Sorry to anyone who has been following the study on this site. It was a very eventful week in the real world as opposed to the cyber world. The biggest item was a special service.
St. Mark’s style is largely small village traditional mixed with the Lutheran Tradition. In fits an spurts over the years it has attempted various things called “contemporary worship”. Churches are 30+ years into the worship wars and something called “contemporary worship” is starting to have a larger meaning. When most people from a traditional setting say it they mean a combination of two things: 1) something that connects with my life as it is lived and 2) something that my kids won’t give me such a hard time about attending. That larger meaning, combined with those two items has created what you are probably thinking when I write contemporary worship – guitar, drum, upbeat music that sounds like the radio. [There might be other things - like excellence of preaching and hollywood/TV production values. Those create serious problems for smaller churches like ours and are probably a driving force behind mega-churches. Production values cost a heck of a lot of money. If you doubt that they add something try watching even a great TV show from the 50s and compare to today. They are slow and only the absolute best are even watchable because we immediately know production values. But even production values can't save a bad preacher. Mega churches do two things: 1) afford production values and 2) give the very talented preacher the most reach. That very talented preacher is a very rare bird. If what the business guru's are saying now, it take 10,000 hours of practice to become truly good (about 10 years if you figure 4 hrs per day). Please note that if this rare bird preacher is a 10, I'd give myself a 5. I've only seen one 10 in the flesh. After hearing this guy, even a Chuck Norris would be reduced to tears or a coward ready to scale the heights. But that is all a sidebar.]
We took our turn at putting on a contemporary service. And the feedback so far has been roughly what was expected. There are those who just wish it would go away. It is confusing and awkward and maybe a bit undignified. There are those who found it invigorating and happy and think we need to do this every week. This post will serve as an online opportunity to give feedback in the comments section. The decision that gets placed before the congregation at this point is if this is part of what ministry looks like at St. Mark’s or if ministry and worship looks like something different.
That, preparation for Advent and preparation for another congregational event took big chunks of time out of my ability to write and reflect on the readings.
I attended the November contemporary service-I thought it was very spiritually uplifting, especially the communion service. Some of the more modern songs will take time for the congregation to become familiar with, but I have contemporary Chrisitian music CD’s, which I play when I am driving in my car, & I find them full of praise & a feeling of worship!! I have attended various contemporary services, both Lutheran & non-Lutheran & have truly enjoyed them & I am certainly not a young person!! I believe this is the way other churches are reaching church-seekers who are searching for relavent meaning of the Gospel message to their everyday lives.
We are not members of St. Mark’s but are looking at that as being a possibility. However, finding they are yet another church experimenting with contemporary worship, we are not sure. We are looking for dignified, intelligent, orthodox worship where worship is not confused with emotionalism. How does God want to be worshiped? His standards of worship can be seen throughout scripture and in Hebrews He had the words penned, “…with awe and reverence” for our God is a consuming fire. Is it really about old verses new or is is really about church verses the world? Is worship about us or about God? Could there be a reason we see no examples of musical instruments used for worship in the New Testament, only in the Old where they were done away along with the ceremonial law and the temple? At least that would fix the worship wars!
Thank you for the comment. You have some great points that we definitely feel the tension of. The post that this comment is on was refering to an experiment done in November and repeated in January. The request from some parishoners is phrased “contemporary worship”. The good Lutheran question is – “what does that mean?” Our little workgroup started to answer that and some of the answers might have been surprising and some not so surprising. The net of those was more of a request for modern language and pace in the hymns/music employed, but it did not extend to “worship band” style contemporary. We held exactly that conversation between the emotionalism based service and a service grounded in the Lutheran liturgical tradition. Even out of the “contemporary group” your heart would be warmed by the appreciation of orderly service. The main point was the music.
Right now what the form that contemprory has taken is a once a month service where we attempt to source all hymns from 1980 and later (which is not exactly contemporary, but for the church positively rebellious), but it is placed within an orderly litugical framework. That is actually a pretty tough task sorting out suitable songs that a congregation can actually sing. The other part of this tension is that we as the church are called to engage with the culture we are place in. In that sense we are always exiles in this world. Have we the modern church failed to give space to the creative people in our midst. Those creative people often define the culture that we live in. When was the last time that a congregation we were a part of sang a hymn composed by a member? Essentially when people say contemporary I’ve always taken that to mean a cultural expression that they can relate too. The church stopped setting the larger cultural expression somewhere in the 20th century. Relevance definitely isn’t everything, especially at the expense of the Word, but the challenge for the church in every generation is to engage the World with the Word in a way that some might hear – a creative tension. Getting very long. I might turn this into a longer post/thread is Ethan goes along, but thanks for the good comment.
So,,,is the purpose of worship for the people of God to assemble corporately to hear the gospel preached, confess our sins and partake of the sacraments? Or is evangelism the purpose of worship? To the former I say yes and the latter, no. Worship began its wobble when churches began to feel the need to cater to the world.
Your dichotomy gets to the very core of the issue. Is worship for believers or is it for seekers (let’s leave out the discussion of if there is such a thing)? If you are going to answer for believers alone, that does not relieve the church of the burden of the Matt 28 and go to all nations. If you are going to answer for believers alone, the burden on the church itself increases as it must use other places/events/time for evangelism. If you answer for believers and ignore evangelism, we are being unfaithful and turning inward. We serve ourselves and not others. If you don’t mind I’m going to pull this to the main page later today and expand a little.