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Let Us Pray: Classroom Worship in Theological Education

Brent Laythamteth_593 110..124

North Park Theological Seminary

Abstract. Theological education typically includes classroom worship, a practice of

great pedagogical power and curricular import. As pedagogy, classroom worship does

four things. It focuses teaching and learning on God, and fosters theological disposi-

tions necessary for sustaining that attention. Second, it rightly positions the entire class

in dialogical relation to the divine Thou, in communal relation to each other, the larger

church and the wider world, and in personal relations that risk transformation. Third, itframes theological education as an integrative practice of faith and learning. Finally,

it invites teachers to know their students as whole persons and students to trust their

teachers as spiritual guides. As curriculum, classroom worship may have greater sig-

nificance than chapel worship for many students and at particular schools. It should be

moved from implicit curriculum to explicit, with careful attention to the null curriculum

and to the matrices of relationship within which worship has meaning.

The first thing a student in Walter Brueggemanns class notices are the prayers.

Each class, each day begins with evocative prayer . . .

I want to thank you as instructors for opening our class sessions with prayer.I really . . . feel the power of that practice undergirding all that we do.

He offered prayer for the midterm, and I dont remember what he said but I just

remember the gentleness of it, and I was really touched.

Here are three testimonies to the power of beginning seminary class sessions with

prayer.1 They point to a widely recognized phenomenon: a typical class at an average

theological seminary includes some act of worship prayer, singing, or devotions. A

2003 survey of theological faculty by the Auburn Institute found that two thirds of them

think it important to open or close class sessions with prayer or other devotional activ-

ity (Wheeler, Miller, and Schuth 2005, 21).2 What begs for analysis is the pedagogicalpower and curricular contribution of such practices, inasmuch as they remain under

theorized and under explored.3 After all, with so little time available to teach the

1 The voices are Edwin Searcy (Brueggemann 2003, xiii), an anonymous student email to professor

Janet Ramsey (Foster et al. 2006, 13839n18), and an anonymous third year student at Mainline Theo-

logical Seminary (Carroll et al. 1997, 189).

2 For reflective interpretation of this data based on qualitative interviews, see Educating Clergy:

Teaching Practices and Pastoral Imagination (Foster et al. 2006, 109).

3 This is Mary Hess description of the state of research into the role of chapel worship in theologi-

cal education in her preface to Common Worship in Theological Education (Garrigan and Johnson

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deliberative optative and the quartodecemian controversy, why would a reflective teacher

sacrifice even five minutes to an activity that seems to belong more properly in the

seminary chapel than in the classroom? I will suggest here that we do it precisely

because such practices do belong in the classroom, not merely as preliminaries to

teaching, but as authentic pedagogy.

Shall We Pray?

Do you start class with prayer? is a question that often generates a good deal of heat.

One friend answered my email query with I do NOT pray before my classes (empha-

sis original), followed by three closely reasoned paragraphs justifying his practice.

Others are just as passionate and reasoned in their affirmation of the practice. Listening

carefully, one can usually hear in their arguments claims about their self-understanding

as a scholar, about the demographics of the class, or about the mission of their particular

school. These are all important issues of identity. We must take seriously objections like

I do not assume that my students . . . grant to me . . . the spiritual authority one mightgrant a priest or pastor (Foster et al. 2006, 109), or not everyone in my class is a prac-

ticing Christian, or a seminary is not a church, and a class is not a prayer meeting.

But we must take just as seriously affirmations like I am ordained to this teaching min-

istry, these students are preparing for various kinds of church ministry, or this

schools mission is to glorify God. 4 Thus, from the perspective of identity, answering

the question shall we pray? may be yes or no, depending on a particular teachers

vocation, a courses constituency, or an institutions mission. If we think instead about

the task of educating clergy about cultivating a pastoral imagination (Foster et al.

2006) I believe that a much stronger and more universal case can be made for includ-

ing worship in the classroom.

5

Beginning with Worship

Where worship is a regular part of each class session, it usually occurs at the beginning.

A cynic might suggest that this is nothing more than a form of classroom management.

Let us pray usually silences a noisy room in ways that Lets get started does not.

Opening class with a devotional act can certainly serve purposes other than truly wor-

shiping God. Yet despite the risk of instrumentalizing classroom worship, two thirds of

theological educators continue to run the risk. Why? Perhaps because we innately sense

the power of classroom worship to focus theological education on God.

Thus, in calling attention to the dearth of critical reflection on seminary chapel, it throws into even

greater relief the near total absence of reflection on classroom worship.

4 At my school, all but two colleagues are ordained, all but a few students intend ecclesial ministry,

and our mission statement reads The mission of North Park Theological Seminary is to glorify God by

preparing students to serve the church by proclaiming and living the gospel of Jesus Christ.

5 Defining worship is a small cottage industry best avoided here. In this essay, I use worship to

designate particular acts, whose native home is the corporate worship of the church, by which the class

attends to or devotes itself to God. Such acts include, but are not limited to, prayer, singing, silence,

reading Scripture, meditation, testimony, a devotional, or other proclamation. The attitude of suchworship can range from lament to joy, from hope to thanksgiving, from adoration to intercession.

Throughout the essay, I use common worship to indicate the social character of gathered worship,

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Attending to God

A Godward focus is intrinsic to Christian worship, and also to theological education,

if it is genuinely theological, for theology is paying attention to God (Wood and Blue

2008, 3). Though every discipline in the theological curriculum pays attention to a more

proximate and obvious subject matter perhaps a text and its interpretation, or a tradi-

tion and its explication, or a skill and its application ultimately it must attend to God

as its essential ground, horizon, or goal. Classroom worship acknowledges and orients

this Godward vision by intentionally practicing the presence of God.6 When teaching

and learning begin in worship, there are benefits for both teachers and learners.

Teachers need the focusing power of classroom worship because our attention too

often and too easily stops short of the divine mystery. John Witvliet alerts us to this

danger in the field of liturgy: It is remarkable that so many books and courses about

worship say so little about God (2008, 138). Substitute your own discipline for

worship, and Witvliets words will probably still read true. In every discipline, there is a

propensity to lose sight of God, focusing instead on things closer to hand. Every time I

step into the classroom there are pressures to lose focus on God which arise from my

subject matter, even though ultimately God is that subject. Opening with a focused act

of worship does not make me impervious to impairment, but it does explicitly turn the

whole classs attention toward God, who is as a prayer of John Calvin reminds us

the proper end of all our study (1984, 80).

Moreover, classroom worship is a most appropriate way to acknowledge and enact

the stance from which the majority of theological educators teach. Auburns 2003 study

found that three quarters of theological faculty strongly agree that teaching has a

spiritual character, and another eighteen percent somewhat agree. This spiritual char-

acter of teaching and learning in a theological school is not only communicated by

classroom worship, it inheres there. Similarly, more than eighty percent of theological

educators told Auburn that they rely on Gods presence while teaching. What could

communicate and enact that reliance more effectively than classroom worship integrated

with classroom teaching and learning?7

Students, too, need practices of worshipful attention to God. Hess and Brookfield

introduce their volume on Teaching Reflectively in Theological Contexts with the claim

that theological formation focuses on the awakening and deepening of spiritual aware-

ness (2008, 4). The authors of Educating Clergy point out that A significant part of

every seminary students intellectual task is to come to grips with the meaning God will

have for his or her own life as well as for his or her future professional career (Foster

et al. 2006, 4). Charles Wood writes that theological education, in its various modalitiesand locations . . . rightly centers on development of an aptitude for paying attention to

God, and to everything else in its God-relatedness (Wood and Blue 2008, 34).

6 Educating Clergy suggests that theological educators use classroom prayer or meditation as their

most common pedagogical strategy for practicing the presence of God, a practice that is the primary

catalyst to and resource for the pastoral imagination (Foster et al. 2006, 10309, quote 109).

7

To Auburns statement I rely on Gods presence while I teach, 28.1% indicated somewhatagree and 52.1% indicated strongly agree. The data cited in this paragraph was provided to me in a

personal communication by the Center for the Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological

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Habituating Hearts and Minds

Sustaining attention to God requires more than a teachers intention or students effort,

however. In the classroom (as in the sanctuary), attending to God requires certain dispo-

sitions or affections, what we might call habits of mind and spirit. Some dispositions are

requisite to all teaching and learning: a student needs trust in her teacher, humility about

her present mastery of concepts or skills, and courage to persevere in her study. Without

these dispositions, it is as difficult to teach Tagalog as it is the Chalcedonian Definition.

Other dispositions seem more particular to theological education, given its focus on a

divine subject. Classically, we might consider the theological virtues of faith, hope, and

love, ideally with a healthy dose of joy thrown in.

But given my focus on the pedagogical power of common worship in the classroom,

I want to highlight four dispositions that Don Saliers claims are engendered through

faithful Christian worship: awe, delight, truthfulness, and hope (1996). Each of these is

essential to healthy theological education. Students who develop a technical mastery of

the various disciplines and skills that comprise the theological curriculum will remain

grossly lacking in genuine pastoral imagination apart from the capacity to be awed to

heaven (Brueggemann 2003) by God and the gospel. Students who succeed in the

classroom for the sake of grades, peer esteem, self image, or denominational require-

ments, yet who never discover the exhilaration of careful exegesis or the sheer delight

of reading the desert mothers and fathers have nothing more than a simulacrum of real

learning. Students who settle for what is merely correct whether political, liturgical, or

evangelical will be mannered at best, ideological at worst; only a deep thirst for truth

opens us fully to the transformative power of our subject matters, and the Subject they

finally reference. Students who start a course or degree program with great energy will

not be sustained in that work, let alone in the rigors and disappointments of ministry, by

sheer enthusiasm or force of will; finally hope that all manner of things shall be well

(Julian of Norwich) is needed to form and sustain the pastoral imagination. And these

same dispositions that students need to grow into their ministerial identities are just as

requisite for teachers to be sustained in theirs.

Of course, five minutes of classroom worship are not sufficient to inculcate disposi-

tions of awe, delight, truthfulness, and hope, any more than two chapels a week are. But

taken in concert, classroom worship, seminary chapel, and congregational worship can

work together to form in all of us dispositions that are essential to theological education.

And where such dispositions already exist, beginning with classroom worship can elicit

them in ways that allow awe, delight, truthfulness, and hope to undergird, permeate, and

sustain an entire class session.

Positioned by Pronouns

In addition to focusing on God, classroom worship positions the class relationally

toward God and everything else in God. We can see this most clearly by noticing the

pronouns that are as proper to classroom worship as to all corporate worship.

We Pray to You: Learning Coram Deo

First, classroom worship addresses God in the second person as you, thereby position-

ing God as a personal Subject rather than an impersonal subject matter. For all the truth

of divine mystery and all the attendant danger of anthropomorphism, theological forma-tion attends to a who rather than a what. Beginning with classroom worship can serve

f d d h h d i li i f l l i hi

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with God to a merely technical reference, a danger Helmut Thielicke says constantly

threatens theological study (1962, 33). But it has far greater potential than this prophy-

lactic effect, if we speak honestly to God in the context of our studies. For example,

Marianne Meye Thompson led an advanced Bible seminar which engaged in critical

study of biblical texts on Tuesdays, followed by personal and communal prayer . . . to

God about or with the texts on Thursdays. The course progressed from positive texts

about Gods love to more difficult texts in which God is portrayed as arbitrary, cruel,

or absent. Though it would have been easy to withdraw back to a safer, comforting,

familiar God, the class instead engaged these new, frightening dimensions of the

divine in prayer. Thompson remarked on what a difference it made, speaking in the

second person to this God rather than only in the third person, about God. It

affected how students understood and felt about God (Foster et al. 2006, 107). Thus,

classroom worships direct I-Thou and we-You address to God holds powerful

pedagogical potential to form both pastoral imaginations and affections.

We Worship and Learn Together

Second, classroom worship positions the class in the first person, as a we that includes

my I. The we comes first, for classroom worship, like all corporate worship, is a

first-person-plural activity. We pray, praise, or sing as participants who are called to be

aware not only of Gods presence, but of each other, and of the world (Witvliet 2008,

121). The we of classroom worship ought properly to remain a we in the teaching

and learning that follows. Both in worship and in study we pay attention not only to

God, but to everything else in its God-relatedness (Wood and Blue 2008, 4). One

dimension of this, according to Brueggemann, is how the we of classroom prayer

invites us to locate teacher and students in the ongoing life of the church in whose

service we learn. Brueggemanns praying at the beginning of class asserts that learn-

ing takes place with a cloud of witnesses who have believed and trusted before the

present company and who believe and trust presently alongside the immediate body of

teachers and learners (2003, xv). But the we of common worship erects no parochial

breakwater against the world; instead we stand before God representatively on behalf

of the whole world (von Allmen 1974, 12829). So our initial classroom worship and

the learning which follows must ponder the condition of the world that is the proper

though sometimes disregarded context of all evangelical learning (Brueggemann 2003,

xv). Rightly understood, the we of classroom worship positions our theological educa-

tion in the church and for the world.

Risking Myself

The we of classroom worship also positions each one of us. First, it positions the

teacher as another one of the learners, as fellow member in the church, as co-servant of

the world. The we of classroom worship thus positions me with my students in ways

that are more fundamental than our difference in role. Second, classroom worship

articulates our shared identity as more basic than my individual differences or your

social diversities or his theological viewpoint. Classroom worship, like all corporate

worship, is a practice of receiving the gift of diversity-in-unity. It positions us to see that

while diversity is normal, . . . [it] is not theologically normative unity in Christ is

(Anderson 2003, 12223). Common worship does more than just remind every I inthe room that we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the

h (R 12 5) hi h b l i Fi ll l

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worship risks my identity. As Annie Dillard famously said, worship is such risky busi-

ness that crash helmets and life preservers are in order (1982, 40). Genuine worship

does not allow me to keep a safe distance or maintain a critical reserve; it risks my

identity, my self-understanding, and my anticipated future. So does true theological edu-

cation. Like worship, theological education risks my prior understandings of God and

world, destabilizes my identity, hazards my future on a relational process in which God

is the superior, determinative power. Beginning with classroom worship positions every

me for the educative process that follows with all of its inherent risk and promise.

In summary, classroom worship rightly done in first person (plural including singu-

lar) address to God in the second person is a model for and an invitation to the deep

relational geography of theological education.

Ora et Labora: Integration

Another power of classroom worship is the way it properly frames faith and learning in

theological education. Opening or closing with worship can symbolize that the teaching

and learning has a spiritual or religious character and relies on Gods presence

(Wheeler, Miller, and Schuth 2005, 21). Indeed, specific acts of classroom worship

imply that the whole class session is a way of loving God with ones mind (Bruegge-

mann 2003, xv). But what classroom worship symbolizes it can also effect: an ethos of

study as rendering gratitude and praise, a pattern of learning as ongoing circulation of

divine and human offerings.

Too often, our students arrive at seminary convinced that there is a divide, perhaps

even a chasm, between heart and head. John Witvliet describes it as the notion that

devotional vitality and rigorous learning live in opposition (2008, 120n5). Faculty, too,

can imagine this chasm between worship and study, and our teaching can reproduce it.

Educating Clergy laments Teachers who emphasize either critical analyses or devo-

tional study of sacred texts because that either/or fails to introduce students to the

power of their interdependence (Foster et al. 2006, 54).

From one point of view, beginning with common worship simply reproduces the

problem; a devotional preliminary followed by a critical main course, with neither prac-

tice aware of, or interacting with, the other. But since it is possible, as Don Saliers

notes, to think prayerfully and to pray thoughtfully, a much more integrated practice

is possible (1980, 75). I will present two examples.

Educating Clergy offers a description and analysis of a class session taught by

Dianne Bergant of Catholic Theological Union.

She began the class session with a prayer from St. Teresa, noting that it was St.

Teresas day in the calendar of saints. The prayer provided her with the opportu-

nity to emphasize the role of a woman as thinker and teacher in the Christian,

and Roman Catholic, tradition several times during the class session. It estab-

lished a theological framework for the class (all is passing and God is enough).

It also functioned as a pedagogical device signaling for students Bergants inten-

tion that they learn how to combine an affirmation of their religious tradition with

a critical stance towards its implications for contemporary life. (Foster et al. 2006,

59)

Note that Bergant not only integrates affirmation with criticism, but also integrates

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My colleague Max Lee begins every class with a devotion from scripture and a

prayer from the communion of saints. In Greek Exegesis, he does the devotion from a

Greek text which exemplifies one of the grammatical principles being covered that day,

and demonstrates in the devotion itself the fruitfulness of attention to the grammar. Max

reports, If in my Greek class, we are studying the imperfect tense, I try to pick a Greek

text that highlights the usage of this tense and how it changes the way we understand

the text (for example, translating elegen as an iterative imperfect in Luke 23:34: And

Jesus kept on saying [and would not stop saying], Father, forgive them for they do not

know what they are doing ).

Note that both Bergant and Lee have pedagogical reasons for a pastoral practice.

However, neither one is using an ostensible act of worship to teach students instead of

to worship God. Rather, each teacher is modeling integration: the integration of praying

and learning, of head and heart, of tradition and situation, of pedagogue and pastor.

Beginning with common worship not only frames all that occurs in the classroom as

grateful response to Gods prior initiative, it can also, when rightly done, model and

effect integration.

Teacher as Worship Leader

Pedagogies of performance are essential to theological formation (Foster et al. 2006,

156186), and we engage such pedagogies every time we invite students to open class

with prayer, take their turn leading a devotion, design a meditation, or lead a song. For

traditions with strong allegiance to the priesthood of all believers, or with softer distinc-

tions between clergy and laity, sharing the leadership of common worship at the begin-

ning of class can also enact and reinforce an ecclesiological vision. In such settings, a

student leading the class in prayer may have less to do with sharpening her skill at pas-

toral prayer and more to do with inculcating an attitude of egalitarian distribution of

worship leadership. In my seminary, some faculty invite students to pray or lead devo-

tions, not so that after graduation they will pray with more eloquence or devote with

more confidence, but so that after graduation they will remember to invite their con-

gregants to lead prayer and devotions rather than always take the lead.

Nonetheless, there are good reasons for faculty to retain the regular leadership of

common worship in the classroom. One reason is because it invests us in the lives of

our students their experience and their callings, their struggles and their triumphs.

A second reason is that it displays us as persons of spiritual trust.

Learning Our Students Lives

In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer states that it is best if the prayers of a community

are led by the same person. He points out, however, that the one who consistently leads

the prayers must share the daily life of the fellowship and know the cares, the needs,

the joys and thanksgivings, the petitions and hopes of the others (1954, 63). Here

Bonhoeffer articulates a crucial rubric from pastoral ministry: to lead Gods people well

in prayer and worship, one must know not only God but also the people. The liturgical

principle is perfectly analogous to the pedagogical reality that to teach our students

well, we must know them. Faculty who are uncomfortable with the idea that teacher

becomes pastor,8 who agree with the teacher who said that students have not

8

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designated me as their spiritual leader, will nonetheless recognize that teaching well

demands more than knowing our material; it requires that we know our students. If we

follow Bonhoeffers advice by regularly leading our students in prayer, we thereby

require ourselves to develop and sustain an acquaintance with our students (an acquain-

tance that might otherwise go lacking). The responsibility of leading in prayer nurtures

disciplines of attention and compassion that can only enhance our capacity to teach

these students.

Showing Our Spiritual Selves

I offer a second reason to lead the common worship. In a thoughtful exploration of the

conundrum of fostering students trust while challenging their core convictions,

Matthew Skinner suggests that three forms of trust are needed: professional, personal,

and spiritual. According to Skinner, the first two forms of trust are germane to every

significant situation of teaching and learning. The third, however, is unique to our task.

The dynamics of faith and theological educations overt attention to the reality of God

make it crucial that students trust their professors as reliable theological guides who are

attuned to distinct kinds of spiritual commitments. Skinner urges theological educators

to be transparent, avoiding manipulation or exhibitionism. He assures us that fostering

spiritual trust hardly requires displays of exemplary faith or sentimental expressions of

piety, though he would surely not require a genuinely pious and sentimental teacher to

hide that spirituality under a bushel (Skinner 2008, 99, 104).

There is no program or strategy for eliciting spiritual trust, but a teacher can take

deliberate steps that give students opportunities to perceive her as trustworthy in a spiri-

tual sense. One such step (Skinners third) is performing as a theological interpreter in

public contexts outside the classroom, such as preaching or writing books for pastors.

These efforts . . . provide glimpses into the God she is teaching. Skinner is right about

this, but he overlooks an opportunity to nurture spiritual trust that is closer than the

chapel and more frequent than ones publication of monographs: leading common

worship in ones own classroom. Where a teacher regularly leads students in prayer

or praise, she risks a transparency that offers glimpses into the God she is teaching,

offers glimpses into the spiritual self she brings before God (Skinner 2008, 108, 110,

111).

I want to put flesh on Bonhoeffers directive and Skinners invitation by describing

the practice of my colleague Phil Anderson. At first glance, he appears to design class-

room worship to serve primarily pedagogical ends. Anderson begins each class with

the singing of a hymn from the period and people being covered that week. Thus, thehymns serve as primary source documents from ecclesiastical history. Before singing,

Anderson contextualizes the hymn by discussing its author or provenance. Finally, as

much as possible he chooses hymns from the seminarys denominational hymnal, in

hopes that students will learn to value it as a treasury of the communion of saints. Yet,

there is also a pastoral dimension here. Andersons class uses these primary source

documents in accordance with their original purpose as acts of worship rather than

as textual artifacts. Moreover, among all the hymns he could choose from a given era,

Anderson selects one that is fitting for the current moment of the class session. Some-

times his choice is determined by what is going on in particular students lives, or in the

wider seminary community, while at other times it is guided by local politics or worldevents. In this regard, Anderson is following Bonhoeffers dictum to know the cares,

h d h j d h k i i h i i d h f h d (1954

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63). Finally, all who know Anderson recognize how central hymnody is to his own spiri-

tuality. So when he leads his class in singing a hymn, he is manifesting the transparency

of soul and trustworthiness in faith that Skinner commends.

Andersons practice serves as another example of the integrative power of classroom

worship. It shows us how a deliberate pedagogical practice combines with pastoral

attentiveness to students in ways that enrich both classroom worship and teaching. Other

teachers will plan and practice classroom worship quite differently, not only because our

disciplines and pedagogical objectives differ, but because our spiritualities do as well.

That is as it should be, and invites us to explore how diversity in classroom worship

impacts the seminary as a school of prayer.

Seminary as School of Worship

My seminary names leadership of worship and prayer as one of the competencies our

Masters of Divinity intends to form. It is likely that yours does too, because one of the

most important roles seminary graduates undertake is to lead the people of God in

prayer and praise. Thus a theological school is, and ought to be, a school of worship.

Learning Worship

How do we school worship in our students? Typically, theological schools have

answered by pointing to required classes in worship, seminary chapel, and field educa-

tion experiences. Though each of these can make an important contribution to a stu-

dents formation for worship leadership, seminary chapel has become the lightning rod

for conversation and controversy about schooling worship (Foster et al. 2006, 27580;

Anderson 2003).9

Byron Anderson argues convincingly that many seminary skirmishes over chapel

worship are rooted in the expectation of seminarians (and not a few faculty) thatworship is primarily (or even exclusively) about expressing my faith. This fails to

notice that the work of theological education and therefore of communal worship in

the context of theological education is first and foremost about formation for leader-

ship in the church. The disciplines of corporate worship and theological study are com-

panion formative practices of the seminary. Certainly worship is our honest expression

to God, but it is also meant to be Gods transformation of us; thus it is both the glorifi-

cation of God and the sanctification of humanity, as has been asserted since Pius X.

Beyond forming dispositions, chapel worship outside my normal modes of expression

can deepen relation with God and broaden community, precisely because it invites an

encounter with the otherness of ones neighbors as well as the Transcendent Other(Anderson 2003, 118, 121, 119).10

Anderson mounts a convincing argument for the curricular significance of chapel

worship. Unfortunately, at my school the majority of students are not regularly in

9 Foster et al. give an overview of the different challenges faced by schools with a shared liturgical

tradition and schools of diverse liturgical traditions. Anderson suggests that seminary-sponsored

worship has been and remains problematic in Protestant seminaries because of three intrinsic polari-

ties: expression and formation, diversity and unity, and congregation and seminary. For an in depth

discussion, see Garrigan and Johnson (2010).

10 Mark Searle offers a lucid summary of the formative power of ritual, suggesting that its core

formation is relationship to God, to one another, to those who have gone before us, to those who will

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chapel.11 Yet all of our students regularly participate in classroom worship, because it

occurs within the bounded space and time of the class. There may be important qualita-

tive reasons that chapel worship remains more formative than classroom worship for

students who regularly do both. But from a quantitative point of view, even a student

who attends both of my schools weekly chapels will spend almost as much time

engaged in classroom worship as chapel worship. For this reason alone, I believe

schools should seek to understand the curricular impact of classroom worship in

theological formation.

One dimension of that impact relates to its frequent repetition. Roy Rappaport sug-

gests that the frequency of rituals may enhance their formative power. Rituals of high

frequency attempt not only to regulate daily behavior, but also to penetrate to the

motivational bases of that behavior. Regularly repeated rituals work to encode meaning

in everyday life, so that they seem to be natural, or at least of second nature (1992,

18). Thus, even though the duration of classroom worship is relatively briefer than

chapel worship, its significantly greater frequency enhances its power to form a stu-

dents pastoral imagination or a professors pedagogical process.

The full impact of classroom worship on theological education will depend on what

is done in each classroom, and how all the practices of classroom worship fit together

into some coherent whole. At a school near mine, about half the professors incorporate

classroom worship into their pedagogy. Overall, this may school their students in the

judgment that worship is a matter of the professors (and subsequently the pastors) per-

sonal piety, rather than a practice intrinsic to the subject matters and skills of pastoral

work. At my school, all of my colleagues (save one) lead classroom worship that paral-

lels the worship in their home congregation. For example, the Old Testament professor

who opens class by singing Hebrew choruses projected in PowerPoint belongs to a con-

gregation that sings (English) choruses projected on a screen. The professor who opens

class with a photocopy of a hymn from the hymnal regularly worships in a hymnal

based (and organ led) congregation. For any given course, this creates a uniform

worship experience, but students working through the typical academic week will

encounter a smorgasbord of worship structure and style.12 Overall, this may school them

in the judgment that worship is a matter of the professors (and subsequently the pas-

tors) preference, rather than a performance sensitive to context and subject to authority.

At Mary Hess ELCA school, all of her colleagues find it very easy to pray spontane-

ously in a public setting, whereas she reads prayers from her Roman Catholic tradition.

Overall, Hess recognizes that this might suggest to her students that Catholics cannot

or do not choose to engage in spontaneous prayer, but she hopes to teach them that itis permissible, perhaps even enriching, to use someone elses words to open prayer

space (Hess 2008, 193, 196).

11 My own observation is confirmed by attendance data from our chapel committee. Such attendance

patterns are probably typical at schools with diverse liturgical traditions, whereas attendance is often

much higher at schools with a shared liturgical tradition. Foster et al. report that at Yale, where diver-

sity predominates, about twenty percent of the student body is present for any given service, with

about half the students and many faculty members participating at least once in a week. Church

Divinity School of the Pacific, on the other hand, centers around a formative liturgical tradition; there,participation is significant (2006, 277).

12

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Implicit and Null Curricula

It can help us understand the overall impact of classroom worship to view it through

Elliot Eisners categories of explicit, implicit, and null curriculum. Many schools have

ministry courses in which leading worship in the classroom is part of the explicit cur-

riculum. But in most instances of classroom worship, the answer to Will this be on the

final exam? is No. Though individual teachers may be quite intentional about how

the content and form of their classroom worship intersects their teaching, as the

examples of Bergant and Anderson show, on the whole theological faculty have not

reflected as a body about how the regular practice of classroom worship fits in and con-

tributes to its curricula. Yet every time we begin a class with some form of common

worship, we are not preparing to teach we are already teaching. Thus most classroom

worship comprises part of the implicit (and null) curriculum of a theological school.

As implicit and null curricula, what does classroom worship teach? At a school

where some teachers do and some do not, classroom worship may symbolize or even

reproduce an implicit curriculum of conflict between evangelical and progressive theo-

logical commitments. If so, their implicit curriculum may mirror the national ideological

struggles of their sponsoring (mainline) denomination. At my school, where all lead

worship but each according to her own lights, classroom worship both symbolizes and

reproduces an implicit curriculum of worships necessity and centrality, but also its

relative freedom from denominational control or traditional authority. In that sense,

our implicit curriculum reproduces the official position on worship of our sponsoring

denomination.13 At Mary Hess school, classroom worship teaches an ethos of extempo-

raneous prayer, while also inculcating an underlying prayer script that relies on a

particular rhythm, a cadence for drawing scriptural verses and particular experiences

together in a pattern that proves familiar to listeners (Hess 2008, 194). This implicit

curriculum also establishes the parameters of the null curriculum: prayer by the book,

Tongsung Kido, meditative silence, and a host of other forms. When Mary Hess begins

class by reading someone elses prayer, she moves an entire form of prayer from the

null to the implicit curriculum.

But what her practice teaches depends on more than what happens in her classroom.

It also depends on the life experience of her students, the classroom practice of her col-

leagues, the ethos and chapel practice(s) of her school, and the liturgical tradition(s) of

its sponsoring denomination. This means that if a faculty want to be intentional about

classroom worship as a powerful pedagogical practice, we will have to reflect on it

within the larger interpretive context of the implied curriculum, which includes pro-

grams, rituals, and relationships integral to the culture of the school (Foster et al. 2006,53).14 If I open each class with a hymn, what students learn from that depends, in part,

on whether other faculty lead hymns, praise choruses, or do not sing at all, how central

hymnody is to the seminarys chapel services, whether I am using the denominations

hymnal (if it has one), and what authority that hymnal has.

13 This position of local autonomy rather than denominational authority is embodied in The Cov-

enant Book of Worship, which recognizes emerging diversity and is not meant to limit or curtail

(2003, ix, x).

14 See also their claim that the implicit curriculum is found in the rituals and organizational struc-

tures, values and assumptions, and patterns of relationship and authority that make up the culture of a

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Mary Hess poignant What am I teaching? I wish that I was sure! (2008) invites

us to move classroom worship from the implicit to the explicit curriculum, at least

occasionally. Within my class, I can occasionally comment not just on the connections

between classroom worship and course content, but on the pedagogical rationale for

including it, and the particular objectives that determine why I do it in this way. Across

the curriculum, a school might communicate explicitly its understanding of what

classroom worship teaches.15

Parts or Wholes: What Does Worship Mean to Our Students?

Finally, reflection on what students are learning from the implied curriculum of class-

room worship raises the question of whether classroom worship is construed as whole

unto itself, with its own integral meaning, or as a component part of larger liturgical

structures, from and in relation to which it draws meaning. I suspect that free church

and liturgical traditions will part company here. In what follows, I have been helped

by the challenge to liturgical theology mounted by Melanie Ross (2006).Consider two quite different examples. Class A begins with the teacher inviting stu-

dents to name particular prayer concerns aloud, then leading an extemporaneous prayer

for the needs expressed, as well as inviting God to work in the ensuing class session.

This approximates very closely the free church tradition of sharing joys and concerns

followed by a pastoral prayer. Though students with that background may be better

habituated to participate, the practice is accessible to all, and noticing the congruence

between classroom and congregational worship is not essential to understanding what is

going on. The meaning of this form of classroom worship does not depend on its rela-

tion to typical congregational worship, nor on where intercessory prayer usually occurs

within a service; in other words, the meaning is not structural. The full meaning of this

practice is formal, however, inasmuch as the forms of voicing items to be remembered

in prayer and of praying extemporaneously both contribute to the ethos of human

authenticity and divine immanence that is essential to free church worship.

Class B begins with the teacher reminding students that it is the second week of

Lent, offering a liturgical greeting, praying the appropriate collect from the prayer book,

after which the entire class sings the Gloria Patri. This approximates at least loosely the

liturgical traditions entrance rite. Students from that background will know their parts

by heart, and will be habituated to the pattern of beginning with a deliberate, adoring

focus on God. Students unfamiliar with liturgical worships basic ordo and calendar will

lack the context to interpret a Lenten prayer offered as an opening collect, because the

full meaning of this classroom worship depends on background knowledge about how

these particular acts mean as parts of larger wholes. In short, the meaning is structural,

and those structures both form and express the ethos of liturgical worship.

Therefore, the formative power of classroom worship as implicit curriculum will be

strongly conditioned by two things. One is the worship traditions that our students bring

to the classroom. In this regard, it is crucial to note that today, though most of our

15 This step would entail faculty conversation beginning with a description of their current practices.

That raw data would allow an analysis of the explicit, implicit, and null curricula. Finally, faculty

should converse together about what the implicit curriculum should teach, and what changes in practicewould assist that objective. In this process, faculty should attend to the three perennial polarities that

every seminary must manage: expressive and formative, unity and diversity, and congregation and semi-

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students come from a religiously plural environment, they often have worshipped only

in insular contexts, knowing little of the piety and practices of traditions other than their

own (Erickson and Lindner 1997, 26). Thus because their experience is limited, a

typical Baptist student can no more manifest full, conscious, and active participation

in worship in Class B than a typical Episcopalian student could in Class A. The Baptist

lacks habituation in the meaning of liturgical structures, and the Episcopalian lacks

habituation in the affect of worship forms. If we intend to teach certain things through

the design and content of our classroom worship, we will be wise to know as much as

possible about how our students worship. And if we expect to foster particular sensibili-

ties with an implied curriculum of classroom worship, we will almost certainly need to

communicate directly what we think classroom worship means to our diverse student

body.

The second factor that will condition the formative power of classroom worship is its

relation to the common worship life of the school. Liturgical classroom worship (Class

B) would be at home at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, but would likely seem

orphaned at Bethel. Free classroom worship (Class A) would be familiar at Fuller, but

would likely feel alien at Luther Seminary. Thus, I have come the long way round to

reaffirm the crucial role that chapel worship plays in seminary formation. We see now

that classroom worship can serve as echo and amplification of the worship tradition

embodied in seminary chapel, or as caveat and question mark.

What all this means for a particular school will be discovered by collegial conversa-

tion about classroom practices, curricular objectives, institutional ethos, and student

experience. Ideally, an entire faculty would engage in such conversation together in trust

and hope, recognizing that risking self-revelation and sacrificing autonomy are neces-

sary steps in service of a more integrated and aligned curriculum.

Let Us Pray

So let us convene a pedagogical and curricular conversation about classroom worship.

But even as we do, let us continue to pray in the classroom, and praise and meditate too.

Let us do it, not because it will make us better teachers, or our students better learners,

or our seminary more curricularly coherent. Classroom worship may well do all these

things, but such things are finally not the point of worship: God is. So I conclude with

a warning from Aidan Kavanaugh, who reminds us that like a feast, which is an end in

itself,

the liturgy inevitably forms its participants but does not educate them in themodern, didactic, sense of the word. . . . Conflating liturgy and education produces

poor education and dissimulated liturgy. The liturgy, like the feast, exists not to

educate but to seduce people into participating in common activity of the highest

order, where one is freed to learn things which cannot be taught. (1982, 28)

Theological education is precisely that, being freed to learn things which cannot be

taught. Classroom worship embraces and enacts just such a freedom.

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