CyberGroup Discussion - Beyond the Worship Wars

Wayne Holst

This study is about excellence in worship and about model congregations that have achieved a high level of excitement, energy, and meaning in worship. We can learn much from these congregations about worship renewal and how to plan for and engage qualitatively in worship.

There will be much discussion about the details of worship services. We will think about music and drama, bulletins and announcements, architecture and choreography, words and symbols, planners and leaders. Important as these matters are, we need to think of them as mere details. The moment of truth in worship is when we emerge from those details and enter, with adoration, into the presence of God. It is God who transforms our meager efforts into a feast of joy. Humans are creatures within whose hearts and minds the need to worship has been implanted by the Creator.

The models we will assess are not named because others might have been chosen and these are examples of a much broader spectrum of churches that are living, growing, serving, and changing.

Traditional and Contemporary

First, a word about the terms *traditional* and *contemporary*. We are being encouraged by no less an influence than the Solutions Group that we need to find other terms to describe the two different forms of worship currently employed here. The truth is, the difference between these two forms of worship at St.DavidOs is negligible, compared to some congregations.

In some United Churches known by your presentors, the differences in worship styles is dramatic. But there is a general sense, across the entire mainstream church spectrum today, that we cannot be doing Obusiness as usualO any more and that worship styles must adjust to new cultural realities. It is assumed that that feeling is, at base, held by a significant number of committed members of our congregation.

What we seem to need right now are inspiration and guidelines to move ahead with creative worship planning, no matter what terms we use to describe our services. A basic assumption of this course is that worship at St. DavidOs needs to continue to evolve in vital and faithful ways.

"Vital" implies aware of and alert to the needs of all our worshippers today.

"Faithful" implies that we are not without resources for the journey. We are part of a long Christian, Protestant and United Church tradition and there is much to be mined from that tradition in order to help us move more intentionally and fully into the future of worship here at St. David's.

Hippolytus Versus Willow Creek - (See also References below for further information.)

Changes are especially explosive when they have to do with congregational worship. Worship lies close to the heart, and even a seemingly minor tweak in the order of worship, not to mention a radical shift in style, can set off controversy.

Traditional hymns for example mean different things to different people. For some it may mean Gregorian Chant. For others, it means 19th century compositions like "Blessed Assurance" or "What a Friend We Have in Jesus".

Modern hymns for some people may be in the mode of 1950's-60's jazz (e.g. "Twentieth Century Folk Mass" a la Geoffrey Beaumont, a favourite of our music director). For others, it means gospel choruses or Taize-styled chants.

To help us understand why there are tensions over worship, we need to learn about the important history behind the differing approaches made available to worshippers today.

Modern traditional worship got a major boost when the Second Vatican Council (early 1960's) cut through the old arguments and disputes of the Reformation and sought to penetrate to the core and essence of Christian worship. This set off aftershocks among Protestants and the result was an ecumenical consensus - or at least a convergence - about worship. The mainstream churches were discovering their common Christian heritage in worship.

Many ancient prayers and rites were revived and set into new forms. For example, the Hippolytus (third century) prayer is perhaps the earliest, complete eucharistic prayer we possess. This prayer symbolizes Christian worship when the church was still one - and reflects a pattern of prayer all Christians hold in common (see our website for links).

The Hippolytus force represents a recovery movement in worship; signifying the importance of word and table; preaching and sacraments. Another result of this movement was the development of a common lectionary (an ecumenical list of scripture lessons used across the churches); recovered gestures, such as the anointing with oil in the service of baptism or the lighting of candles at times of commemoration.

The Willow Creek force (originating in S. Barrington, IL. NW of Chicago) started developing at about just the same time. It was, in essense, a rejection of the modern liturgical renewal movement. Willow Creek arose in response to the belief that many people were leaving the mainstream churches because of "boring" worship; and many more had never been part of the church in the first place. The visionary leaders of this movement determined that people were not tired of spirituality - quite the opposite, they were hungering spiritually - but they were tired of the typical churchy kinds of spirituality.

Willow Creek pioneered what has become known as the "seeker" worship style. This style was geared to people who were essentially illerate about or uninterested in the typical kind of church service. The Sunday morning seeker kind of service gave prime time to people who were potential Christians, not committed ones. Services for committed Christians were held during the mid-week. Sunday services were contemporary in language and music; highly visual, employing dramatic skits and multimedia presentations of high quality. They were filled with messages pertinent to the issues faced by people today. Clearly, it was OChristianity 101O. A large number of churches in America, and many in Canada use this model, or a variation of it, for at least one of their weekend services. This is especially true in evangelical-type churches, but also in congregations we might describe as the old mainline.

Some Hippolytus types believe the Willow Creek folk have sold out historic Christianity and cater to the fast-food, historically ignorant, theologically vacuous and consumerist fads of modern times. In short, Willow Creek is superficial.
On the other side, Willow Creek types charge the Hippolytus folk with *playing at church* while growing percentages of the population are essentially heathen.

Actually, most congregations today are in neither camp, but find themselves in the mixed and muddled middle and are trying to sort out what their worship conflicts mean. There are people in both groups trying to co-exist in most of our congregations.

Finding a Third Way

The bias of our study book, open to debate in our sessions, is that neither the Hippolytus nor the Willow Creek approaches are finally up to the challenges of the day.

Some believe that, in the long run, the Willow Creek seeker approach is a pretty shallow pool and that those who move from seekers to committed members are not as numerous as we have been led to believe. The "circulation of the saints" motif might apply here. There is a certain element of the population that gravitates to "where the current action is" but then move on to something else.
Traditional services tend to be grounded in the essential biblical narrative. Seeker services are more likely to be grounded in prime time.

However, it can also be argued convincingly, that traditional worship as we have come to practice it seems hardly aware that we are in a changing and challenging cultural environment and that worship must always be ready to adapt. Out there, and even in our own families, there are growing numbers of people who are spiritually hungry but for whom the church is probably the last place where they would come to be fed. Just ask your typical teen or Gen-Xer. Talk to your Boomer friends at the club. Just ask your seniors who have more or less given up trying to influence congregational developments but who assume the church will be there to Odispatch themO when the time comes and who have serious questions about the meaning of life and death. There is a lot of spiritual interest out there waiting to be tapped but we in the church seem at a loss to know how to address it.

This study assumes that many congregations (St. David's included) really want to move beyond hardened battle lines and desire a third way in worship. Many congregations truly want a sense of historical Christian continuity, but they also want to be genuinely responsive to the present cultural environment and desire to be accessible, attractive and hospitable to newcomers and spiritual questers.

This study assumes there is a way through the worship wars that combines the best features and best impulses of both *sides*. At the same time, this study tries to avoid calling what it seeks to advocate a *blended* style of worship (i.e. a little something of the old and a little something of the new).

What we will be studying are congregational models which have created a new thing in the earth - a service of worship completely attuned to our cultural moment, but also fully congruent with the great worship tradition of the Christian church. A service that attracts the young, the curious and the hungry. Yet, it is also a service that draws people into a deeply refreshing pool of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it has been historically understood in the church.

Here are the characteristics of third way churches as the author of "Beyond the Worship Wars" sees it:

Vital and Faithful congregations:

1. Make room, somewhere in worship, for the experience of mystery
2. Develop planned and concerted efforts to show hospitality to the stranger
3. Recover and made visible the sense of drama inherent to worship
4. Emphasize music that is both excellent and eclectic in style and genre
5. Creatively adapt the space and environment of worship
6. Form a strong connection between worship and local mission
7. Maintain a relatively stable order of service and a significant repertoire of worship elements that the congregation knows by heart
8. Move to a joyous festival experience toward the end of the service
9. Have strong, charismatic pastors as worship leaders.
During the next four weeks, we will investigate, at some depth, each of these characteristics.
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