For those with Patience, LONG

TEN YEARS AGO THIS WAS PUBLISHED
IN THE PREACHER'S MAGAZINE

I STAND BY IT:

Charting the Changing Scenes in Corporate Worship
Article written and published for Preacher's Magazine
by Dr. Russell Metcalfe, Pastor Emeritus,
Wollaston Church of the Nazarene,
Quincy, Massachusetts


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Just what goes into the Sunday morning worship service at your church and mine? Why do we do what we do? Why do we have Wednesday night Bible study? Why does there seem to be a conflict between some of the needs, interests, and purposes of various representative groups in our congregation? What should we be seeking to accomplish in worship? Is worship a means to an end, or an end in and of itself?
Some of the tenets we stress, and some of the concerns we ignore, may reflect ecclesiastical and doctrinal battles that were old long before we were born. Some of the things we hold as absolutely sacrosanct may be handed down from scriptural times, or they could be derived from idiosyncrasies or personal convictions of some strong personality of comparatively recent years.

God has not been included in this study as a "component part" of worship, for God is what worship is all about. Worship is centered in God, and is directed to Him--or should be. It is taken to be a "given" in this article that real worship will be our attempt to bring our best, our all, to the loving praise of God's glory; and that real worship is not complete unless and until a dynamic connection takes place, a Presence.

Seven elements of worship, according to James F. White, in a fairly recent book, are people, piety, time, place, prayer, preaching, and music. People are "the primary liturgical document." Piety, Time, and Place are what he terms the circumstances of worship; while prayer, preaching and music are the acts of worship.

In graphic form the elements of worship might look like this:



2. Piety 5. Prayer

3. Time 1. People 6. Preaching

4. Place 7. Music [1]


1. "People," to quote James White, are "the primary liturgical document."[2]

Worship which does not connect culturally is like instruction in a foreign language. In any normal church setting there is a wide range of levels of moral and intellectual development represented. Age groups see similar issues from different slants. Birthright Catholics see things differently from past Pentecostals or former Baptists. When there are a variety of cultures represented, a special challenge obtains.

Added to this are the changing attitudes of society at large, attitudes that are often all-too-quickly reflected in the church setting. Deliberate choices must be made by worship leaders about when to seek to be like other voices in current society (culturally correct?) and thus "connect" with people in tune with entertainment, pop psychology, and success-oriented thinking, and when to confront popular thinking, me-ism and television influence with demands for clear separation of lifestyle. Currently we see some odd combinations of living in the name of Christ-likeness.

Much is currently written about the influences of the baby-boomer and baby-buster generations in American society. Depending on how recent trends are interpreted, the flower children and peace-niks of the late sixties and seventies gave way to narcissism and introversion of the eighties, with continued emphasis on physical appearance and youth.

Some of the changing dynamics reported in various denominations have included lack of loyalty to any tradition; supermarket mentality in consumerism; lack of interest in Sunday School or midweek services, and more recently in the necessity for two services on Sunday; relaxed dress codes reflecting sometimes relaxed behavior codes; swing away from classical modes in music, literature, worship styles; instant gratification; preaching that affirms instead of confronts sin or wrongdoing; increasing conflict between a movement's drive and a denomination's stability. [3]

2. Piety refers to the climate in which we relate to God and to each other.

Probably it has most to do with the deeply held concepts of God that we have formed.

People who think of God first as a "God of vengeance," always looking for faults and sins, will worship differently from people who conceive of God as "keeping score, but willing to forgive," which is different from others who see God as predominately interested in sharing His life and joy.

Worship can cover a spectrum from totally evangelistic, with the assumption that everyone present needs to be severely chastised for falling short of God's glory, to almost totally praise and positive thinking, assuming that the assembled church is already "family."

For the purpose of categorizing only, think of three viable evangelistic modes or "sets" of worship as:

evangelistic;
penitential (with confession/absolution as central focus); and
resurrection, or rejoicing and celebration.
It is my contention that an ideal evangelical church will have a blending of all three, without getting stuck in any one category.
3. Time refers to the various chronological cycles in which a church worships.

These can be thought of as daily, weekly, yearly, and lifetime. Also under the general heading of time in worship, we consider punctuality or lack of it (often a cultural key,) and the usual length of services, and that length in relationship to the overall time-usage of the worshipers. Highly scheduled people will respond differently from more casual approaches to time management.

In a lifetime cycle certain churches expect their members to do certain things at certain times of their lives in certain ways. Sacraments and sacramental-type events, baptism, joining the church, weddings, passages, and even funerals are observed in widely differing ways, even in the same denomination, in different areas of the country, and in different cultural pockets.

Each church has a yearly cycle, whether or not such has been officially recognized by pastor or people. The American versions of the free church often substituted their own local or national observances for the ancient church calendar abandoned in Europe by immediate forebears. Ethnic-based evangelicals brought old-country celebrations or prohibition of celebrations with them to this country when they came. Evangelicals of many denominations in recent years have discovered the richness of the yearly cycles observed by Christians across the centuries, of days of Advent, Lent, Pentecost, Trinity, and many others.

Also under yearly cycles come such events as revival meetings; district events such as assemblies; as well as unspoken or tacit "attitudes" at various times of the year, such as "easing off" in the summer time from choir and from strictness of form in worship to accommodate vacation habits of large proportion of our people; the gathering of intensity as school starts in the fall; the unspoken and often unrecognized weariness and temptation to negativism in the spring when fatigue sets in for many who have been "flat out" for eight months or more.

Weekly cycles, too, should be examined. How often do we observe the Lord's Supper? Why? Why do we worship at 11 a.m. on Sunday? (Why NOT?) Why do we hark back to a mid-week prayer service for as long as we can remember? What does a church encourage its members to do regularly in order to maintain vigorous spiritual health?

Daily schedules might refer to what is expected of each participant in a congregation; what sort of prayer/devotional schedule/time management is practiced as the norm (or professed.)

4. Place of worship is the third "circumstance" of worship and is probably more important than usually thought.

There is a saying among those who make worship a study: "The building will always win." That statement is probably very nearly true. Many churches have been started in very unlikely places, and "wherever Jesus is, 'tis heaven there.'" But function is often shaped by form. Certain types of worship are almost dictated by certain arrangements of seating, furniture, and participants, as well as respect demanded by or given to the place of worship itself. Building materials of themselves are not sacred, but even as we love and cherish our houses until they reflect our personalities and become our homes, so the House of the Lord becomes more than the sum of its constituent parts.


The "acts" of worship:
5. Prayer is a universal in worship.
It is unthinkable that there should be worship without prayer. How do the people speak to God? Literally, how do they call Him?--"Thou" or "You"?

[Is there something somehow "holy" about addressing God in Elizabethan language? Do we realize that even then the "Thou" was the more intimate and familiar address that one would use with close friends? But when one has grown up hearing only this form of address to God, it becomes a "language of prayer" and connotes respect; so often the "Thee" or the "you" simply denotes the generation of the pray-er.]

What form does the main prayer of the worship service(s) take? How about he use of printed prayers? Is it a "no-no"? How often is the Lord's Prayer used? Is that important? How are people taught to pray? What emphases on prayer are regularly reviewed?

6. Preaching is another basic "act" in the drama of worship.

It is central in most evangelical services of worship. Exegetical, doctrinal, evangelistic, narrative, topical are all styles or types of sermonizing, plus there are always "fads" of various kinds (participatory, team preaching, drama) that come and go. Personally, I have an almost mystic faith that preaching "connects" when God is Present' that the written Word becomes the Living Word for those who listen with the anointing of God as the preacher preaches with the same chrism.

Others have less lofty ideas of preaching, although it remains central in most Protestant worship orders. James White speaks of one task of preaching as "stressing the corporate memories." [4]

Preaching probably at once shapes and reflects, defines and describes, spurs and soothes, enlightens and condemns, influences and is influenced by the entire church and all of worship. It is not beyond the discussion of the governing board, but is so arranged in my mind that I need a separate agenda for talking about it.

7. Music is the last "act" of worship that we discuss here.

Like preaching, music has "life of its own" in the church and we can approach it from many different directions.

The songs and hymns a congregation often sings say a great deal about the communal mind-set. Spiritual songs and hymns reflect all the tenses and moods of all of life. But in worship we tend to begin and end where our emphases are.

First-person songs tell about "I" and "We." They reflect experience, and they are important and useful. They can also begin and end with "me." God is important because of what He has DONE FOR ME! Of course He is to be praised for what He does for us! To paraphrase another author, we sometimes get the idea that "Jesus, Lover of MY Soul" would be turned around to "MY SOUL, Lover of Jesus!" We easily become self-centered, even in our so-called spirituality. We attract attention to ourselves in insisting that WE will do it such and such a way, etc.

But, too, it is hard to improve on "The Lord is MY Shepherd!"

Third-person songs tend to be statements of fact. They can be exalted statements that lift and bless. But in them we stand back and make observation. "Isn't HE wonderful?" (Of course, He is!) "To God Be the Glory!" lifts us as we sing--and all can freely enter in the praise. Many great doctrinal hymns of the Wesleys and others are in this mood.

But second-person songs and hymns address God in the "I-Thou" mode; they are actually prayers put to music. Whether they are older, accepted hymns ("O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder") or choruses ("Thou art worthy, Thou art worthy O Lord!) they address God directly, and put the assembled congregation into dialogue with God in prayer even when it is not called prayer time. This second-person music must have a central part in any significant plan of worship.

Music is highly significant in the shaping of thought; it reflects our state of piety and belief. Nowhere in the church have the emerging technological advances made more impact; we not only have instant accompaniment by professional sound track musicians in the smallest churches, we have television-trained soloists to clone the stars that make the hits. In some cases, they are cloning the clones of secular singers. These technical facts are not in and of themselves bad or good. What we can lose sight of is the fact that genuinely good music is:

highly subjectively judged; and
not necessarily correlative to genuinely popular church music; and that
there are no spiritual short-cuts to becoming a means or channel of God's blessing, even though it is relatively easy to prepare a performance.
To sing the words and sound the tones may evoke excitement and even applause. To convey the message God intends for the particular occasion still requires preparation for which there is no instant fabrication.


Addenda:
The public worship experience itself is dynamic. In my lifetime I have seen a shift from passive participation, if that is not an oxymoron, where just showing up for church was considered worship, to a demand for more active participation in worship, with an emphasis on saying and doing and responding to the Word.
Where we go from here is hard to predict. I have my own strong preferences, but my tastes are far from universal. Hopefully those who chart a course of worship in their local churches will remember they must speak in a language their people can understand, but also that they do not necessarily need to always say, indeed they dare not always say what their people want to hear. As Wesley urged his preachers to preach Christ in all his offices--prophet, priest, and king--so we who seek to determine the direction of corporate worship must use all the elements of worship in sacramental intentionality solely for the glory of God.




1. White, James F. The Study of Protestant Worship,
(Westminster Press, 1989).


2. Ibid., p. 44.


3. See "The Christian Century," July 10-17, 1991, article by
Paul B. Tinlin and Edith L. Blumhoffer on the 'Dilemmas of
the Assemblies of God.'"


4. White, p. 112.

Permission to reprint or publish this material is GRANTED as long as the reprinting or republishing is not-for-profit. You can access more of Dr. Metcalfe's sermons at his scripturally indexed sermon archives web site. Dr. Russell Metcalfe is Pastor Emeritus of the Wollaston Church of of the Nazarene. You can reach Dr. Metcalfe at eflactem@aol.com.