Who Is Winning The Worship Wars?

This past Sunday on the way to our second home in Colorado, we attended worship at a Lutheran congregation that has two different services, one traditional and one they call contemporary, featuring loud rock-style music. Reluctantly, we went to the 11:00 a.m. Contemporary Service. As before, I found myself troubled by what I saw and heard—or did not see and hear. I also struggle to put into words my thoughts and feelings. So I did a little online research that I share today.


The research suggests that pastors are more concerned about the type of music used in worship than are the worshippers. The Barna Group's research shows that congregants are more concerned about prayer, the sermon, quiet moments for reflection and communion - http://bit.ly/kJ8C1v. Barna also discovered that church-going adults are more focused upon themselves than upon God. He concludes that the church needs to focus upon the God who is worthy of our worship and offer ourselves in response to His love and mercy toward us in Christ.


Along with many, I am concerned that much of what is called contemporary worship is extremely shallow, banal, childish and man-centered. This relates to what Brian Doerksen, a writer of contemporary music, says. In an interview about his work and about contemporary worship, Doerksen responds to a question about why he put out his recent album of songs about God's holiness. He says,

"Two reasons. The positive reason is, when I went to withdraw and seek God at the beginning of last year to learn what he wanted me to do, I had such a powerful encounter with him and his holiness. The more I meditated, the more it became the only thing I wanted to sing about.

The negative reason would be simply my deep concern about some of what is going on in the modern worship explosion—the shallowness, the man-centeredness, the banality. I wanted to do something that was about God and his core attributes. A song like "Holy God" is a God song, not a song about our feelings toward God. It's not our response to God. So this was my way of saying, "Think on these things." 

As pastors and worship leaders develop services, they must ask about the principles guiding them. What theology is reflected in these services. What makes the service authentically Christian and Christ-centered? So often we have not thought these matters through. Instead we simply go along with what feels right or what we perceive to be a style that will attract a certain group of worshippers. In an article in Christianity Today  Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger write,

"At the end of the day, culture is an arena from and to which God speaks, but also one that distorts God's self-revelation. So it is not only acceptable but also necessary that we bring popular culture and its symbols into the church, for through them God engages us, and we respond to him. But since culture's symbols can also distort both God's engagement and our response, we must be wary.

"The church has used and adapted thousands of cultural symbols for worship that reflect and shape its view of God and of the gospel of salvation. Pulpits, kneeling benches, vestments/robes, fish symbols, pictures of Jesus and the disciples, video screens, incense, movie clips, and so on all affect the church's view of God and the communication of the gospel. The result has been a consistent tension in the church between form and function.

"If the forms of worship are meant to communicate God and his message of salvation (the function), then as culture precipitates a change in forms, this change necessarily affects the function. The basic question the church must address is, Do changing worship forms adapted from popular culture facilitate an authentic encounter with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit as described by the Scriptures and understood by historic Christian orthodoxy?" 

Let me leave you with that question for today. Ponder it very seriously. The church has been thinking about this for 2,000 years. We have much to learn from that history. We also must repent of the hubris that causes us to decide that current generations are wiser and more faithful to the Gospel than the generations before us.