Worship Wars Roundtable at Regent

just attended a talk about “Worship Wars” at Regent with Marva Dawn, Ross Hastings, and Andrea Tisher (Regent’s music and worship coordinator). 

The following are a few notes from the conversation:

What do we mean about worship wars

• usually, clash of musical styles, content, lyrics
• Purpose of worship, directed where, to whom – more for God’s ppl or those outside the church

Ross

• Felt he lived through the worship wars, and its passé
• Tried for a blended service, and had to deal with critics on both side
• Now, he has 3 worship services for both styles,
• Feels there’s a new ‘war’ today
• This is to get ppl back to the core liturgy from the ancients
• He is contextualizing worship, and not to think that is naieve
• If you don’t contextualize it, you create a subculture
• Worship is for God with an eye for mission
• Contextualize in terms of music style and taste, almost generationally
• To fail to do so is not responsible
• Remove as many barriers in the way we do church
• There was not a loss of generational unity
• Ppl of all ages attended all 3 services

Marva

• From ‘reaching out without dumbing down’
• Every worship service is contemporary because we’re doing it now
• Every worship is traditional because we’re worshipping God
• Musical styles is an idolatry
• To insist that you have your own style over God is idolatry
• From ‘a royal waste of time’
• Talking about the different musical styles, etc
• Shouldn’t make worship services utilitarian, as the primary means of evangelism
• It becomes a cop out for our personal evangelism

Marva on 3 services

• She works with a church that has 3 services
• Has a difficult time with the very contemporary service because there are not enough songs that follow the liturgical service
• The liturgical calendar should be a gift to the world
• Worship is not traditional and contemporary, it’s all contemporary
• Just use these labels to argue with each other

Ross

• Would say it can be idolatrous
• Would rather say worship is missional
• In current evangelical churches, there is lack of depth in the catholicity of our worship traditions

Marva

• From her third book argued that worship is based on the ancient Judaica
• Deeply rooted in the history of the OT

Ross

• What defines worship
• Eucharist – the centering core of worship
• Participation in triune God (missing from today)
• We protestants are Trinitarian in faith, but palegian in worship (through works)
• Worship should have contemplation and silence

Comment from crowd

• Some have responded with blended worship, or separate services
• But Regent goes a third way, and tries to draw from proper liturgy while properly contextual

Marva

• Just want to object to use of word ‘blended’
• Don’t want stuff blended into a bland puree
• But instead, each music would have its own integrity
• So every hymn is played like a song and it no longer has a hymnic majesty/lament
• Would like to use the music of the whole world, but let’s be faithful to it
• (Sven) Robert Webber uses the word ‘convergent’
• else you are colonist

Ross

• Perhaps the worship wars was needed to help the church grow
• Back to issue of newer songs lacking content with the cross, or the trinity
• But ex of Brian Doerkson, see his development, he wrote a song in his new album called the ‘triune God’
• The churches who are judged as ‘good’ is all about the pastor or the worship leader
• Church should be judged about the centrality of another person, Jesus, so that’s why eucharist should be central
• Reformers say ‘Word and Sacrament’

Andrea

• Has encountered contemporary songs that are bad, but also hymns that have bad theology
• The critique against repetition (7-11 songs, that sing 7 words 11 times), is not valid
• Ie. Bach, Handel, etc

Ross

• Biblical literacy is shown to be better in liturgical churches because it has more scripture read

Marva

• In mainline churches (which is described as dying), they read 4 parts of scripture every service

Andrea

• There is a hunger for more scripture being read, not just preached

Marva

• There is a need for hearing the scriptures read well. Need to train readers

Comment from the crowd

• There is also a liturgical illiteracy, ppl don’t understand the structure, so it gets old and stale
• Ppl don’t know the liturgical calendar so are even more confuse
• Is it right for buildling our services based on others outside the church

Ross

• It’s a complex issue
• Missional factor is part of it
• 1 Cor 14 – don’t just do whatever you want, some new person will come in and say you’re nuts
• we’re here to do worship with structure that ppl can come in and worship God
• reading a book that proposes protestant worship with catholic substance
• so you have worship that is both wide and deep
• concerned with saints of the past and what they said

Comment from crowd

• What does it mean to be seeker sensitive?
• Person attended an orthodox church, had a person sit down with her to explain it
• Sometimes we push it on the service, but shouldn’t we own up to it and do it ourselves

Marva

• One of problems of our vocab – “user friendly” churches
• Where is the locus of hospitality, not in the service, building, but in the people
• Missional emphasis, our congregation needs huge training

Andrea

• Liturgy is done at every service
• Perhaps it’s just a manner of the degree in formality and thoughtfulness
• In a worship course, the class said to worship means they are focused on Jesus
• Yet our worship services are places where it’s hard to focus on Jesus
• We haven’t defined what it means to focus on Jesus
• And we haven’t explained what God is doing, it’s all about me

Marva

• Recommend James Torrance – worship, community and the triune God