Contemporary question: Is it worship?

by Brad Isbell

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
- John 4:22-24

 …since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire
.-Hebrews 12:28, 29

A recent visit to what I suppose to be an ordinary, middle-of-the-road, mid-sized¹ Southern Baptist church stunned me, though it shouldn’t have—I should have known better. What I encountered (they used the word “encounter” a lot) was arguably not a Christian worship service. So what was it?

The 70-minute-long Sunday morning gathering can best be described as a Christian inspirational-motivational-organizational meeting with musical performance interludes. Here’s the liturgy, as best as I can recall:

• Opening song - Lyrics were projected (there weren’t many words), tune was written for soloists or professionals, maybe 5% of the congregation attempted to sing

• Promotional video for a church event

• Announcments

• Recognition of and prayer for participants in a completed missions project

• Another song - same as above, but with one and a half verses of scripture read at the end and a brief prayer for the service

• Another song - followed by a brief prayer for THE NEXT SONG

• Another song - lots of repetition, not many words

• Brief pre-sermon prayer, brief reading of sermon text, and sermon (a call for personal tranformation through authentic encounter with Christ, exhortation to sharing a “real” testimony with others)

• Invitation/closing song²

• More announcments and brief closing prayer

There you have it—a service in many ways not unlike many SBC or evangelical church services of the past 50-60 years. Similar, I say, in many ways, but tragically worse in others. Let me try to break it down:

• The beginning. The lack of a call to worship is unsurprising, but a rolling song-leader start (“Great to see you guys…”) works against reverence and any sense of occasion. The service had a less reverent and serious beginning than many of the attendees would have experienced in earlier decades.

• The organizational imperative. Announcements and promotions sprinkled throughout the service are de rigueur for modern churches. Such constant self-reference seems to be a felt need of all heavily programmed organizations—marketing to a captive audience who are presumably already connected and on board. Again, these work against reverence and make the church appear to be an organization much like any other.

• The music. The contemporary praise-and-worship selections were sung at the congregants, not by the congregants. Singing along with the musical team was almost non-existent…maybe because of unfamiliarity with the songs or because the songs were unsuitable for average church members to sing. A couple of the songs were vaguely hymn-like in their praise and the others were songs of personal testimony.³ No psalms, no doctrinal hymns. The music was not even up to the standard of the baptist hymnals or songbooks many of the congregants grew up with. Did it inspire awe? If it did, it was the awe of silent spectators.

• The scripture and the sermon. The amount of scripture read or sung was one of the most disappointing parts of the service. The sermon was biblical but largely motivational. The “witnessing” imperative theme was familiar to anyone who grew up in evangelical churches, but post-Young, Restless, and Reformed era and the supposed improvements in certain seminaries, the doctrinal content was disappointing as well. References to the Old Testament were entirely absent. The truth quotient of the service was low; there was little biblical content for the Spirit to use.

• The prayer. There wasn’t much: no Lord’s prayer, no invocation of the awe-inspiring Triune God, no specific prayer for specific needs of the people, no “long” pastoral prayer.

The bottom line: I believe the service had less bible truth, less prayer, less reverence, lower musical quality, and less congregational participation than evangelical-SBC services of earlier generations. Commendably, the service avoided Second Commandment violations and did not use video clips, skits, or props.

We in the P&R world talk a lot about the ordinary means of grace, which prioritize the biblical truth-saturated Lord’s Day worship services of the local church. It’s worth remembering (and this is nothing new) that evangelical and SBC churches often consider small groups, Sunday School classes, midweek activities, or personal devotional times as being of equal or near-equal importance with the Sunday worship service(s) of the church. In a sense, these churches are being true to their ethos with the organizational, motivational, inspirational character of their services. The goal: motivate people to be involved in the multifarious offerings of the organization and to inspire personal piety—piety aided by various offerings and deliverables of the church and parachurch organizations.

We need to grapple with the fact that many of our neighbors do not participate in distinctly Christian worship, even if they regularly attend a Christian church. They may have attached themselves to an organization with more or less Christian aims. They may hear Christian sermons or talks, and they may listen to (or even sing!) Christian music. But they may not be confessing their sins, learning the essentials of the faith, or gaining an understanding of biblical truth about our Triune God or the saving work of Christ. We need to remember that.

Let me close with a neighborly analogy. The concern for evangelical neighbors and what happens at their churches is not like being offended by our neighbors’ overgrown yards or their tacky or peeling paint. It’s more like noticing that the foundations of their homes are near collapse or that their children are not being fed or protected from harm. Worship and the biblical means of grace are matters of spiritual (and eternal) life and death.

This Presbycast show (video) and podcast (audio) examined these issues.

Follow-up post here.

1. A church in a small-to-medium-sized city with about 1500 members and 300-500 attending each of the two identical morning services

2. Many SBC churches have jettisoned the invitation. Its half-hearted retention in this case is a nod to tradition.

3. A problem with “songs of personal testimony” is that they may not reflect the experience of those asked to sing them and/or may be only vaguely biblical.