How we worship says a lot about what we believe. Our practice always follows our doctrine. The worship wars have been going on for a while now. It seems that the newer cutting edge forms of worship are winning out. Contemporary worship has found its way into just about every (if not every) church body, while the old church liturgy has been jettisoned in many a church.
Whereas many churches are championing their contemporary worship, updated technology, and talented musicians and vocalists, other churches are bucking the trend and sticking to the old liturgy, while others (a very small minority) are jettisoning all forms of structure altogether, even arguing that the new contemporary forms of worship have too much structure, and that these forms of structure are not found in the bible. (See Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna)
As an aside, I highly recommend the long series Pr. William Weedon did on Issues, Etc. regarding the liturgy. It's well worth the listen.
What a church believes about what is happening in worship will drive how it actually worships. Numerous questions need to be addressed in this discussion. I will try to handle a few of them.
1. Is Christ present in the worship service?
a. If Christ is truly present in the service, our worship will take a different form than if he is not. If he is present, the focus will be on Christ addressing us first and only then do we respond to Him in thanksgiving. He leads and we respond.
b. If Christ is not present in our worship service, the focus and structure will change radically. Our worship will be centered on our acts of praise to God. We lead and we respond. This is not to say that these forms of worship are not about Christ.
2. What is the major purpose of the service?
a. If the main purpose is Christ objectively giving us His gifts of forgiveness and salvation through Word and Sacrament, then once again, the focus and structure of the service will be on Christ delivering these things to us.
b. If the main purpose is for us to offer up our praise to God (which certainly is part of any service), then the entire service will revolve around that. Yes, there will usually be a teaching session (sermon) and some exposition from God's Word. However, this belief makes the service more about our sacrifice for God and less about His sacrifice for us.
3. What does the church believe about the Lord's Supper?
a. If Christ is truly present in the Holy Supper, giving us His true body and blood, then our worship in this regard will take the form of receiving of a gift. Again, Christ acts first and gives us His gifts and we are but passive recipients of these gifts.
b. If the Lord's Supper is a memorial or a symbol of Christ's work at Calvary, the focus again shifts to us in some form. For certain, the memorialist/symbolic stance remembers Christ when they partake. But if there is no direct and objective divine giving involved in the Lord's Supper proper, then the Sacrament becomes a pious remembrance and not a direct giving from God for life, forgiveness, and salvation.
In summary, the points labeled with an a. represent the Divine Service or the Mass. These represent the old traditional Christian liturgy. The liturgy is structured as such for the reason that we are there to receive Christ and His gifts directly in Word and Sacrament, among other things. Churches use this liturgy precisely because of what they believe the Mass is. It is Christ present with us to deliver to us His gifts.
The points labeled with a b. represent the contemporary worship of American evangelicalism. Why are American evangelical churches structured in this manner? I posit that it is precisely because of what they believe regarding the presence of Christ, the purpose of worship, and their symbolic stance on Holy Communion.
What we believe about the purpose of worship and the Real Presence really do drive how we worship. If we truly believe Christ is present in Word and Sacrament for us and for the forgiveness of our sins, then there simply is no way the focus of our worship can ever be anything but that. He is there. And if we believe that, our pious praise and thanksgiving can never usurp the fact that Christ is our Prophet, Priest, and King, and that He is there to address us and give us His gifts.
This is why the contemporary worship structure of American evangelicalism simply does not work in a Lutheran parish. Why so many Lutheran congregations want to adopt this worship structure is beyond me. The structure itself is a tacit denial of the Real Presence of Christ in Word and Sacrament in the Mass. This structure of the service confesses that Christ is not present and that our worship is to be mainly about us giving back to God, as opposed to God still giving to us through the gifts that He has ordained for us. What we are unwittingly doing is adopting a form of worship that flows naturally from a particular Confession of faith. Namely, American non-denominational Baptist. We simply cannot be Lutheran in doctrine and Baptist in practice. As silly as it would be to walk into a non-denominational (Baptist) church and see the pastor dressed in vestments and beginning the service with the sign of the cross - it should be just as silly to walk into a Confessional Lutheran church and see a praise band of which the pastor is a part and that the pastor is dressed no differently than the other musicians. Why should we let Chuck Smith (Calvary Chapel) dictate how we worship?
Far from being a rant about different styles of music; what should concern us most is the structure being used. What we are confessing when we adopt the American evangelical worship structure is one of two things, whether we know it or not.
1. Christ is not present in our worship service and this is evidenced by us claiming that our acts for God are the primary focus. If people confess this, they are neither Sacramental in their theology and therefore not Lutheran. Why are they then trying to change the structure of the Divine Service? Or,
2. Christ is present in our service and our acts still should take precedence.
In the first case, we have adopted non-Sacramental -and thus non-Lutheran- theology. In the second case, well, how much more prideful and silly can we be?
Lutherans worship like Lutherans. This means that we confess that Christ is present among us in the Mass. We need to stop trying to be something we are not.
Pax
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