Posted on 01/22/2015 5:05:08 AM PST by Gamecock
Missional Meditation
Consider this comment I received on the “Modernized Hymns” post.
"I have tried to avoid God my whole life. I wouldn’t know a traditional hymn from a modernized hymn. I’ve never even stepped foot into a church…until this past Sunday. The people on stage sang a song by David Crowder, and I began to feel the very presence of God. It was like nothing I ever felt before. Tears streamed down my eyes and right then, I bowed down and made a decision to surrender my life to Jesus. I ask you a simple question…wasn’t David Crowder’s song – guitars, modernized lyrics, and all – worth being written and sang that way? - The person next to you in the pew"
This type of appeal is quite common, both on this blog and elsewhere. I’ve heard it as long as I can remember. “We don’t worship like we used to because it doesn’t bring people to Jesus. You want people to come to Jesus, right? RIGHT?!? YOU BETTER WANT PEOPLE TO COME TO JESUS!!”
I heard one pastor say it this way: “When we aren’t willing to change how we worship so that our culture understands it, we’re telling the world it can go to hell.”
Yikes.
To make sure I don’t come across as mean or callous, especially to my evangelical friends and readers, I should explain something.
I do want people to come to Jesus.
But my answer to this commenter is, “No.”
For one thing, music doesn’t bring people to Jesus. Jesus does that work admirably enough through the Holy Spirit, certainly better than a brush with David Crowder’s beard.
But there’s an even deeper flaw in our thinking.
Worship is not an evangelistic tool.
We don’t worship together to attract unbelievers.
We worship together because God is worthy.
We worship together because this gracious God has called us into his story and grafted us together as covenant people.
We worship together because we desperately need to tell and retell and hear and rehear that story.
We worship together to be refocused, reshaped, renewed by God’s gifts. We need liturgy. We need Word and Sacrament.
Homily on Homage
Did you know that we’re supposed to do work in corporate worship?
I didn’t for the longest time either, having grown up in the middle of the church growth movement. As far as I could tell, the point of “worship” was to get as many butts in the seats as possible, mesmerize them with a theatrical production of bright lights and shiny objects. You know, the latest and greatest in Jesusy entertainment. And then, we bait-and-switch them with the gospel at the end.
At some point, we decided that the worship service was the best venue for evangelism. After all, if we can just make things interesting enough, funny enough, dynamic enough, and entertaining enough, we can really pack ‘em in. So, put together a mini-concert, followed by a speaker who knows how to get the crowd energized, mix in a few things about Jesus, and you’re set.
Even our language has changed dramatically, as we’ve learned to borrow more from our entertainment culture. Instead of a Sanctuary, a place of refuge, we have an auditorium. Instead of chancels and platforms, we have stages. We have performers and an audience. Churches are now hiring worship “producers.” Our music is entirely current and commercial.
We couldn’t possibly do anything else. We’d lose too many people.
To make matters worse, we’ve grown to like it ourselves. It’s nice to come to church and be entertained. Throw that liturgy out the window. I don’t want to work, I want to sit here and get fat off the spiritual carbs they put in front of me. And if the production value slips, I can always go down the road and find another fast-food church that fits me just right.
No longer are there opportunities for congregants to participate, other than singing along if they feel like it, as if they were singing “Roll Out the Barrel” at a Milwaukee Brewers’ seventh-inning stretch. We’ve lost the idea that we are gathered there for a sacred task, not in search of a good time.
And it’s cost us dearly. We don’t have the opportunity to be the people of God together anymore, reshaped by God’s gifts and molded by the Christian story.
And in case anyone is wondering, it hasn’t really helped the evangelistic cause in the long run, anyway. It’s still shrinking. See, when you compete with all other forms of entertainment – TV, movies, music, sports – you will lose. Those things are always more entertaining, at least to those who are looking to be entertained.
That doesn’t mean we lock our doors on Sunday morning. To the contrary, and this is the tricky part. Evangelism is always a byproduct of true Christian worship. The problem is that we thought we needed to be marketable to begin with. Along the way, we got caught up in illusions of grandeur, judging our evangelistic worth by the number of people we could squeeze in our buildings.
Cancel the Vaseline and shoehorn.
But the moment we turn from our task at hand to try and capitalize, we fall short again. Stanley Hauerwas says it well: “The difficulty with worship especially shaped to entertain those who are ‘new’ is not that it is entertaining but that the god who is entertained in such worship cannot be the Trinity.”
So back to David Crowder. Whether doing his songs or his hymn arrangements is a good thing, well, that’s up for discussion I suppose. But I don’t think answer can be, “It’s okay, because it brings people to Jesus.”
Hymn of Invitation
So what happens, then, if we don’t craft our worship services to attract unbelievers?
We’ll have to get serious again about Sunday. All of us. And then as the clock strikes noon, we’ll have to go.
Go out and feed the hungry.
Go out and clothe the naked.
Go out and associate with people who don’t look like us, don’t think like us, don’t act like us, don’t vote like us, and don’t usually like us.
Go out and fight for justice.
Go out and end oppression.
Go out and proclaim anew the old, old story.
Go out and reach out to those who are running from God and God’s church.
Go out and stop deflecting tough questions with our usual, tired cliches.
And do all of this in the name of the one who sent us.
And then open the doors wide again on Sunday morning.
Then we’ll actually be the church.
A Redeemed Benediction
I can’t help by think of Fred Pratt Green’s haunting, convicting hymn.
When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door, lest the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer, may our prayers, Lord, make us ten times more aware that the world we banish is our Christian care.
If our hearts are lifted where devotion soars high above this hungry, suffering world of ours, lest our hymns should drug us to forget its needs, forge our Christian worship into Christian deeds.
Lest the gifts we offer, money, talents, time, serve to salve our conscience, to our secret shame, Lord, reprove, inspire us by the way you give; teach us, dying Savior, how true Christians live.
Forge our Christian worship into Christian deeds. Wow. Let it be so.
Every time I say this I get howled down, but I am going to say it again: Worship is not the place for evangelism, but the goal.
“and I began to feel the very presence of God. It was like nothing I ever felt before. Tears streamed down my eyes and right then, I bowed down and made a decision to surrender my life to Jesus. “
Since this was the result; it sounds like things were done pretty well.
Dude!
There ain’t a true, confessional Lutheran on FR that would disagree with you, in concept.
Now...that “american evangelical” thing, mmmmm...not so much.
But still, the desire of God is served as best as our weak efforts can be used.
Far be it from me, a human to tell God what he can and can’t do with his worship.
ping for later
The author left one significant thing out...
We worship together because we are His...In Christ...the Body.
The church never was called to bring the unsaved into the church...church was meant for believers. We were called to go out among them.
Just as Jesus took his diciples aside with Him and further explained and elaborated to them what His teachings meant. So to was the church.
Today we invite anybody in and among...rapidly baptize them and then wonder why the problems and the world has become so much a part of the church.....further that the unsaved are taking over.
He certainly spoke of order in the church...too much of it borders as the Corinthian church, which Paul had to correct time and again they got so out of hand.
Pastors and Leadership are too afraid to make those corrections...so things continue to increase more and more worldly.
I questioned it right away......for it was all about “feeling”...and the “mood” set. Neither of which saves an individual...rather sets them up to “expecttations” that when they aren’t “feeling” somethings wrong.
One of the things I would warn people about is the Evangelical community and others are attempting to bring in the church these “mood” themes...they often resemble New Age with candles and soft music, low lights etc. with someone leading that all should focus on being silent and clear their minds.
That is NOT Christian and a prelude to what may well be the future church Jesus warns about.
Music style is not something to get upset over. God doesn't care about style as much as He cares about heart and content.
***God doesn’t care about style as much as He cares about heart...***
God looking at my heart is the worst thing I can imagine.
I am counting on God looking at Jesus for my redemption, not my foolish heart.
Sometimes it does.
What I do know is that preaching in a dead language as many of my fellow Catholics want to go back to doing has virtually ZERO chance of reaching anyone under 30.
Christ died to save sinners from their sins.
If a person doesn't believe their sins are that bad before God, they won't feel the need to be saved from them.
Therefore, what exactly are they worshipping?
Anything other than a Holy and just God, who desires to have relationship with man, at the cost of his son's death on the cross, and resurrection, that removes their stain sin, so that they maybe Holy before that Holy God, anything else is truly self worship. Worship to make ones self feel good. Thus worship of self.
When a person worships God, there are 2 beings involved (no matter the size of the crowd). The person and God. If the person isn't worshipping God, there is only one left at who they are worshipping.
What does an unbeliever know of Amazing Grace? Or the greatness of Gods faithfulness? What do they know of Holy, Holy, Holy, as they stand and sing covered in the stench of sin?
It must be preached in a living language. Take the book of Acts. They spoke in their native languages and it was an active, not passive, voice. Ramblings and repetitive readings do nothing to draw one to Christ. It is a personal thing between the person and Him...
It seems that today, people are more in a hurry to baptize, than make disciples.
Worship music changes. The contemporary hymns you hear today in church are the future of worship music.
The next Great Awakening will be driven by contemporary music styles, not the hymns of the 1880’s.
Leonard Ravenhill
Smith Wigglesworth
David Wilkerson
Dr. J. Edwin Orr
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