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Some call it Worship Wars, truly a sad phrase for the conflict being waged over the central act of the Christian community of believers, our worship of the risen Christ. Yet the fact remains, the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, like many others, is sadly divided over the issue of how to conduct worship. The conflict revolves around the abandonment of the historical liturgy and liturgical practices, along with the introduction of so-called contemporary hymns or songs. The primary purpose offered by proponents of  such changes is so that the church may fulfill the Great Commission to make disciples of all nation. This is one of the primary principles of the Church Growth movement. Following are some links discussing the issue of worship.

 

Rev. Paul Gregory Alms of Catawba, North Carolina writes in Consensus (http://www.consensuslutheran.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=274 ) "Our Lutheran liturgy springs from God's actions of grace and mercy to us in Christ, the preaching of the Gospel and the sacraments. Our true worship is to receive God's gifts. We receive them with thanksgiving and praise but the center and source are God's actions. Worship can easily be distorted into "us" centered activity where the focus and emphasis is on our praise or our preferences."

 

Rev. Paul Howden, pastor of St. Lukes Reformed Episcopal Church, has a long essay that Lutherans will find interesting (http://www.stlukesrec.org/acts/wars.html).  In his essay, he bemoans current changes in liturgy and music and lifts up a list of issues in the worship conflict from the writings of ELCA Lutheran Dr. Marva Dawn  (Reaching Out without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for the Turn-of-the-Century Culture):

 

· The danger of the cult of the charismatic leader. (p. 78)

· The elements and symbols that create a God-centered environment. (p. 79)

· Entertainment evangelism. (pp. 80, 187)

· God is the audience in genuine worship (pp. 82, 190)

· Why baby-boomers don't like doctrine. (pp. 85, 144)

· Advantages of the Church Calendar. (pp. 96, 196)

· The loss of "the holy" in worship. (pp. 97, 207)

· Praise choruses that foster narcissism. (pp. 108 ff, 173)

· The benefits of memorizing the liturgy. (pp. 120, 259)

· The Anglican Book of Common Prayer compared to a great cathedral. (p. 142)

· The folly of framing worship music towards visitors. (pp. 168, 192, 275)

· Shallow music forms shallow people. (pp. 175, 209, 248)

· The advantage of an organ in worship. (p. 181)

· Children's choirs. (p. 193)

· The characteristics of great music. (pp. 197 ff.)

· Tips for choirs. (p. 203)

· The role of the Pastor in worship. (pp. 216)

· The Church as a community of theologians. (pp. 235 ff)

· The wisdom of traditional liturgies. (pp. 254 ff.)

· Weekly Communion. (p. 263)

· The usefulness of silence in worship. (p. 265)

· Bowing at the altar, and other rituals. (p. 254 ff.)

· Why do people leave the Church? (p. 280)

 

James Barna of Barna Research Online (http://www.barna.org/cgi-bin/PagePressRelease.asp?PressReleaseID=126&Reference=F) asks What type of worship music do congregants gravitate toward? If the service attended is any indication, traditional worship music still reigns, although a minority of church-going adults experiences it. Presently, 40% of adults say they attend a service that uses traditional music (e.g., a choir, hymns, organ). The next most common styles are "blended" music (used in the services frequented by 12% of adults); gospel (11%); praise and worship (10%); and contemporary Christian (i.e., CCM) or Christian rock (9%). One out of every eight attenders (13%) said they don't know what the style of music is at their services.

 

Barna claims that the style of music is not the real issue. The Barna study discovered that among the key worship issues is that church-going adults and Protestant Senior Pastors do not share a common perception of the most important outcome of worship. Congregants were most likely to understand worship as activity undertaken for their personal benefit (47%) while Senior Pastors described the purpose of worship as connecting with God (41%) or experiencing His presence (30%). Only three out of ten church-going adults (29%) indicated that they view worship as something that is focused primarily on God. One out of every five attendees admitted that they had no idea what the most important outcome of worship is.

Another relevant research finding was that most pastors do not prioritize worship as a main thrust of their church's ministry. When asked to list the two or three top ministry priorities of their church, the survey revealed that worship was included in that list by only one out of every four pastors (26%). Other top-rated priorities included evangelism (listed as a top-3 priority by 41%), preaching/teaching (34%), ministry to youth and children (25%), and discipleship (19%).

 

 

Thomas G. Long writes in the Alban Institute book,  Beyond the Worship Wars: Building Vital and Faithful Worship (http://www.alban.org/BookDetails.asp?ID=897) that the worship revolution started by the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church shaped many current clergy's understanding of the importance of preaching and the sacraments, "the compelling logic of the classical structure of the Lord's Day service, the value of the church's lectionary, the power of gestures such as anointing with oil in the service of baptism, the beauty of chanting the psalms, the rich tapestry of time-tested language in worship, and the jewels to be found among the great hymns of the church" (p. 4).

 

Another force has been at work however, Long writes. He calls it the Willow Creek Force. In response to the declining numbers of worshippers, "a few visionary church leaders began to theorize that people were leaving churches . . . because they were tired of the typical churchy kind of spirituality, tired of the boring, remote, and highly institutionalized forms in which the established churches always seemed to package the search for God. . . (Many today are) "seekers," religious free agents, people untethered from conventional church loyalties, human beings hungrily searching in their own ways for spiritual experiences in very personal, immediate, often unconventional and practical ways.

 

A handful of churches led the way, says Long, toward developing "seeker-oriented" worship, none more publicly, famously or symbolically than the Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, a northwest suburb of Chicago (http://www.willowcreek.org/). What did Willow Creek Church and others like it, do? Realizing that most "secular" people who are willing to come to church for any reason at all do so on a Sunday morning, the Willow Creek Church decided to schedule its more standard style of worship - worship for the regulars and the faithful - in the middle of the week and do something quite innovative on Sunday morning. Leaders turned the Sunday morning service into a completely seeker-oriented event, a bold experiment in evangelism.

 

A growing number of pastors and congregations in the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod have adopted variations of the Willow Creek model. And so the conflict continues in our midst. Concordia Publishing House (http://shop.cph.org/Index.pasp?ct=472848341)

has recently released a book by Rev. Rodney E. Zwonitzer, former marketing executive for Westinghouse, Storage Technology and United Technologies Mostek, now senior pastor of 1300 member Emmanuel Lutheran Church and School of  Dearborn, Michigan (http://www.emmanueldearborn.com/),  Testing the Claims of Church Growth. 

 

 Calling church growth advocates people pleasers, Rev. Zwonitzer, calls the church to six practical steps to resolve the conflicts in our midst over church growth and worship-related issues:

 

1. Establish and work from a corpus doctrinae - for Lutherans that means defending one's position only on the basis of the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions.

2. Define terms - critical terms, issues and words must be carefully explained so that everyone is speaking about the same thing.

3. Practice the art of precise talking - resist name calling and always address the issues. Clarity and precision of speech prescribe more intense listening and less emotional speaking (James 1:19-20).

4. Refer all points back to the Scriptures. Use the original languages. Cite church fathers where pertinent.

5. Be willing to say we don't know. We don't know how, where and why the church grows the way it does (John 3:8).

6. Conclude with a formal written agreement for those in concord.

 

            CrossTies invites your responses. We will be happy to publish thoughtful, Scripturally based and confessionally oriented articles that address this vital issue. Let us know.

 

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