On The Worship Wars

I wasn't planning to post tonight because my brain needs a break, but if YOUR brain is working, you might like this. I'm sorry to say I've lost the source...I THINK it was John Fischer, but I'm not positive. I put my favorite part in blue print.

Jennifer feels she is really worshiping when two or three of her favorite praise songs are strung together, each one taking her higher than the one before. Robert’s passion for Christ soars on the third verse of “And Can It Be?” Tanya doesn’t feel like she is really reaching God until the decibel level reaches sonic boom proportions. Vincent will tell you that God gets through to him only in the silence. Irene thinks angels sing in the organ pipes. How are all these worshipers going to be fulfilled in the same church? Not very easily.

Having been a Jesus music pioneer in the ’60s, I have watched with interest and concern as the music we spawned in the Jesus movement moved into the church. I have been a Christian long enough to have grown up with the more traditional fare of “Crown Him With Many Crowns” for Sunday morning and “In My Heart There Rings a Melody” Sunday night. So I know why hymns are so important to worship, and I also know why music that’s more contemporary is so important to worship.

Three Churches

I can think of three churches I have visited in the past nine months that typify many others in transition. Gary is the worship leader of a growing Bible church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Much of the transition to a more contemporary worship happened before he got there, so he feels his job has been easy — to establish what the church had already decided they wanted: a careful blend of traditional and contemporary worship into one service. Still, not everyone is pleased all the time, and Gary notes how free people are with their opinions. “Once in awhile we have the youth worship team lead worship in the main service, and we definitely hear about the electric guitars.” He was quick to point out that a united leadership is very important to any transition.

United leadership is the very thing that Terry’s church in Rapid City, S.D., is lacking, and the ensuing confusion is having its effect on numbers and attitudes. This is a church that went to two services due to size demand, watched them each grow into two different styles of worship, built a larger building because of the growth, and is now losing members trying to put the two back together again. Humpty Dumpty was doing better when he was in pieces on the ground.

And then there’s a church in Lubbock, Texas, that has spawned what can only be considered a new church in its own basement. Candles, contemporary music, and a coffeehouse setting, complete with a full range of flavored lattes, set it apart from the traditional service upstairs. It’s an upstairs/downstairs church.

In Search of an Experience

Never before, at least in my lifetime, has worship been more important to Christians; and never before has it been so complicated and tentative, as people shuffle from church to church seeking the right blend of worship experience for their families in what seems like an endless zero-sum game.

Statistics show that larger churches are not necessarily growing by converts; they are just better at more popular forms of worship, siphoning off the attendance from smaller churches that simply can’t keep up. Even what used to be the all-important sermon may at times seem more an adjunct to praise and worship. Many people go to church today more to experience God than they go to hear about Him, and they feel that they experience God mostly in the music.

Nothing I know captures this shift better than the titles of two popular books about searching for God: Francis Schaeffer’s landmark philosophical work of the late ‘60s, The God Who Is There, and Bill Hybels’ recent, equally significant offering, The God You’re Looking For. Three decade ago, it was enough to reason God’s existence. If faith could be shown to be rational, people would believe. But today people are saying, “So what if God is there? Is He here? Can I meet Him? Can I encounter Him in my life … and in my music?”

Charismatic and African American churches have always had enthusiastic worship as a vital part of their services. While many of the more conservative churches were preaching discipleship and exegeting scripture 30 years ago, these churches were speaking in tongues, dancing in the aisles, and singing in the Spirit. Conservatives found these manifestations highly suspect and passed this behavior off as ultra-emotionalism. Now many of these same churches are sharing in 30 minutes of contemporary worship music, even tolerating a few upraised hands and swaying in the pew — and counting on emotion to revitalize their services.

Almost everyone coming to church now, regardless of denomination, is expecting some kind of emotional experience, and that experience they define as worship. The good thing about this shift is that it seems more people are willing to assume God is there. This assumption reflects a general spiritual hunger in our society. Spiritual themes are now common even in popular culture, and church attendance is up.

The bad thing is that each person now becomes the sole and final authority as to what worship is. In effect, 'worship’ is whatever connects with me. What I like and understand is what ministers to me. It should come as no surprise, then, that conflicts over worship styles are now called worship wars. People are bound to take changes personally if they affect their worship experience. This is not just a function of personal preference, this is sacred ground being tread upon: a person’s corporate experience with God.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no way any one church can meet such a broad band of expectation. But I am beginning to believe that God is interested in using the conflicts that have arisen over styles of worship to help teach His church deeper truths: that there is a way of winning the worship wars that has nothing to do with the “blended or separate service?” question. It has everything to do with getting a bigger idea of what worship is and a more mature understanding of what the church is and what it is here to do.

Your Worship Is Too Small

God is after a life of worship for each one of us. It’s what Paul calls our “service of worship” — presenting ourselves to Him continually as living sacrifices, transformed in our thinking and awake to His will in the world (Rom. 12:2). Unfortunately we tend to turn this service of worship (which takes up our whole life) into a worship service (which takes up about an hour a week). It puts a lot of weight to bear on 30 minutes of music if that will be a person’s sole worship experience for the week. No wonder people are fighting so hard for their music.

We worship because we are worshipers. We were created with this big cavity in our souls that can’t be filled with anything but God, and filling ourselves with God on a continual basis is the most fulfilling thing we can do. It is what we were made for.

True worship incorporates our minds in understanding, our strength in service, our souls in wonder, and our spirits in praise. It does not take a song to do this. It takes my mind on God and my whole being focused in His direction.

I also believe it is possible to do all this while doing everything else we normally do — in fact, this is what gives everything else meaning. This is what Paul meant when he said to do everything we do to the glory of God (Col. 3:17?). I never have read any qualifiers on that in my Bible, so it must be possible to do.

It’s our life, not a worship service, that will make us worshipers.

We don’t go to church to worship; we go to church because we are already worshipers. And if someone is a true worshiper, which means their whole life is an act of worship, then what happens for 30 minutes of music once a week is a small thing indeed.

If I’ve lived a week like this and I get to church with my fellow believers filling up a room, they can sing in French and play sitars and it won’t matter to me. I’ll be so happy just to be there and join my voice, however timid or strong it might be, with others who believe.

Yeah, me, too! I used to be prejudiced against the second service (I called it "the funeral service") but I've repented! Lately I've been going to both the second and third services fairly often, and I'm just happy to be there at both of them!