faithful innovation in worship; it just means that creativity and novelty in worship are not goods in and of themselves. We inherit a form of worship that should be received as a gift" (p.78). And Smith is not simply talking about instrumentation and musical style.

"Christian worship is the heart of discipleship just to the extent that it is a repertoire of practices shaped by the biblical story. Only worship that is oriented by the biblical story and suffused with the Spirit will be a counter-formative practice that can undo the habituations of rival, secular liturgies" (p.78-79).

Beware of contemporary forms of worship "whose telos is not God's vision of shalom but consumerism's vision of happiness via consumption and disposal" (p.79).

Understanding the Gospel with Your Gut

"Worship is the heart of discipleship if and only if worship is a repertoire of Spirit-endued practices that grab hold of your gut, recalibrate your kardia, and capture your imagination. Because we are liturgical animals, we need to recognize the rival liturgies that vie for our hearts and then commit ourselves to the rightly ordered liturgy of Christian worship as a recalibration and rehabituation project. And if you are someone responsible for leading the people of God in worship, the implications are further ramped up: every pastor is a curate and every elder a curator, responsible for the care of souls and responsible to curate hearts by planning and leading worship that undertakes this formative task" (p.83).

Smith dives deeper into understanding Christian worship as formative and embodied. "Christian liturgies can't just target the intellect: they also work on the body, conscripting our desires through the senses. Christian worship that will be counterformative needs to be embodied, tangible, and visceral. The way to the heart is through the body. That's why counterformative Christian worship doesn't just dispense information; rather, it is a Christ-centered imagination station where we regularly undergo a ritual cleansing of the symbolic universes we absorb elsewhere. Christian worship doesn't just teach us how to think; it teaches us how to love, and it does so by inviting us into the biblical story and implanting that story in our bones" (p.85).

"In this chapter we'll consider the plot and practices of historic Christian worship as gifts of the tradition handed down to us for our (re)formation" (p.86).

Worship Character-izes Us

"Every liturgy, we've said, is oriented toward a telos - an implicit vision of flourishing that is loaded into its rituals. Those formed by such liturgies then become the kind of people who pursue and desire that end" (p.86). God has revealed Himself and the trajectory of all creation in a story. "History is His-story" as it's been said. This story has an ultimate end, or telos. Each of us is a character in the story, and a story within the story. As God is renewing and restoring His image-bearing purpose in the macro-narrative of history, He is also renewing and restoring His image-bearing purpose in the micro-narrative of my own life, my own being.

Smith says, "Worship character-izes us" meaning two things: the practices of Christian worship make me a character in the story, and the practices of Christian worship make my character (virtue) according to the story. "The goal of Christian worship is a renewal of the mandate in creation: to be (re)made in God's image and then sent as His image bearers to and for the world... We are called to be characters in this story, to play the role of God's image bearers who care for and cultivate God's creation, to the praise of His glory. To learn this role is to become what we were made to be... To assume this role is to find our vocation" (p.88).

"If our loves are liturgically formed - if learning to love takes practice - then we need to be sure that the practices of Christian worship reflect the plot of the gospel, that the lineaments of Christian worship rehearse the story line of Scripture. Such an understanding of Christian worship is precisely what we find in the ancient heritage of the church" (p.90).

Worship Restor(i)es Us

"Formative Christian worship paints a picture of the beauty of the Lord... in a way that captures our imagination. If we act toward what we long for, and if we long for what has captured our imagination, then re-formative Christian worship need to capture our imagination..."

"That means Christian worship needs to meet us as aesthetic creatures who are moved more that we are convinced" (p.91).

"Christian worship should tell a story" that captures our imagination by engaging every facet of our being and sinks deep down into who we are as we understand the grand narrative in which we are characters; a story with a specific trajectory.

"Worship that restores our loves will be worship that restro(i)es our imagination. Historic Christian worship has a narrative arc that rehearses the story of redemption in the very form of worship - enacting the 'true story of the whole world'. And it does so in a way that speaks in the language of the imagination, the part of us that understands in story. Intentional, historical liturgy restores our imagination because it sanctifies our perception - it implants the biblical story so deeply into our preconscious that the gospel becomes the 'background' against and through which we perceive the world" (p.94).

The "life of the church" is set in an unfolding story of which God is the Author. It is the story of the universe according to its Creator. The story is ongoing and it is moving decidedly toward a specified end, a telos. I understand Smith to be saying that Christian worship - the life of the church - characterizes us (makes us characters) and re-story-s us. Which is critical in discipleship as other narratives of the world compete for our hearts.

Plotlines: The Narrative Arc of Christian Worship

"Across an array of traditions... historic Christian worship reflects a basic plot or narrative arc that centers on God's gracious reconciliation of all things to Himself" (p.95).

Smith suggests four main "chapters" of this plotline:

• Gathering - God's people are drawn together through a call to worship, confession, forgiveness, and reconciled fellowship with God and one another.

• Listening - "We listen as we hear God's Word proclaimed, another opportunity for us to make the biblical story our story, to see ourselves as characters in the drama of redemption" (p.97-98).

• Communing - Coming to the Lord's table and partaking of the body and blood of Christ we declare our oneness with Him and with each other.

• Sending - "The sending at the end of the worship service is a replay of the original commissioning of humanity as God's image bearers because in Christ - and in the practices of Christian worship - we can finally be the humans we were made to be" (p.98). We are sent out to be renewed image bearers in the world.

"[O]nce you see the biblical narrative that is embedded and carried in the practice, you should begin to see how and why worship is the heart of discipleship. Worship is the sacramental center of God's transforming grace. You might think of worship as the repair station for our erotic compasses... You know the sort of person you want to be and know that immersing yourself in this Story is how the Spirit is going to change your habits" (p.99).

Interlude: Some Tough Questions

What should you do if you find yourself in a worshiping community (a local church) that doesn't practice these things? Smith provides some suggestions and then defends his case for why this is of critical importance to the future of the Christian faith.

"Now, what if your congregation's worship doesn't look like this?"

1. Look more closely. The plot-line of Christian worship can be detected even when it's not obvious. Do you get the sense that it is the aim of the leadership of the church? This has been the question at the heart of my own examination.

2. Try to be part of a solution. What can you do to start a constructive conversation about this concept in your local church?

3. If all else fails, consider worshiping somewhere else. Smith will say that it's that important. There is not a perfect church anywhere...

"But because I do believe that worship is the heart of discipleship - and hence that the church is at the heart of the Christian life - I also believe that for the sake of discipleship it is crucial to immerse oneself in a community of practice that exhibits the reformative potential we've been describing. Your heart is at stake. Indeed, in many ways I think the future of orthodox, faithful, robust Christianity hinges on the renewal of worship" (p.100-101).

"How did we get here?" Smith says. Meaning, how did we lose these practices over time as modern Christianity developed? Smith introduces a concept coined by Charles Taylor called "excarnation".

He claims, "[O]ne of the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation, Taylor argues, was a disenchantment of the world. Critical of the ways such an enchanted, sacramental understanding of the world had lapsed into sheer superstition, the later Reformers emphasized the simple hearing of the Word, the message of the gospel, and the arid simplicity of Christian worship. The result was a process of ex-carnation - of disembodying the Christian faith, turning it into a 'heady' affair that could be boiled down to a message and grasped with the mind. To use a phrase that we considered above, this was Christianity reduced to something for brains-on-a-stick" (p.101).

[Page 101 to 103 might be the most important plea of Smith's entire argument in the book.]

"...What Christian communities need to cultivate in our 'secular age' is faithful patience, even receiving a secular age as a gift through which to renew and cultivate an incarnational, embodied, robustly orthodox Christianity that alone will look like a genuine alternative to 'the spiritual'" (p.102-103).

The Gift of Confession (and a diagnosis of the Megachurch)

Smith continues to build out his argument with a critical look at the movement of modern Evangelicalism toward the megachurch/seeker-friendly concept and specifically the loss of corporate confession.

"In the 1980s, North American evangelicalism experienced an almost revolutionary innovation: what later became known as the megachurch. What defined this new dialect of evangelical Christianity wasn't really size but strategy. The philosophy of ministry and evangelicalism behind the megachurch movement was often described as 'seeker sensitive'" (p.103).

What's at stake in this shift?

"[I]n order for the church to be that sort of place it was going to have to feel less, well, churchy. If it was going to be sensitive to seekers, the church would have to remove those aspects of its practice and tradition that were alleged to be obstacles to the 'unchurched'" (p.103). The church begins to orient itself around what it assumes people want. It starts to look like the mall.

Smith focuses on one aspect of traditional Christian worship that is lost in the seeker-sensitive movement: Corporate confession of sin...

The Poetics of Confession

"I have emphasized that Christian worship rehabituates our loves because it embeds us in - and embeds in us - a different orienting Story, the story of God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" (p.106).

How does this Story work on us in the worship experience? "Story isn't just the what of Christian worship; it is also the how" (p.106). It is not only that worship tells a story in its content, it is that worship is most like a story in its form. "If God meets us as liturgical animals who are creatures of habit, He also meets us as imaginative animals who are moved and affected by the aesthetic... Our imaginations are captured poetically, not didactically. We're hooked by stories, not bullet points" (p.107).

Smith continues to focus on the element of confession to build out his case.

"To conform to the image of the Son is to have so absorbed the gospel as a 'kinesthetic sense,' a know-how you now carry in your bones, that you do by 'feel' what cannot be done by conscious thought... Formative worship speaks to us - shows us, touches us, shapes us - on this level... But if the sensibility that confession should generate is going to be carried in our bones, then even out confession needs to be more poetic than didactic. In other words, how we confess makes a difference as to whether this practice will truly be formative" (p.108).

Smith shares two examples of corporate confessions. One is "driven by a pure fixation on content, aims to be primarily didactic, and would be very difficult for a congregation to recite together precisely because it has no rhythm or cadence that makes us sing. For this reason it will also be a confession that is quickly forgotten" (p.109).

The other example is a historic prayer of confession that sticks. Why? "You can feel the lilt and rhythm of this, even if it's the first time you've ever read or heard it. Its use of parallel and parataxis, symmetry and series, allusion and alliteration all make it 'work' on us below the radar of consciousness... it is the poetry of this confession that makes it stick" (p.109).

"And you move through your day inhabiting a different Story, with the humility of confession ready on your lips, hungry for the mercy of God, longing to embody it for your neighbor" (p.110).

"[W]e learn how to love at home" (p.113). "This chapter is an invitation to take a kind of liturgical audit of our households, recognizing their power to calibrate our hearts and acknowledge that our domestic rituals might need to be recalibrated as a result of our auditing work" (p.114).

The opening section of this chapter is worth quoting at length, but I will attempt to summarize.

The "gathered, congregational worship is the heart of discipleship, but this doesn't mean that communal worship is the entirety of discipleship. While communal worship calibrates the heart in necessary, fundamental ways, we need to take the opportunity to cultivate kingdom-oriented liturgies throughout the week... There are all kinds of other spaces where we can and should be intentional about the liturgies that govern our rhythms, and we should see this as an opportunity to extend the formative practices of worship into other sectors of our life..."

"Recognizing worship as the heart of discipleship doesn't mean sequestering discipleship to Sunday; it means expanding worship to become a way of life" (p.113).

The call here is to be intentional about the liturgies of the household, and their relationship to the greater household of God (the Church).

Liturgical Lessons for Home-Makers

"I have argued that in worship we learn on levels we don't always realize. The practices of Christian worship carry biblical truths that are sometimes more caught than taught; they picture what God desires for us in ways that might be more powerful than explanations. Embedded in the church's worship are important pictures of what flourishing homes and families look like. Making those implicit pictures more explicit can provide wisdom for how we might then liturgically order our home" (p.114).

The Church is the family of families and the household of God. The practices and liturgies of the worshiping community of the church - specifically in this section Smith will discuss baptism and marriage - ought to shape the practices and mini-liturgies of the individual families within it.

I'm not sure where Smith stands on the spectrum between paedo- and credo-baptism. Consider these bigger-picture ideas that Smith articulates as they pertain to the liturgies of the family of God. I'm still trying to determine if I agree entirely with his arguments:

• Baptism is a sacrament in which God is the acting agent. Smith says, "we need to relinquish our tendency to think of baptism 'expressively'... It is the sign that God is a covenant-keeping Lord... This is why, since the time of the early church, households have been baptized... and it is why... believing parents present their children for baptism" (p.114-115).

• "Baptism signals our initiation into a people" (p.115). This family in which believers belong is the only identity that matters. Baptism "makes and signifies a social reality" (p.115). The individual, autonomous family unit is grafted into the corporate, heteronomous family of the Church. "[T]he social role of the family that is configured by baptism is to be a family 'dependent upon a larger social body... In theological terms, family is called to be part of the social adventure we call the church'" (p.117, quoting David McCarthy).

Baptism shapes our "theology of the family" and changes our household liturgies. "Baptism opens the home, liberating it from the burden of impossible self-sufficiency, while also opening it to the 'disruptive friendships' that are the mark of the kingdom of God. For this reason, one of the most important decisions we can make regarding faith formation in our homes is the congregation to which we commit ourselves. Wise faith formation begins in the hub of the church's gathered worship life. So one of the best decisions parents can make for their children's faith journey is to immerse them in a congregation whose liturgical practices enact the Story we've described above" (p.118).

(Marriage)

"A tacit understanding of the family and household is enacted in baptism; it is also in our wedding ceremonies. We learn how to be families in these rituals, even if we're not consciously thinking about it... we need to cultivate our critical, 'apocalyptic' capacities to read with discernment the cultural liturgies of weddings" (p.118).

Smith properly diagnoses the current cultural wedding liturgy, which has become a massive commercial industry. "[W]e spend more time fixated on the spectacular flash of the wedding event than on the long slog of sustaining a marriage" (p.120). You must carefully evaluate your telos of marriage and the corresponding expectations and rituals that reflect it. Smith captures the pervasiveness of the current cultural imaginary with great precision:

"This 'romantic,' just-the-two-of-us view of love and marriage suffuses almost all of our cultural narratives and is enacted in many of our wedding rituals - especially those that imagine themselves as primarily 'expressive'... Isn't a wedding the realization of our romantic dreams? And isn't marriage the idyll of a sort of perpetual wedding/honeymoon?" (p.121).

Contrast that with the liturgy of the "counter-cultural, biblical vision that is carried in an Orthodox wedding rite" (p.121). Smith describes the two-movement rite of a traditional Christian wedding ceremony on p.121-124. "You're not going to learn that in the liturgies of The Bachelorette or in the customized expressivist weddings that revolve around the couple. To the contrary, we need to become aware of how much we have 'learned' about marriage and family from these cultural liturgies and intentionally seek to roll back their influence by immersing ourselves in counterliturgies found in the body of Christ. Embedding our own households and families in the household of God at once decenters our tribe, with its tendency to become an idol, and simultaneously centers us in the only community that can sustain us: the Triune God" (p.124-125).

"So let's think about the liturgies that can frame the places where we eat our daily bread - for in important ways, the formative power of Christian worship is amplified when our daily lives echo and expand those rhythms" (p.126).

Guard Your Hearts

The family, and specifically parents, play a very important formative role. "[W]e are both incubators and defenders of our children's hearts and minds, stewards of their imaginations, responsible for their instruction" (p.126). Our understanding of what it means to be human and how we learn and develop will shape the way we parent. "Every parenting strategy, like every pedagogy, assumes something about the nature of human beings... Having drunk from the Cartesian wells of modernity (love that quote), we tend to treat our children as intellectual receptacles, veritable brains-on-a-stick, and we parent and protect them accordingly" (p.127).

"What does it look like to parent lovers?" Smith asks. "What does it look like to curate a household as a formative space to direct our desires? How can a home be a place to (re)calibrate our hearts?" (p.127).

"Each household and family does well to take an audit of its daily routines, looking at them through a liturgical lens. What Story is carried in those rhythms? What vision of the good life is carried in those rhythms? What vision of the good life is carried in those practices? What sorts of people are made by immersion in these cultural liturgies?" (p.128).

"First and foremost, our households need to be caught up in the wider household of God... biblical worship draws us into the drama of Christ-centered redemption. That liturgical formation 'character-izes' us: it weaves us into the story of God in Christ and thus shapes our character. The formative liturgies of a Christian home depend on the ecclesial capital of the church's worship" (p.128).

"Family worship will be formative to the extent that it taps into our imagination, not just our intellect. To do so, such worship needs to traffic in the aesthetic currency of the imagination" (p.129).

This includes story, poetry, music, symbols, and images. "Such worship will be tactile, tangible, incarnate... Children are ritual animals who absorb the gospel in practices that speak to their imaginations" (p.129).

But the rituals of the home are not meant to create an inward safe-haven. "Instead, we want to be intentional about the formative rhythms of the household so that it is another recalibrating space that forms us and prepares us to be launched into the world to carry out both the cultural mandate and the Great Commission, to bear God's image to and for our neighbors" (p.130).

Building Cathedrals at Home

There is a story of two stonecutters who respond differently when asked what they're doing. One says, "I'm cutting this stone in a perfectly square shape." The other says, "I am building a cathedral."

Both are correct. But the bigger picture of cathedral building is critical in order to give purpose, direction and shape to the quotidian work of stonecutting.

Smith makes this parallel to the rhythms of the home. Each day we participate in "routine" and "mundane" tasks and rhythms, but they still have great significance in building the cathedral of the home and the family. He shares stories from his own family and their habits around the dinner table and gardening. He says of his kids, "They have been apprenticed through rituals that reinforce the importance of community, friendship, and hospitality... The significance of these household liturgies is oriented by the Liturgy of the body of Christ. The table at home is an echo of the Lord's Table; the communion of the saints is given microcosmic expression in the simple discipline of daily dinner together. There is an ongoing dance between the rhythms of gathered worship and the rhythms of our 'sent' lives Monday through Saturday" (p.136).

Smith shares a story describing the small town he grew up in. He knew the town by heart, which is much different than knowing a town by a map. "I learned this town on the ground, from the bottom up... as someone who lived in it, not by looking at it or reflecting on it... Map knowledge is the knowledge of a spectator, not an inhabitant" (p.138).

Smith then proposes:

"What would it look like to 'learn' the Christian faith the way I learned my way around Embro? What would it mean to have a 'feel' for God's creation the way I had a feel for my hometown? What if learning to have the 'mind of Christ' was less like memorizing a map and more like learning how to live and move and have our being in Christ? How can we form and educate young people so that they know the gospel in their bones? What if we could absorb a biblical understanding of the world like we were natives of God's good creation?

What if education weren't first and foremost about what we know but about what we love?" (p.138).

This would change the way we seek to educate young people. "Education is an inherently formational project, not just an informational endeavor... 'All education, whether acknowledged or not, is moral formation.' We need to think carefully about the telos of Christian education as well as the pedagogies by which we induct young people into the faith" (p.139, quote from Stanley Hauerwas).

In this chapter, Smith will take a closer look at several different spaces where young people are educated in the faith.

God Desires True Worshipers

Smith describes the Sunday school area at St. George's Episcopal Church in Nashville. "Here children learn the faith in ways that are more tactile than didactic" (p.139). "This is liturgical catechesis. Instead of instruction in the faith that is centered on an abstract framework of doctrine lifted from the outline of systematic theology, liturgical catechesis is an induction into the faith that begins from what Christians do when we gather to pray around Word and Table... The worshipers that the Father desires are formed, not just informed. That formation should begin with children's ministry that grabs hold of the imagination" (p.143).

Learning that is tactile (of or connected with the sense of touch) engages all the senses and dimensions of our nature. It is only this kind of "knowledge you carry in your bones" as Smith says.

Youth Ministry for Liturgical Animals

Smith describes a scene that captures what probably comes to mind when you think of contemporary youth ministry. The space is designed to look like a rec room, arcade, coffee shop along with a band and a speaker who desperately try to be relevant and engaging. "You wouldn't know it, but the entire 'program' we've just witnessed is designed by fear - not for fear; by fear. It is the creation of a generation of parents and adults who are terrified that their children - the proverbial next generation - will leave the church and leave the faith. And they've convinced themselves that the primary reason young people will wander away from Christ is because they are bored... The result has been an approach to youth ministry that has reflected two disastrous decisions" (p.144).

1. "We have stratified the body of Christ into generational segments, moving children and young people out of the ecclesial center of worship into effectively 'parachurch' spaces... this segmentation of the body of Christ into generational castes eliminates one of the most powerful modes of habit-formation: imitation. If young people are always and only gathered with and by themselves, how will they learn from exemplars, whose model saints in the local congregation who have lived a lifetime with Jesus?"

2. "We have turned youth ministry into an almost entirely expressivist affair... the anti-intellectual fixation of entertainment is really just a lack of confidence in formation."

"The very form of the entertainment practices that are central to these events reinforces a deep narcissism and egoism that are the antithesis of learning to deny yourself and pick up the cross... such participation is not actually forming their hearts and aiming their desires toward God and His kingdom as long as the default liturgies of such events are built of consumerist rituals and the rites of self-concern" (p.146).

"[W]hat they really crave is not liberation from ritual but rather liberating rituals. Have we failed to realize that while we're trying to entertain them, our young people are waiting for us to form them?" (p.150)

"So what might a formative youth ministry for liturgical animals look like? No revolution is needed. To the contrary, formative youth ministry grows out of several simple convictions and practices" (p.152).

1. "[E]nfold them [youth] in a congregation that is committed to historic Christian worship and multi-generational gathering..."

"...youth ministry - like the rest of the Christian life - should be centered in the sanctuary..."

"...Formative youth ministry isn't its own thing; it is, rather, the same repertoire of practices that characterize lifelong Christian discipleship. If we're worried about 'keeping' young people in the faith, then instead of sequestering young people elsewhere in the building, we should be keeping them with us in the sanctuary" (p.152).

2. "[I]nvite young people into a wider repertoire of Christian disciplines as rhythms of the Spirit... To be introduced to such disciplines is to be given on-ramps into the Spirit's power... invite young people to see formative worship as the heart of discipleship" (p.153).

3. Deliberately avoid using entertainment for service. Smith identifies two issues (of many) with entertainment-based youth ministry. "Forms of youth ministry that tend toward the entertainment model face challenges related to class: the sorts of activities that keep young people entertained are often highly relative to cultural, socioeconomic, and even racial preferences. What sounds like 'fun' to one group will be alienating for another... As a result, an unstated focus on entertainment can contribute to an unintended segregation along various lines". Secondly, "the unilateral focus on entertainment only serves to reinforce a wider cultural focus on self that is cultivated by social media. Shouldn't church be the place where we unlearn such narcissism?" (p.153).

Smith suggests a focus on service and the power it has to create both a leveling effect and a formative effect. "[S]ervice to others can have a kind of leveling effect. No matter how wealthy or privileged, disadvantaged or marginalized, in fact all of us are called to love our neighbor. But more importantly, service has a formative effect: it blunts our cultural practices of self-consciousness and self-regarding, pulling us out of the swirling eddies of our narcissism to an other-regarding concern..."

"Formative youth ministry will be ministry by youth rather than just ministry to youth" (p.154).

Schooling the Imagination

What could this look like in a classroom?

"If liturgies are formative, that means they are implicit pedagogies or teaching strategies that can be marshaled in learning environments beyond the walls of the church. This reframes the goal and task of Christian education..." (p.154).

"A holistic Christian education... aims to habituate students in the faith, seeing the school as an extended opportunity to create a learning environment that is not just informative but formative. A holistic Christian learning environment doesn't just fill the intellect; it fuels the imagination. This requires serious intentionality not just about curriculum and content but about pedagogy and teaching strategy" (p.155).

Smith shares as example of this philosophy seen in "Teaching for Transformation" or TfT. Learning is set in the framework of a story, the Story, while also intentionally engaging students in ways that cause learning to sink deep into their habits, loves and imaginations.

"Teaching and learning that are attuned to the spiritual power of habit recognize the cumulative power of little things, the formative power of micro practices. Little things repeated over time in community have a formative effect...

As Winnie the Pooh once said, 'Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart'" (p.157-158).

Reforming the Formers: On Teaching for Formation

"If I am going to be a teacher of virtue, I need to be a virtuous teacher" (p.161).

I think this is the essential summary statement of this section. If teachers and educators are going to cultivate virtue in their students, they must first posses (and continually pursue) those virtues themselves. "You can't give what you don't have" or "You can't be a tour guide in a land you've never visited" as I've heard said before.

Formative, virtue-cultivating education flies in the face of the modern secular idol of personal autonomy. The educator actually has a telos, a precise "Good" toward which they are orienting, shaping and forming their students. This kind of educator has a very specific vision for what they want their students to become. It is very much like parenting, which is consistent with the historic notion of the faculty in loco parentis (in place of parents).

Smith suggest what this might look like and some ways in which educators can maintain this focus and practice together:

1. See worship as "faculty development". Teachers and educators must be involved and invested in formative Christian worshiping communities.

2. Cultivate practices of faculty "life together". "One of the most important practices we can undertake as Christian educators is to cultivate time and space to renarrate to one another just what we're doing together... Every school community needs to foster an ethos of mutual renarration." (p.161). Smith suggests a few ideas:

   • Eat together.

   • Pray together.

   • Sing together.

   • Think and read together.

And finally, serve your students. "Don't underestimate how cultivating loving concern for your students can itself be a (re)formative experience" (p.162).

"Teachers of virtue are not born; they are formed."

Rites of Passage

Smith invites us to consider another facet of what a "liturgical paradigm means for education" (p.164).

We need "to be attentive to the telos of education: To what end are we educating students? What we teach is important, but why we want students to learn is equally important."

"Helping students gain a teleological (understood or explained in terms of purpose) purview is part of the project of a holistic, formative education" (p.164).

"Zooming out to consider the ultimate telos of education - the story that nourishes the university project - is a way to make explicit what is otherwise implicit" (p.165). Essentially, I understand Smith to be saying that all of life and its corresponding endeavors (especially education in this case) should be set firmly in the story of God's redemption and restoration. It's in this Story that we understand our character and find our telos. In this light then, "the ways we 'frame' learning can themselves be formative, reinforcing a broader, ultimate vision" (p.165).

"Every community of practice has 'gateways' into it... that 'set up' what we're doing together. These are what I like to call 'framing' practices" (p.165). Smith's explanation of these framing practices inspires my imagination about "onboarding". I've captured it in my TA Log. "Our macro/micro (momentous/mundane) framing practices send important and (disproportionately) influential signals about why we are learning... we should be thinking about the rites of initiation and inculcation into the community of practice that is the university" (p.166-167).

Smith refers to these initiation experiences as rites. They are "powerful, tactile rituals laden with metaphorical significance... they carried a significance beyond their materiality" (p.167-168).

Smith makes a compelling case for both micro and macro rites and rituals that are embedded in the Grand Narrative of redemption and Kingdom and penetrate to the deepest parts of who we are as they engage every sense of our being. These are the types for formative experiences that shape and reorient our whole lives.

Everything Matters

"Creation is very good... That's why everything matters. To understand the world as God's creation is to hear rumbling in the world itself a calling. When the Spirit gives you ears to hear and eyes to see, creation is a gift that calls - it is a chamber of God's glory that resonates with an invitation" (p.172).

Your (Com)mission (Should You Choose to Accept It)

"Think of the biblical theology of creation as a manifesto, as marching orders, as a commission... the biblical teaching on creation is a charge, a mission, a commission that sends us into God's good but broken world with a calling" summarized in three verbs:

• Image

• Unfold

• Occupy

"These are 'do' words, action terms. Let me unpack each of these elements in a little more detail" (p.172).

IMAGE

"First, you are called to image God. We are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). But I think it's important to hear this more as a verb than a noun - as a task and mission rather than a property of characteristic" (p.172).

"We are commissioned as God's image bearers, His vice-regents, charged with the task of 'ruling' and caring for creation... in short, through culture" (p.173). "Imaging God thus involved representing and perhaps extending in some way God's rule on earth through ordinary communal practices of human sociocultural life" (Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image).

"Do you know what that means? We image God in our work - in all of the very earthly and human, all-to-human things we are called to do" (p.173).

UNFOLD

"Second, you are called to unfold creation's potential... God places us in creation with an invitation to unpack and unfurl all of the latent potential that God has folded into creation... we are 'sub-creators'" (p.173).

"God's desires for creation - the shalom and flourishing that are painted in those pictures of the kingdom - are clues as to how we should be unfolding the latent potential of creation" (p.173).

"This is why we need to be attentive to how our desires become aligned with God's desires. As I've been trying to show, this isn't just a matter of information; it's a matter of habit-formation" (p.173-174).

It is good to be motivated by this commissioning, but like anything else, Smith says beware that your culture-making endeavors do not consume you and become an expression of "Promethean striving" - an unhealthy drive to conquer.

OCCUPY

"The body of Christ (the church) is called to be that peculiar people who occupy creation and remind the world that it belongs to God" (p.174). Everyone occupies Creation in the sense that it is the only context in which there is life, but Smith says the Church should occupy the world in a distinctly different way - a way that points to the coming Kingdom that is Creation restored. This is what James Davison Hunter describes as "faithful presence" (p.174).

As Smith has said before, Christians must understand the way in which they are characters in this narrative. The rhythms of the worshiping community have a restorative (or what Smith likes to call a re-story-tive) effect on us. Discipleship teaches us to be the characters we were meant to be in the Story of Creation and Redemption.

Bringing this all together, Smith says:

"This now intersects with our core theme because our (culture-) making, our work, is generated as much by what we want as by what we believe. We are made to be makers, but as makers we remain lovers. So if you are what you love, then you make what you love. Your cultural labor - whether in finance or fine arts, as a fireman or a first-grade teacher - is animated less by 'principles' that you carry in your head and more by habits of desire that operate under the hood of consciousness" (p.175).

Work is animated by our telos - our projection and orientation toward a picture of the Good Life. It is a longing that bubbles up primarily from the heart, not the head.

Taking an example from the Star Wars movies that George Lucas created, Smith describes how our creative impulses are governed by what we believe and what we want. "Which is why all of us - as culture-makers and meaning-creators - need to curate our unconscious, to be attentive to the formation of our imagination... Our making bubbles up from our imagination, which is fueled by a Story of what flourishing looks like. We all carry some governing Story in our bones that shapes our work more than we might realize because that Story has taught us what to love" (p.177).

Tradition for Innovation

"The Christian liturgical tradition should be seen as a resource to foster cultural innovation" (p.180). This section is so profound and inspiring...

"The innovative, restorative work of culture-making needs to be primed by those liturgical traditions that orient our imagination to kingdom come. In order to foster a Christian imagination, we don't need to invent; we need to remember. We cannot hope to re-create the world if we are constantly reinventing, 'church,' because we will reinvent ourselves right out of the Story. Liturgical tradition is the platform for imaginative innovation" (p.181).

I am seeing this as the culmination of Smith's entire argument. In the Gospel, God is reconciling and restoring all things to Himself. Christian discipleship is the process by which we become restored as Gospel truth remakes our entire being - what we love, what we think, what we want, what we do and how we do it. This work is ultimately oriented toward the end goal of Redemption, so all we do both internally and externally is also oriented toward this ultimate end. Life is set in the context of the great Story.

All our work - all our vocations - are how we carry out the commission to sub-create according to God's standard. Innovation in "culture-making" work is creativity that propels humanity toward restoration - almost like moving forward toward the original. It's paradoxical.

This is why the movement of "progressivism" is deceiving. It's done in the name of "progress", but the telos toward which it is oriented is away from God's design, ultimately toward disorder and chaos.

Christian work, design, culture-making, creation and innovation is oriented toward making the world the way God has commissioned us to make it according to His glory and goodness.

What fuels my imagination and motivates my desire to work?

The Gift of Constraints

We are commissioned to be culture-makers as we inhabit God's Creation. Let the juices of innovation flow freely. Unfortunately, we find that our lives are fraught with limits. These limits can feel extremely constraining to imagination and innovation. But Smith challenges the reader to think differently about such limits.

"All of us have daydreamed about what it would be like to be free of such constraint - to 're-imagine' the institution from scratch. Then, we tell ourselves, we'd really be free to push forward our mission and vision. But now, in the real world, these constraints are like millstones, anchors dragging on the bottom as we try to steer the ship forward into new waters.

Could we ever imagine receiving such constraints as gifts? Indeed, is it possible that the constraints of handed-down traditions could be catalysts for creativity and imagination?" (p.182).

Smith tells a story of an art museum design that at first appeared to be suffocated by constraining demands, but turned out to be a work of architectural genius when the designers brilliantly re-imagined their task within the constraints given to them.

"Think of the cranky constraints in your own context. Could it be more creative not to simply wish them away but to receive them as gifts? Is there a genius embedded in those constraints that some imaginative leadership could unveil, leading to new appreciation? Maybe a 'completely free hand' is not what we need. Perhaps what we need is good constraints and the imagination to receive them as gifts for innovation... our daily work might best flourish within the gift of constraint..." (p.184-185).

Smith's specific application and challenge is to the structure and liturgy of the Church handed down and preserved. We ought not to think of it as constraining, but within the divinely defined instructions we find fertile soil for innovation.

Personal Note:

I am encouraged to think about this idea. Most of my best experiences and projects have the same theme. I have been able to take something with an existing form (aka, constraints) and re-imagine it. Parameters and existing boundaries have provided me with the best guidelines for my work and my creativity. I think about Cross Training Sports Camp, Next Level Retreat, Sigma Nu Delta Rho, Colorado State Track & Field... All of these things that I've been involved with have been handed to me in an existing form and structure. I have been able to take those structures and bring them into their "next edition" with awesome results. This is the context in which I do my best work.

Vocational Liturgies

"We need to immerse ourselves in rituals and rhythms and practices whereby the love of God seeps into our very character and is woven into not just how we think but who we are... This is also why we need to think about habit-shaping practices - 'vocational liturgies,' we might call them - that can sustain this love throughout the week" (p.187-188).

Smith has made and defended the claim that we are "liturgical animals". Rhythms, rituals and liturgies shape our lives. They are not just things we do, but things that do something to us. We may not realize how formative our rituals are. In chapter 2, Smith encourages us to take a liturgical audit of our lives. We must become aware of how are habits are shaping our loves. This is true for our work rhythms as well.

"We ought nor to settle for being Christians who happen to be artists, or lawyers who are simply 'also' Christians. We should see our vocations as ways to pursue God Himself..." (p.186). Thank carefully about how you can do your work in a way that trains your heart and behavior toward love for God and sets you apart from the watching world. "There are all kinds of ways to contextualize vocational liturgies that train us to love the God who pulls us and calls us" (p.188).

Smith gives examples of Wall Street bankers who listen to the public reading of Scripture, or teachers who start off each day with prayer. These rituals are not elaborate, but they train and orient the heart.

"Worship ends with sending: we are gathered by the grace of our (re)creating God in order to become the image bearers He created us to be, precisely so we can be sent into His world as ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:17-20). The God who is love reorders our loves, bending our deepest desires back toward Himself, so that we might rightly love our neighbors for His sake. The Spirit re-habituates our loves not merely for the sake of renovation but so that we can love even our enemies. This is what we were made for: to love what God loves. Our telos bring us back to our beginning. And we were made to be sent... And so: Come to the feast that is worship so that you can go, renewed and re-habituated by the Spirit, and say 'Amen' in everything you love" (p.189-190).