I’ve read several thought-provoking articles this year about worship, all of which were from the perspective of proponents for liturgical worship. The subtext of all of these articles is that the traditional church is dying, and that the razzmatazz of the contemporary mega churches is the reason for it. Let me start by sharing with you my understanding of what liturgical worship is.
“Liturgy” comes from the Greek, meaning “work of the people”. This means that in liturgical worship, the congregation, led by the liturgist, plays a prominent or even primary role. The congregation stands to say corporate prayers (prayers which the whole body of the congregation prays in unison), statements of faith and confession, litanies, and hymns. There is generally no band to sing the hymns. The worship follows an “order of worship” which varies from denomination to denomination, but they all pretty much follow the same pattern. (e.g. Gathering (prelude), greeting, entrance of the light, call to worship,hymn of praise, call to confession, confession of sin, assurance of pardon, response, passing of the peace, prayer for illumination, scripture, anthem, sermon, etc, etc, ending with a postlude). Liturgical worship follows a liturgical year: Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost, Ordinary, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and so on.
Liturgy has it’s roots in the Catholic church, and so many Protestant church goers have a resistance to it. The evangelical churches reject nearly any ritual. They have just reasons and I respect them. But liturgical worship has been adopted by many mainline denominations including Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Disciples of Christ. Being a Presbymethodist, this is what I’m used to.
All of the articles seek to justify the validity or perhaps even superiority of liturgical worship, while the rest of the world seems less and less interested in it. Contemporary worship people cite meaningless ritual and outdated music at the top of the list of reasons they do not worship at a liturgical church….it’s boring, they say.
So what is contemporary worship? I’ve attended a handful and found them very engaging on an emotional level. It’s a free form. A band leads songs of praise and devotion for about thirty minutes with prayers sprinkled in. The last song of the first set might involve an offering. Then there is a scripture/sermon followed by a high energy song of praise. There is often a video about one of the church’s projects somewhere in there, too. The space is not a sanctuary, generally, it’s a worship space with a stage and lights.
The idea is that worship not be encumbered by rigid ritual. It should be free, spirited, and emotionally engaging. I think the ideal here is that it be as close to pure surrender and praise to God as possible, and secondarily, it should make you feel good.
These aren’t the only kinds of worship. The Pentecostals are all about outward signs of the Holy Spirit and the Baptists are traditional in the sense there that there are often still traditional hymns accompanied by an organ, but non-liturgical. My experience ends there.
So who is right? And does God care?
Perhaps a good place to start is with a definition of worship:
Dictionary.com
worship – reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred.
The first word that pops out of this definition is “reverent”. When I think of reverence in worship, I think of heads bowed, hats off, quietude, solemnity. That sounds a lot like what Presbyterians and Episcopalians do.
Dictionary.com
reverence – a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe; veneration
Nowhere in this definition does it say anything about solemnity or quiet. When I saw AC/DC a few years ago, I felt a deep sense of reverence in the true sense of the word. There was nothing quiet about it! My sense of awe toward the gods of rock was, at times, infinite. So the use of the word “reverence” in the definition of worship doesn’t eliminate any kind of worship as valid.
In liturgical worship, there is an order and a form that enables the congregation to speak as one. We can worship on our own of course, but there is something powerful about corporate worship. That is the goal of liturgical worship. It engages the heart, spirit, and mind in the context of the whole congregation, and it covers all the bases. You get every element of worship ever time.
In contemporary worship it is both corporate and personal. They sing and pray together, but there’s plenty of room for your personal praise and prayer. It’s likely, because of the lighting, that you will barely see anyone else around you to interfere with your personal expression of worship, if that’s what you care about. But I confess, there is an intense shared energy in a service like that. It’s something much less formal and defined, but there is corporate worship happening. The emphasis is far less on intellect, and much more on the heart and spirit. I don’t feel intellectually stimulated by these services at all. But is that bad? I am so highly intellectual that it is beneficial for me to be free of that for one hour a week so that my heart and spirit can reign free.
So which is better? Our worship decisions are so often based on our own consumeristic desires. We have to have this music, this preaching style, this sanctuary, and this vibe in order for us to feel able to worship God. All styles of worship seek to do the same thing: provide a platform for worship and transformation. It’s not really fair to say one is all about entertainment and the other is boring as hell. That one is right and one is wrong. Because ultimately it’s not about that at all. It’s not about our preferences, it’s about God’s desires.
So then what does God desire? My belief is that God desires our wholeness. So what does worship have to do with wholeness? Isn’t it about praise and reverence and the sacred? Yes, yes, and yes. But do you really think that God needs these things from us? Does God really have any needs that we can provide Him? That seems very unlikely to me. I would say that God has desires for us. What I think is that God has designed us to need to worship. In order to become whole, we must surrender all, we must live in reverent awe, we must recognize the sacred around us and within us and within each other, and we must express our gratitude for it. If that is what worship is, then it has far more to do with every moment of our lives than what we do for one hour on Sunday morning. The worship service is important, no matter how we do it. It’s important for a church family to come together as the body of Christ, but it seems like a very futile act without a week of worshipful living to fuel it. Without that, no amount of liturgy or razzmatazz will save it from demise.
Import complicated 