Living God’s Story: Strengthening Liturgical Participation and Christian Formation through the Renewal of Enacted Narrative in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy

It is axiomatic in Orthodox liturgical theology that the central act of worship, the Divine Liturgy, is a participation here and now in the coming kingdom of God. This should naturally result in the shaping of Orthodox worshippers to live in this age according to the heaven-on-earth reality of the age to come, to live the “liturgy after the liturgy” in a life of kingdom-building. Yet there is little to suggest that this is happening in Orthodox churches today. Drawing on postcritical insights that challenge modernity’s limitations—especially the concept of life as an enacted social drama, the importance of narrative for signification and formation, and the priority of embodied, participatory knowledge—the author proposes that the decline in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy's power to transform worshippers results principally from an eclipse of the enacted narrative of the kingdom of God within liturgical celebration. Using his ministry base of an Orthodox mission parish as a case study, the author has implemented a series of changes in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy to recover and prioritise narrative elements. This includes the publication of a service book focusing on what to do in the liturgy—in essence, a contemporary mystagogical catechesis attending to the participatory knowledge of enacted narrative. Then, drawing insights from a narrative method of qualitative research with a group of worshippers at the mission, the author shows that, when worshippers are encouraged to grasp and embody the story contained within the liturgy, they can be inspired to reflect on and re-narrate their lives according to the story of God as a precursor of fuller Christian formation. The discussion concludes with a tentative model of narrative liturgical formation and suggestions for application in other parish contexts and for further study within the Orthodox Church.Doctor of Ministry (DMin