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Holy Conversation

Author:	Jonathan Linman
Published By:	Fortress Press (Minneapolis)
Pages:	190
Price:	£13.99
ISBN:	978 0 8006 2130 8

Reviewed by Philip Joy.

In case you were wondering, this is not a book about holy conversation in the sense of speaking to one another Christianly. It’s about worship meetings as opportunities to converse with God and with one another: to ask “what is God saying (and doing), and what are we saying (and doing) in response?” At a time when, broadly speaking, liturgy is making a come-back in the Free Churches, this book makes tempting reading. Although it is principally a call for greater spiritual engagement in the liturgy, by which it means the Eucharistic Rite (the author is a Lutheran) nevertheless there are some points of common interest for Evangelicals.

Its main thrust is that there is a wealth of spirituality in the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, and as such Linman offers both food for thought and good material for those occasions when we seek to encourage devotional meditation or contemplation in our congregations: at services, away-days or in small groups. Building on the monastic notion of lectio divina­ - ‘prayerful reading’ - Linman challenges us to practise a deeper engagement with God through his Spirit in our private and public meetings.

So far so good. Admittedly the meat of the book consists of a series of chapters taking sections of the Latin Mass as opportunities for Lectio Divina. If one can see the trees for the wood, this offers some stimulating reading. There is a chapter on Preparation for Worship as an act of conversation with God and one another; the Reading of the Word chapter offers that challenge to listen to God not only in the sermon, but in the word-read itself; the role and preparation of preachers and listeners is explored in a chapter on Meditation; Prayer is offered as an opportunity to engage with the Word and our own meditations that have arisen from it; Contemplation of the bread and wine is an opportunity to marvel with the church triumphant and the heavenly hosts at God’s special presencing of himself in the supper; and a final chapter called Sending provocatively imagines a church meeting whose agenda is set through holy conversation with what has just emerged from a worship context!

This holds out to us possibilities of a richer worship experience, especially in the Communion. Many of us with our frequently poor extempore liturgies - ‘habits’ might be a more accurate description - could learn a lot. One thinks of the wine in its tiny personalized glasses, people sitting in chairs with their eyes closed in splendid isolation, except for the moment when the bread plate approaches. Rarely do we watch the bread being shared (though, rapt as before a high priest we always watch it being broken!), rarer still do we watch everyone else drinking as by the time we’ve drained our glass so has everyone else; rarely, if at all, do we even acknowledge the presence of others around us except in that artificial and often embarassing Anglican import, the Peace. Recapturing a corporate dimension to the spirituality of our communion meetings would be a valuable specific application of Linman’s message.

Taken as a whole, the message of this book is for joined-up worship. It encourages that Holy Spirit quality of word-centered, community-centered, sacrament-centered teaching, prayer and mission which characterizes the life of the early church in Acts 2 as it grows daily in joy and awe, not to speak of numbers! It also challenges us to look upon spirituality, in our individualistic age, not merely as a personal, interior experience, but also as something corporate and accessible in the congregational setting - something which may be experienced together. Not half bad a vision of what it means to gather together in Christ’s name!