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    Exploring the Worship Spectrum: 6 Views
    Exploring the Worship Spectrum: 6 Views
    Exploring the Worship Spectrum: 6 Views
    Ebook370 pages4 hours

    Exploring the Worship Spectrum: 6 Views

    By Zondervan

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    An exploration of what worship looks like from a biblical standpoint and why the topic of worship can be so contentious among Christians.

    Because worship is inherently theological--because it's a manifestation of humanity's response to God's holiness--it's important to take seriously how we worship and the roles it serves in personal displays of adoration and in community with other believers.

    Exploring the Worship Spectrum provides an overview, critique, and celebration of six prominent worship styles:

    • Formal-Liturgical – represented by Paul Zahl
    • Traditional Hymn-Based – represented by Harold Best
    • Contemporary Music-Driven – represented by Joe Horness
    • Charismatic – represented by Don Williams
    • Blended – represented by Robert Webber
    • Emerging – represented by Sally Morgenthaler

    This unique format allows those with a heart for worship to compare different perspectives and draw their own conclusions on what the Bible teaches. It allows readers to understand the various approaches to worship, carefully evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and make personal choices without adopting a judgmental spirit.

    The Counterpoints series presents a comparison and critique of scholarly views on topics important to Christians that are both fair-minded and respectful of the biblical text. Each volume is a one-stop reference that allows readers to evaluate the different positions on a specific issue and form their own, educated opinion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateMay 11, 2010
    ISBN9780310861904
    Exploring the Worship Spectrum: 6 Views

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      Book preview

      Exploring the Worship Spectrum - Zondervan

      EXPLORING THE

      WORSHIP SPECTRUM

      Books in the Counterpoints Series

      Church Life

      Evaluating the Church Growth Movement

      Exploring the Worship Spectrum

      Who Runs the Church?

      Remarriage after Divorce in Today’s Church

      Understanding Four Views on Baptism

      Exploring Theology

      Are Miraculous Gifts for Today?

      Five Views on Apologetics

      Five Views on Law and Gospel

      Five Views on Sanctification

      Four Views on Eternal Security

      Four Views on Hell

      Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World

      Four Views on the Book of Revelation

      How Jewish Is Christianity?

      Show Them No Mercy

      Three Views on Creation and Evolution

      Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism

      Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond

      Three Views on the Rapture Two Views on Women in Ministry

      r

      ZONDERVAN

      EXPLORING THE WORSHIP SPECTRUM

      Copyright © 2004 by Paul A. Basden

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

      ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86190-X

      Requests for information should be addressed to:

      Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Exploring the worship spectrum : six views / contributors, Paul F. M. Zahl . . .

        [et al.] ; Paul A. Basden, general editor.—1st ed.

            p. cm.—(Counterpoints)

          Includes bibliographical references and index.

          ISBN-13: 978-0-310-24759-3

          1. Public worship. I. Zahl, Paul F. M. II. Basden, Paul, 1955–.

        III. Counterpoints (Grand Rapids, Mich.)

        BV15.E93 2004

        264—dc22           2003024153

      The Scripture versions used by the various contributors are indicated which hereby becomes part of this copyright page.

      The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      07 08 09 10 11 12 13 • 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6

      Dedicated to Robert Brandon,

      worship leader,

      lead worshiper,

      servant of the Word and Spirit in music.

      I thank God for your friendship

      and collaboration over the years.

      I am happily in your debt.

      CONTENTS

      COVER PAGE

      TITLE PAGE

      COPYRIGHT

      Bible Translations

      Introduction: Paul A. Basden

      1. FORMAL-LITURGICAL WORSHIP

      PAUL F. M. ZAHL

      A Traditional Worship Response

      A Contemporary Worship Response

      A Charismatic Worship Response

      A Blended Worship Response

      An Emerging Worship Response

      2. TRADITIONAL HYMN-BASED WORSHIP

      HAROLD M. BEST

      A Liturgical Worship Response

      A Contemporary Worship Response

      A Charismatic Worship Response

      A Blended Worship Response

      An Emerging Worship Response

      3. CONTEMPORARY MUSIC-DRIVEN WORSHIP

      JOE HORNESS

      A Liturgical Worship Response

      A Traditional Worship Response

      A Charismatic Worship Response

      A Blended Worship Response

      An Emerging Worship Response

      4. CHARISMATIC WORSHIP

      DON WILLIAMS

      A Liturgical Worship Response

      A Traditional Worship Response

      A Contemporary Worship Response

      A Blended Worship Response

      An Emerging Worship Response

      5. BLENDED WORSHIP

      ROBERT WEBBER

      A Liturgical Worship Response

      A Traditional Worship Response

      A Contemporary Worship Response

      A Charismatic Worship Response

      An Emerging Worship Response

      6. EMERGING WORSHIP

      SALLY MORGENTHALER

      A Liturgical Worship Response

      A Traditional Worship Response

      A Contemporary Worship Response

      A Charismatic Worship Response

      A Blended Worship Response

      Conclusion: Paul A. Basden

      Recommended Reading

      About the Contributors

      Discussion and Reflection Questions

      ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

      SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

      BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

      Paul Zahl: Revised Standard Version

      The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

      Harold Best: Various versions

      Joe Horness: New American Standard Bible

      Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

      Don Williams: Various versions

      Robert Webber, Sally Morgenthaler, Paul A. Basden: New International Version

      All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®.

      Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

      Other versions:

      The King James Version.

      Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible. Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      INTRODUCTION

      Paul A. Basden

      Worship is once again hitting the big time, getting its due, coming into its own. Whether or not that is a good thing, you will have to decide for yourself. But it certainly is not a new thing.

      Throughout Christian history, public worship has attracted attention, stimulated discussion, and even provoked contention. Christ-followers have debated controversial issues—when and whom to baptize, how to observe Holy Communion, how often and how long to preach—only to watch those debates degenerate into rancorous fights and full-blown schisms. For example, Eastern and Western churchmen fought over the role of icons in worship, eventually dividing Christendom; Calvinists killed Anabaptists over the baptism question; Luther split with Zwingli over the meaning of the Lord’s Supper; Puritans separated from Anglicans over the priority of the preached Word.

      Worship wars have been ugly before. Will history repeat itself?

      Today’s worship debates center mostly on these overlapping questions:

      • Should adoration of the one true God express itself in one true way of worship?

      • Since God is one and longs for his people to be one, should our public worship be more unified than diverse?

      • Does the freedom of worshipers compromise the integrity of the One we worship?

      • Does worship preference reflect our legitimate freedom in Christ or our selfish sinful nature?

      • Simply put, does God want all people to offer public worship to him in more or less the same way? Or does God affirm and bless all of our approaches that seek to give him glory and honor? And if he blesses some and not others, what are his criteria for rejecting those approaches that do not make the grade? (And while we are at it, why has he not been clearer about communicating the grading scale?)

      No one in his or her right mind wants to fight over worship. Keeping debates civil requires clarity and humility. Both of these qualities can be enhanced if we will look at worship through the eyes of theology, the Bible, and church history.

      THROUGH THE EYES OF THEOLOGY

      Worship is inherently theological. It is primarily about God. Specifically, it is about how Christ-followers offer to God their love, gratitude, and praise. Several theologians have served us well by defining public worship in ways we can understand. For example:

      • True worship is that exercise of the human spirit that confronts us with the mystery and marvel of God in whose presence the most appropriate and salutary response is adoring love.¹

      • Christian worship is the glad response of Christians to the holy, redemptive love of God made known in Jesus Christ.²

      • Worship, in all its grades and kinds, is the response of the creature to the Eternal.³

      • The [Trinitarian] view of worship is that it is the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father.⁴

      • "Worship is . . .

      • To quicken the conscience by the holiness of God,

      • To feed the mind with the truth of God,

      • To purge the imagination by the beauty of God,

      • To open the heart to the love of God,

      • To devote the will to the purpose of God."⁵

      Notice the underlying commonality: Worship is our response to God’s holy nature and redemptive acts. God’s love evokes our love. But having agreed on that core conviction, we find that these definitions of worship begin to diverge. Some emphasize God’s mystery, others his revelation; some stress God’s holiness, others his loving-kindness; some are monotheistic, others Christocentric, still others Trinitarian.

      The conclusion? There is no ideal definition of worship. No one has defined worship so completely as to plumb the depths of this divine-human encounter. To make matters more interesting, ancient creeds and modern confessions of faith have not settled on a single orthodox understanding of and approach to worship that has won the approval of Christians worldwide. There is no Chalcedonian formula for corporate worship.

      Many believers say, If you will just read your Bible, you will see how God wants his people to worship. (And it’s usually the way I worship!) What exactly does the Bible say about worship?

      THROUGH THE EYES OF THE BIBLE⁶

      A brief glance at worship in the Bible provides significant clues about how we should understand and practice it. Abraham built altars and offered sacrifices to God as a way of thanking him for making and keeping promises that one day Abraham would be a blessing to all nations. During the Exodus, Moses continued to build altars and offer animal sacrifices, but he introduced new elements as well: singing, festival days, reading God’s covenant, sprinkling worshipers with the blood of the covenant, receiving offerings, and building a tabernacle.

      King David revolutionized Israelite worship. It all began when he located the long-lost Ark of the Covenant and brought it to Jerusalem, leading the joyous procession by dancing in such an undignified manner that it ultimately cost him his marriage. That honest to God mind-set led him to write songs for corporate and individual worship that have lasted for centuries as the Psalms. He organized Israel’s worship by assigning the priests and Levites to be ministers of temple worship, appointing them as gatekeepers, musicians, and treasurers.

      As Israel’s worship matured and evolved, idolatry and immorality were lurking in the shadows. The people preferred to worship false gods of their own making—which they could see and manipulate—rather than worship the one true God whom they could not control. So God sent prophets to judge his people and to call them to heartfelt worship and righteous living. Persistent disobedience led to permanent judgment as God sent pagan nations to defeat both Israel and Judah, destroy the city of Jerusalem and Solomon’s temple, and thrust many of the survivors into exile.

      During the next five and a half centuries (587 B.C.–4 B.C.), worship changed dramatically. Sacrifice and music all but disappeared. In their place emerged three practices: reading the Torah, saying prayers, and reciting psalms. Keeping the Torah in all its detail became the goal of worship. Upon returning to the Promised Land, the Israelites formed houses of instruction and worship called synagogues. The synagogue service included a call to worship, extended prayers, recitation of the shema (Deuteronomy 6:4), Scripture readings, and a sermon. It also became the transition from Old Testament worship to New Testament worship.

      To the chagrin of many Christians, nowhere in the New Testament can we find a full description, detailed order, or divinely ordained style of worship. Instead what we find are pointed reminders to gather together as believers in order to engage in several practices that summarize worship: praying, singing, reading and preaching and teaching Scripture, collecting offerings, baptizing, and observing the Lord’s Supper. But no prescribed approach is sanctioned as God’s favorite. Instead we see diversity early on.

      • When we read about the early church in Acts, we discover that the first believers in Jerusalem gave priority to the apostles’ teaching, Holy Communion, prayers, and communal living;

      • When we turn to Paul’s earlier letters, we find him correcting—not rejecting—the charismatic impulses of Corinthian worshipers, encouraging them to speak in tongues, interpret tongues, sing in the Spirit, and perform miracles;

      • When we look at Paul’s prison letters, we notice that worship in the Asia Minor churches of Ephesus and Colossae consisted primarily of singing, teaching, and thanksgiving.

      Whoever looks to the New Testament for liturgical uniformity meets just the opposite. Within thirty-five years of Jesus’ death and resurrection we can discern at least these three distinct patterns of worship in the early church.

      To summarize: The Old Testament reveals varying emphases in worship in different periods in Israel’s history, while the New Testament unveils varying approaches to worship based on different locations and cultures. If we turn from the Bible to church history, I wonder what we will find.

      THROUGH THE EYES OF HISTORY⁷

      The spontaneous praise and preaching of the New Testament house church evolved into structured two-part worship by the second century: the service of the Word and the service of the Table. This represented a fusion of the synagogue service and the Upper Room meal. It also introduced a formal approach to worship foreign to the New Testament. Once Christianity was legalized and legitimized early in the fourth century, public worship moved from simple homes and assembly halls to elaborate cathedrals and sanctuaries. Worship increasingly began to reflect secular culture.

      During the next millennium (A.D. 500–1500), worship changed dramatically. Clergy became actors, laity became audience, and priests performed the worship: reading the Scriptures, offering prayers, handling the elements of the Mass. The Eucharist assumed exclusive priority, overshadowing all other acts of worship commended by the Bible. In essence, God had become unapproachable; Christ’s death had become unintelligible; the Spirit’s power had become unavailable.⁸ Few similarities remained between the simple, heartfelt, participatory worship of the New Testament and the formal, lifeless, priest-led service of the Mass in the medieval church.

      Several church leaders stepped forward in the sixteenth century to reform worship and reground it in the Bible. Chief among the reformers was Martin Luther. Luther abhorred the sacramentalism of his own Roman Catholic faith and sought to return the church to Word-centered worship. He replaced the standard seven sacraments with just two: baptism and Eucharist, both interpreted Christologically. He also stressed the importance of biblical preaching as a sign that the church was to be captivated by Holy Scripture alone.

      Luther’s friend, Ulrich Zwingli, was more radical in his approach to change. Believing that nothing in our sinful world could truly communicate the beauty of God’s spiritual world, Zwingli rejected music and musical instruments (especially organs!). He dramatically parted ways with Luther over the Mass, convinced that the words of institution—This is my body—must be interpreted figuratively since the earthy elements of bread and wine could not be vehicles of divine grace.

      Several years later, a new reformer, John Calvin, offered a moderating approach to their two extreme views. While he despised the empty, unbiblical ritualism of Roman worship, he wanted to avoid the excesses of Zwingli. He is best remembered for regarding the Mass as communion with the Lord, whose presence was dynamically active at the Supper; preferring divinely authored psalms to humanly written hymns; and stressing weekly exegetical preaching of the Bible.

      While Calvin and Luther thought Zwingli went too far, some did not think he went far enough. A group of radical reformers emerged in central and northern Europe, known disparagingly as Anabaptists. They rejected infant baptism in favor of believers’ baptism, state religion in favor of church-state separation, and the Old Testament in favor of the New Testament.

      At the other end of the spectrum was the Church of England, the Anglicans, who appreciated royal privileges and retained numerous Roman formalities. The reformation of the Church of England came primarily through its archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who compiled the Book of Common Prayer as the primary resource for church worship. Based squarely on the Bible, it reacquainted scores of believers with the Psalms, the Gospels, and Paul’s letters—all in their own language.

      If Roman Catholicism could not escape worship reform, neither could Anglicanism. Puritans sought to change the Church of England so they could remain members in good conscience, while Separatists became impatient and bolted from the flock to offer worship that was built more on Scripture than on tradition. One hundred years later, the brightest lights in the reform of Anglican worship were John and Charles Wesley. They organized spiritually hungry Englishmen into small groups of genuine biblical community where they studied the Scriptures, listened to lay preaching, sang joyfully, and served the poor. By the time the Wesleys died at the end of the eighteenth century, worship in Europe was fragmented: one could find formal Romanists and Anglicans, semiformal Lutherans, less formal Calvinists and Puritans and Separatists, and informal Zwinglians, Anabaptists, and Wesleyans. Worship in America would show even more variety.

      The earliest colonists in the New World brought their Anglican, Puritan, and Catholic faiths with them. Worship along the East Coast largely mirrored worship in Europe. But once the East Coast was settled, Americans moved west across the frontier. The religion that sprang up in this context was unexpectedly different; it became known as revivalism, named after its dominant emphasis on personal conversion via revival services. Frontier worship did away with formalities. Out went prayer books, educated ministers, and pipe organs. In came brush-arbor tents, song services, evangelistic sermons, and extended public invitations. In the process, the aim of worship changed dramatically. Worship was no longer for God. It was for the lost sinner who needed to be saved. The shadow of revivalism remains in much of our current worship practices.

      While white Americans were worshiping out in the open as free men and women, black Americans were worshiping in private as slaves. If America’s original sin was institutional slavery, then slavery’s salvation was black worship. How slaves who were unjustly treated could accept the religion of their masters is beyond explanation. But the worship that was birthed in the midst of this evil and suffering has become a doxological treasure within American Christianity. Marked by dynamic and exciting preaching, lively audience participation, emotionally powerful music, heartfelt prayer, and otherworldly hope, these services called downtrodden slaves to patiently await the day when justice and goodness would prevail.

      Pentecostal worship built on African-American worship, capturing its emotionality and adding an expectation of the Holy Spirit’s immediate interruption into everyday life to bless, heal, and empower. Paying almost exclusive attention to the charismatic passages in Acts and 1 Corinthians, Pentecostals rejuvenated glossolalia (speaking in tongues), recovered body life in worship so that every member had a part to play, and reveled in prophecy, miracles, and singing in the Spirit.

      SIX VIEWS OF WORSHIP

      Theology, Bible, and history all unite in this witness: Worship has never been practiced in all places by all people in one way. God is too profound and people too diverse for that to happen. The question now becomes: Can we identify specific ways that people are worshiping today and explain why they are the most common approaches?

      Some years ago I realized that the world of worship was changing rapidly and looked very different from what I knew growing up. That observation led me to visit numerous churches, participate in multiple worship services, and experience the richness of divergent liturgies and doxologies. At the same time, I began to read every book on worship that I could find. This time of hands-on exploration and academic research coincided with a request for me to teach a course on Christian worship at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University. Eventually I put my thoughts on paper. The result was The Worship Maze: Finding a Style to Fit Your Church.⁹

      Soon after the book’s publication, I realized that many people still failed to get it. They were so busy defending their own approach to worship as God’s obvious preference that they could never see the blind spots in their thinking. Then another idea occurred to me: Why not invite representatives from the most prominent schools of worship to present their views in a format where both strengths and weaknesses would be readily apparent? Why not provide a forum for interactive dialogue among scholars and practitioners who know their particular world of worship inside out? Thus was born the idea for Exploring the Worship Spectrum: Six Views on the Church’s Worship.

      Concluding that followers of Jesus Christ in North America are currently expressing their worship to God through six major approaches, I decided that my next task was to enlist capable writers who would clearly represent these views in an irenic spirit. God blessed the church in providing the authors who have contributed to this work. They are renowned for their leadership, writing, and speaking on worship. The contributors and their topics are the following:

      Each chapter summarizes a particular view of worship. The author explains the philosophy and practice inherent in this approach, examines its strengths and benefits, and acknowledges its limitations. Then each of the other five authors responds from his or her specific viewpoint by celebrating commonalities, suggesting inconsistencies, and highlighting blind spots. By the time you finish reading this book, you will understand the richness of worship as practiced in six major traditions as well as recognize clearly the strengths and weaknesses of the dominant approaches to worship in today’s world.

      It has ever been the case that worship is multiform, not uniform. God is not threatened by this reality—he ordained it; he expects it; he glories in it. As followers of him who said, God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), we should celebrate every honest attempt to express love and devotion to God. Concurrently, our commitment to truth calls us to offer humble critique whenever we believe that a worship style has failed to provide a faithful expression of praise and sacrifice to God.

      This book intends to be a forum where this kind of healthy dialogue can take place. May God use it to renew his people—the body of Christ—and make our worship more and more worthy of the One who deserves our all.

      Introduction Notes

      ¹Ralph P. Martin, The Worship of God: Some Theological, Pastoral and Practical Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 9.

      ²Horton Davies, Christian Worship: Its History and Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon, 1957), 105.

      ³Evelyn Underhill, Worship (New York: Harper, 1936), 3.

      ⁴James B. Torrance, Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 20, as quoted in D. A. Carson, ed., Worship by the Book (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 42.

      ⁵William Temple, as quoted in Franklin M. Segler, Christian Worship: Its Theology and Practice, 1st ed. (Nashville: Broadman, 1967), 4.

      ⁶See Paul Basden, The Worship Maze: Finding a Style to Fit Your Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 19–25.

      ⁷Ibid., passim.

      ⁸Ibid., 44–45.

      ⁹(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999).

      Chapter One

      FORMAL-LITURGICAL WORSHIP

      FORMAL-LITURGICAL WORSHIP

      Paul F. M. Zahl

      It was during Dr. Bedell’s ministry and well into the

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