Business Week – Earthly Empires
If the church wants to see how the secular world looks at her, then this article in Business Week gives that opportunity. The church of America tends to fall prey to “fads”. The major reason that the church jumps into the swift currents of modern fads is what many call “cultural relevantism”. As a Bible college professor, I hear this term used a lot by young people who want the church to be “in” or “popular” with our society. The means to accomplish this popularity is for the church to adjust to the world, or to make the sacred look like the secular. When I discuss this topic with some of our college students, their premise is usually “Jesus was relevant to His culture and He fought against traditionalism”. I usually try to point out that this is a false premise and furthermore, it is built on bad hermeneutics. Is that what the Gospel is? Did the incarnate Son of God come to earth to to save mankind, be culturally relevant, and break traditionalism?
A culturally relevant church might be sensitive to its society, but it is subjective in its mission. At this point I must make a distinction in church mission. First, we are to worship the Triune God by responding properly to all that He has said and done for us. Second, the mission of the church is identified with the body of Christ in the world, filled by the Holy Spirit to do the work of Christ as commanded in Matthew 28:18-20. The First is our corporate worship and the second is our outreach. Worship must be objective or we end up with a subjective individualism like that found in the philosophy of William of Ockham and the nominalistic teachings of the Reformation. As soon as Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg, one church became five: Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Anglican. Truth became more subjective. This isn’t to say that the Catholic Church didn’t need reform, but the disunity that took place was not of God. The mission of the church, as outreach is concerned, may only work by being culturally relevant, but corporate worship ought to be objective and unchanging. I look at the Eastern Orthodox Church which has not changed its worship style for 2000 years, and it is growing, but they also reach out to the community in relatively unique ways. John Wesley was not trying to start a new denomination or change worship when he included small groups of discipleship. He was trying to enhance the quality of spirituality of the believer of the Anglican Church. So, why does the church of America run after social fads?
If Jesus would walk into a “culturally relevant” church, similar to the ones in the article of Business Week, would He not also drive out the money changers? Yes, Jesus was culturally relevant, but the reason we can’t use Him as a model for our worship being culturally relevant is that He is the object of our worship. We can do as He did in our outreach (His humanness), but He is also divine and our worship ought to reflect a balance…, if our worship is to be Christocentric. If not, then we begin hiring MBA’s and marketing people and we look more like corporate America and less like the body of Christ in the World.
Ron, how are you, my old friend?
I’m a little unclear by what you mean when you write, “The mission of the church, as outreach is concerned, may only work by being culturally relevant, but corporate worship ought to be objective and unchanging.” I’m not sure how worship can be objective and unchanging. The object of our worship, the Triune God, is unchanging, but we as the worshipers are subjective and changing. It seems to me that worship is the Christian’s repsone in the context of relationship with God. One of its goals is to know the Triune God, not with just an objective systematic-theological type of knowledge, but a relational and experiencial knowledge as well. If worship is our response to God in relationship with Him, it not only allows for worship to be changing, but I think it demands that we as Christ’s followers become creatively engaged in worship.
You note that John Wesley never wished to break from the Anglican church to start a new movement, which is true, but he certainly changed the dynamics of Anglican worship in that day. Charles Wesley’s hymns, class meetings, open-air preaching, and appointment of lay ministers all seem to indicate that Wesley was not satisfied with objective Anglican worship. Now, I suppose it could be argued that Wesley made these changes to evangelize not to change worship, but I guess I would want a clearer understanding of what we mean by worship.
I tried to sho that the mission of the church is two fold. The first is worship (being that vertical relationship) and the second is outreach in society (being that horizantal relationship).
Worship is either corporate or private. I was discussing corporate worship, which we in the Western world truly don’t know much about. It is this corporate worship that needs to be objective. We need an “order” of worship, not chaos. God is a God of order. I do think that contemporary worship can be done and give God praise, but I have not found (as of yet)a quality contemporary church that worships with a unifying intengenality that draws all its members into a harmonious order of worship. Most often it is individuals “grooving on Jesus”. I’m afraid that we are desensitizing our people. We need louder music, brighter lights, more outrageous entertainment and more songs that repeat the same phrase over and over twelve times with the first person pronoun sprinkled all throughout it. This isn’t corporate worship. It looks like pagenism! I recall the pagen priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel who did outrageous things in an attempt to get their God to respond to them. They were trying to manipulate their god for something they wanted. That is what the culturally relevant church (contemporary) often looks like. Worship should not start with us saying something to God. Proper worship, it seems, starts with God saying something and us, His people, responding to that Word, Revelation, or action.
John Wesley always told his followers to go to church, meaning the Anglican Church (the corporate church of England). He was culturaly relevant six days a week, but on Sunday he wanted them to attend the Church. He also pushed the sacraments. All of this he considered the means of grace, i.e. church attendance, sacraments, fasting, Bible reading, etc.
Worship is proper response to God. Cain thought his style of worship was proper. God told him otherwise. God expected something quite different.
I have much more to say on the topic, but time will not allow.
-Ron Adkins
Hello to all,
Ron, I agree a great deal with what you have said.
My simple and humble response would be this.
Worship is for God. Anytime we try to involve ourselves, or what is relevant to us, is selfish. I think we can all agree that God does not change, therefore, as far as God is concerned, there is no need to change how we worship Him. Changing our styles of worship is of no benefit God.
We tend to argue if it is right or wrong to change styles of worship. If we just ask the question, “Why should we change?” There is no answer that can be given that leaves our selfishness out of the equation. God does not need us to change, therefore we don’t need to change. To change our style of worship only satisfies our fleshly wants.
So the real answer is that we “want” to change our style of worship so do. It really is that simple. We would now need to review why we want to change our style of worship.
I can only think of one good reason to change a style of worship. If God receives more glory, and He is more greatly praised, or reverence to Him can be increased, then we have a good argument to change a style of worship.
I am not pretending to know which style of worship is the most holy one out there. Maybe the Orthodox church has had it wrong for 2,000 years, and we are slowly getting better at it! Maybe drums are evil, and maybe they are God’s favorite instrument so the more bass we have in a service, the more we truly worship God. I am not arguing “if” we should or should not change our worship style. I am just saying that we should be asking “why.”
If the answer is that “we need” to be more relevant to the world. “We need” to change with the younger generations. “We need” to change in order to grow. “We need” to be creative. “We need” to…
If anywhere in your answer you use the term “we” or even worse, “world” then your point is insignificant.
Yes, “we” are subjected to a changing world, but not to a changing God. So if our style of worship is broken, it has always been broken. If our worship needs to change, then it has always needed to change.
We have gone from kneeling with our faces buried out of such deep respect and reverence to Him in worship, to an electrifying emotional “engagement,” jumping up and down and shouting.
I say…”If the spirit so leads then go! Ye who try to lead the spirit though, be prepared.”
According to my simple, uneducated (no degrees from a Christian college, I just read the Bible) opinion, change of worship style is permissible if it glorifies Him more than our current style.
If we change for the right reasons, then our relationship with God will grow stronger. Worship enhances our relationship with God, and brings us closer to Him out of our praise. So if the styles change for the right reasons, contemporary music should produce a better relationship with God when we enter into worship in that style. Therefore those who worship through contemporary style, should have a closer relationship with God and the generation that “we need” to reach through this music should be more spiritually mature than the last generation, and even those who worshipped in the first 7 churches.
If, however, we changed worship because it was more emotional for us, we could be in trouble.
The Holy Spirit is awesome! He can lead us in directions that we could never predict or even dream of. David danced wildly for his King (although not in the temple). Miriam played the tambourine. Instruments have been used throughout time for worship. I am not condemning nor condoning a certain type of worship. I am just saying that we need to question “why” “we need” to change worship. We certainly do not need to change to be more relevant to the world, or to grow our youth group, or to meet people where they are, etc… These are all the common answers we hear, and they are poor answers.
Someone tell me that God can be glorified more, or that God can be praised and honored at a higher level, and then you have an argument. Keep in mind that being glorified more, or honored more is on a spiritual level, not based on the number of people we can get to do certain types of worship. The quality of the worship is far greater than the quantity (Cain & Able).