JAMIE SMITH AND THE HOMO LITURGICUS
I am so excited that my friend, Dr. James K.A. (Jamie) Smith is coming to City Church this weekend. He will be speaking at all the services this Sunday after leading a retreat for our Newbigin Fellows over the weekend. Jamie has spoken to the Fellows three times previously, and we've enjoyed him so much we just had to share him with the entire congregation!
This Sunday, Dr. Smith will be asking us to consider a crucial question: What is at the center of your life, and what does it really say about who and what you love? Sunday's message will be an invitation to engage in life-practices that redirect and focus our desire on God's kingdom and its vision of flourishing, in light of a marketplace that offers many other visions of the good life and invitations to love.
In his excellent book Desiring the Kingdom, Jamie asks what it would look like if Christian education (the process of growing to become like Jesus Christ as his disciples) isn't first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love? His teachings about desire have shaped the larger conversation about Christian living, and with good reason. Following the ancient teaching of the 4th Century master-teacher St. Augustine, Jamie believes that spiritual growth is fundamentally a project of ordering our loves and desires. Our identities are not primarily formed by processing information, but by what and whom we worship. We are homo liturgicus, beings who worship, "desiring, imaginative animals." "Humans are not primarily for the most part thinkers, or even believers,” he writes. “Instead, human persons—fundamentally and primordially—are lovers."
Smith's recent work with his "Cultural Liturgies" project has yielded two books on theology and culture (Imagining the Kingdom and Desiring the Kingdom), with a third to come. He works primarily at the intersection of theology, philosophy, and cultural criticism, and his framework for cultural engagement is one of the reasons we are so glad to have him here at City Church. Find him on Twitter @James_KA_Smith for reflections on politics, theology, and tennis.
Dr. James K.A. Smith is professor of Philosophy at Calvin College. He previously taught at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and Villanova University in Philadelphia. Jamie has also been a visiting professor at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Regent College in Vancouver, and Trinity College at the University of Toronto. His numerous publications include Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, Desiring the Kingdom, and Letters to a Young Calvinist. Jamie and his wife, Deanna, have 4 children and are committed urban dwellers who make their home in the East Hills neighborhood of Grand Rapids, MI.
Read an Interview with Jamie Smith at Christianity Today
Watch this video interview on worship, formation, and routine