Reflections on Contemporary Worship in Light of 2000 Years of Christian WorshipLester Ruth

Methodist School of Music, Singapore, 22 June 2019

(title slide,slide 1) Before I begin, let me first say what a honor and privilege I feel it is to be here. I appreciate your attendance and thank the organizers of this event for inviting me to speak.

If we took one of these Christians from the past—(slide 2)some from around 1,500 years ago (Egeria [a pilgrim to Jerusalem in the fourth century], Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine of Hippo in North Africa, Justin Martyr of Rome in the second century) or (slide 3)one of these Christians from around 500 years ago (John Calvin, John Wesley)—and brought them to one of these services (slide 4)slides), what would they think? What would they say? What would they see as strengths and what would they see as weaknesses? Where would they be applauding and saying (slide 5) “Amen” and (slide 6) where would they be wondering what we were thinking to worship this way?

(slide 7, white slide) Those are the questions I want to play around with for the next hour in order for all of us to find a way to think about Contemporary Praise and Worship. I will bring in my work as a historian of Christian worship to play around with possible answers to these questions. Of course, none of those past Christians have been to a Contemporary Praise and Worship service and so my thoughts have a bit of playful conjecture in them. Nonetheless, it can be helpful to try to get out of our own familiarity with what is happening now in order to try to gain some new perspective on it. Before I try to help us do that, let me address a couple of background issues.

(slide 8) First, let me clarify for you why I am using a term that no one actually uses in everyday life: Contemporary Praise and Worship. The problem is that we know this way of worship when we see it (go through a series of images) but no one uses exactly the same term for it. Some folks have called it “Contemporary Worship” but that is a term that is mainly found in English-speaking North America among a certain kind of Protestants (usually from a mainline denomination like Methodist, Presbyterian, or Lutheran or in an established evangelical denomination like Baptist), who are usually white or anglo. “Modern Worship” is another term that is used in North America and in the United Kingdom, but again it is a term that is found among a certain section of people and churches. The more common term around the world and in North America is “Praise and Worship.” That is especially true among Pentecostals worldwide. Consequently, some of us have decided to fuse together the two most common terms and speak of “Contemporary Praise and Worship” as a way of speaking about the whole phenomenon. In that way I hope to not leave anyone out as well as have a term that triggers some degree of recognition.

This variety in names helps us see there is a variety with this way of worship and suggests there is a complexity in its history, too. To talk about that variety and complexity while giving a brief overview of how this new way of worship came about is the second background issue I would like to address. This phenomenon is not and has not been a monolithic entity without diversity. There are lots of common traits and tendencies, but it not exactly the same everywhere. I think these pictures can give you some hint of that. I want to give you a sense of this diversity and the overall shape of the history so in a few minutes when I am talking about Contemporary Praise and Worship’s strengths and weaknesses, I can nuance my suggestions a bit and point out when a particular assessment is more fitting to one kind of Contemporary Praise and Worship over another.

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And so please grant me a few minutes to unfold some history.

I and my research colleague, Lim Swee Hong, have found it helpful to use an analogy from rivers. Rather than force the history into a single narrative we have found it best to speak of two parallel rivers, each with its own channel, to explain the history of the first fifty years or so. Each river is best identified by the technical term that predominates within that line of development: “Praise and Worship” and “Contemporary Worship.” Within each river were multiple currents, a fact which increases the complexity of the historical narrative. Each current will contribute something to the larger river, reinforcing its character and strengthening its power.

(slide 9) Broadly put, the Praise and Worship river channel moved along on the sense of pursuing a new approach to worship as a fulfillment of the revelation of God, especially as seen in a scripturally grounded theology of worship focused on experiencing God’s presence through praise. Churches in this channel worshiped in this way because God had given this way of encountering the divine; it was a gift. I sometimes call this first river the River Gift.

Where are the headwaters for the River Gift? (slide 10 with animation1) In 1946 Canadian Pentecostal speaker Reg Layzell began teaching an interpretation of Psalm 22:3 (God inhabits the praises of his people) that emphasized corporate praise as the means by which God becomes manifestly present in worship. Soon Layzell had linked up with the Latter Rain revival, which had started elsewhere in Canada in 1948. This revival provided the platform by which this teaching on praise spread widely across the continent, especially in independent Pentecostal churches. (animation2) Further dissemination occurred as certain preachers, churches, and institutions (like Bible colleges and summer camp meetings) emphasized the centrality of praise, leading an increasing number of Pentecostal churches to alter previous ways of worship. A global missionary push—as well as international trips by Layzell and other first generation Latter Rain teachers—had taken the message, theology, and practices of Praise and Worship across North America and to every continent within just a few years. By the mid-1950s, for instance, this vision for worship centered about Psalm 22:3 was in Taiwan, the Canadian Arctic, Uganda, and in New Zealand and Australia (where it would impact a church eventually known as Hillsong). As various charismatic renewal movements arose in established churches, those charismatics tended to learn ways of Praise and Worship from the Latter Rain-affiliated folks rather than from Pentecostals in more established Pentecostal denominations. (Debbie Wong has done some preliminary historical work on Contemporary Praise and Worship among Methodists in Singapore. Not surprisingly, people touched by charismatic renewal feature prominently in that story.)

(animation3) Starting in the late 1960s a surge of published literature offering biblical theologies for underpinning an emphasis on praise began to emerge. This literature reinforced a praise-centered way of worship within the Latter Rain network of churches which crossed over to charismatic renewal movements and, increasingly, some other Pentecostals. This literature increasingly made a technical distinction between praise and worship based on biblical worship studies. (animation4) Combined with the increasing musicalization of praise in the same time period (i.e., an understanding that the praise in which God becomes present is congregational singing), this distinction between praise and worship led to early types of worship “sets” of extended times of congregational singing with good flow and guided direction from praise to worship. (animation5) Concurrently, the emergence of Jesus people (young adults in the hippie sub-culture of southern California) brought about an additional current of developments within this channel, particularly with reference to the writing of new songs and the

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widespread introduction of acoustic guitars and bands into the instrumental mix. This period also saw the publishing of the first how-to guides and the holding of the first instructional conferences.

(animation6) The mid-1980s saw an explosion in the number and range of churches doing Praise and Worship. The period also evidenced an explosion in the supports for pursing it in terms of explanatory literature and conferences. By the late 1980s the key music companies had been established and stabilized. The pieces and the motivations were in place to support intentional “exporting” of this way of worship across the continent and around the world, including large-scale conferences to teach the theology behind and musical techniques of Praise and Worship. In addition, non-white expressions of Praise and Worship in the United States and around the world became more visible and influential.

(animation7) Through the 1990s what had started as a singular emphasis in 1946 on the priority of praise had swollen to a massive movement. A major overhaul of Sunday worship was occurring in many churches as previous forms of worship gave way to a normalizing of Praise and Worship. This spread among congregations was reinforced in several ways. The Promise Keeper rallies in the United States, for example, gave a large-scale, public introduction into this way of worship for many men, including pastors and church musicians, while the dissemination of media like music cassette tape subscriptions and worship magazines resourced congregational adoption.

That is an overview of the Praise and Worship river, the River Gift.

(slide 11) In contrast, the Contemporary Worship river had different headwaters. It flowed from an anxiety that societal and cultural changes had caused the church’s worship to be out of step with people. This channel, largely associated in the United States with denominations like Methodist and Lutheran and classic evangelical groups and churches (usually white in their makeup), sought a new, more thoroughly inculturated way of worship to overcome the gap that had developed between culture, people, and prior forms of worship. Its purpose was to understand people’s desire in order to adapt worship practices to meet them. Churches in this second channel worship in this way because it was necessary to bridge the gap that existed between worship and people; the driving concern was this divide. The critical Scripture, if one was cited, was I Corinthians 9:22 from which was derived a vision of becoming all things to all people in order to win some. If the first river was the River Gift, I usually call this second river the River Gap.

(slide 12 with animation 1)The story of Contemporary Worship begins around the time of World War II as churches and parachurch organizations appropriated the wider cultural sensibility that the future lay with youth. Fearing the loss of a generation of young people who found worship boring and out of touch, concerned Christians adopted a mentality—paralleling developments in business marketing—that targeted youth and the developing youth subculture by using music and other parts of worship to reach and attract those targeted. This targeting established elements that will define Contemporary Worship for the next several decades: a concern for authenticity and fittingness, an attraction to creativity and novelty, and a reliance upon generational thinking with an emphasis upon youth and young adults.

(animation2)The angst about the disconnection between people and the church’s worship sparked a period of liturgical experimentation in established congregations in the late 1960s, sometimes under the name of “contemporary worship” and sometimes under alternative names. While this initial

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use of the term “contemporary worship” had faded by the mid-1970s, the traits developed in these experimentations (contemporary language, contemporary concerns, and contemporary music) continued as anxiety about the gap between worship and culture persisted in haunting many established denominations.

(animation3) The propensity toward attempts to overcome the perceived gap between worship and people received a jolt of energy from the Church Growth Movement, a school of mission theory that began to apply its insights to an American context. The result was a resurgence of a form of worship pragmatism that raised the appeal of liturgical experimentation and targeting, beginning with the advocacy for multiple services within congregations. Beginning in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, a pragmatic approach to worship became widespread. Pastors and denominational leaders were attracted to it since it played on their anxiety about numerical decline in membership.

Critical for the mainstreaming of Contemporary Worship were several megachurches who modeled the pragmatism advocated by the Church Growth Movement. In addition to modeling, these churches facilitated the spread of new ways of worship by serving as centers to teach other churches.

(animation4) Consequently, by the early 1990s many pastors and musicians had become aware that something new was astir. Eager to find tactical ways to bridge the gap and anxious about numeric decline, congregations began to adopt Contemporary Worship, often by starting a new service at a new time in a new space. Denominational officials, publishing houses, and events resourced those willing to build the liturgical bridge.

(slide 13) Around the start of the new millennium the two channels of Praise and Worship and Contemporary Worship began to flow into each other, establishing a new liturgical reality, a kind of confluence. This new form of worship became increasingly widespread, but lost much of its novelty as it spread. Each of the prior channels began to lose their original distinctiveness as the various currents mingled and shared. Whereas both channels’ early literature was breathless with a sense of novelty or a sense of urgency about this new thing in worship, both senses had begun to fade by the early 2000s. Authors no longer wrote as if their readers would have no familiarity with the phenomenon. Neither did they argue vehemently the well-worn rationales which had characterized both channels for decades. Instead authors moved on to a new task: fine tuning a way of worship that they assumed was a given in the broader liturgical landscape.

This confluence of the two rivers has an infrastructure that supports the whole phenomenon in different locales as well as globally. Elements in the infrastructure include the role of Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI), educational programs for worship leaders, specialized companies and consultants to facilitate technological resourcing for churches, celebrity “worship leaders” to emulate, celebrity “congregations” to emulate, and music companies with international reach.

That picture, generally, is where we are in 2019. I appreciate your patience in letting me unpack that history.

But back to the original questions. (slide 14) If these historical Christians came to these services, what would they affirm and what would they be surprised by? What would they applaud as a strength they recognize and what would they question as a possible weakness? Let us get to those questions now, beginning with what they would see as strengths. Although most of my familiarity is with

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Contemporary Praise and Worship in a North American setting, I hope the commonalities in the phenomenon will allow my assessment to still have relevance for you in Southeast Asia.

Here is the first thing I believe they would applaud as a strength in Contemporary Praise and Worship: (slide 15) the centrality of praise itself. This new way of worship has typically placed the praise of God as the cornerstone of the church’s activity when it gathers. Indeed, the word is found in the root phrase itself: it is praise and worship. Praising God is fundamental to this way of worship. It is at the beginning and it is the foundation throughout.

That praise is central is not surprising, given the theology for the Praise and Worship river itself. Remember it was a theology of praise based on Psalm 22:3 (God inhabits the praises of his people) that sourced the entire river. The thinking was that a habitation for God needs to be created and the lifting up of praise was that habitation. (Alternative versions of the Bible said God was enthroned on praise and that emphasis is sometimes made.) Once God inhabits the praise and is made manifest among the people, then the activity can naturally flow to worship, which dealt more with adoration.

This priority on praise was evident in several ways in Contemporary Praise and Worship. It was found in distinctive practices. Reg Layzell’s church, for example, met an hour before the beginning of the scheduled start of the worship service in order to lift up praise for that hour. A second way was in the new songs this river generated. Notice they are usually called praise choruses. A third is in the amount of teaching and study that was given to analyzing the different biblical word for praise. Many have spent much time analyzing the nuance of meaning, for example, in the seven Hebrew words for praise, including a new book from Chris Tomlin.

Praise was also fundamental in the different models for organizing and ordering a service. In 1987 Eddie Espinosa, for example, laid out multiple models that worship leaders could follow to organize a music set. Each begins with praise, whether the one based on Psalm 95, Psalm 100, or the Vineyard model that emphasized terms of relationship with God.

Indeed, the actual analysis of the most popular songs indicate that honoring God has been a main element in the songs that pray to God. You can see in these two spreadsheet analyses of (slide 16) some early and (slide 17)some more recent songs that direct expressions of praise to God (the second green column from the left) and songs that express praise indirectly by making some kind of statement that honors God (the fourth green column) are very common, even though recently there has been a shift in the weight between these two modes of expression.

While past Christians would disagree with the theology (more on that later) that so closely and automatically links God’s presence with praise, they would applaud the centralizing of praise as an essential activity.

Ancient services brought the praise of God front and center at the beginning of the services. (slide 18)The Liturgy of St. James gives one example. After an initial prayer in which the minister prays for God to lead worship, the next note is a bold and striking articulation of praise: “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, the Triune light of the Godhead, which is unity subsisting in Trinity, divided, yet indivisible. The Trinity is the one God Almighty whose glory the heavens declare, the earth his dominion, and the sea his might. Every living creature at all times proclaims his majesty. All glory, honor, and might, greatness and magnificence, are his, now and ever, and to all eternity. Amen.”

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(slide 19)And praise is the central feature of the central prayer in ancient services, the prayer said to consecrate the Lord’s Supper. Here’s how that prayer known as the liturgy of Basil begins: “Master, Lord God, Father almighty, reverence, it is truly fitting and right and befitting the magnificence of your holiness to praise you, to hymn you, to bless you, to worship you, to give you thanks, to glorify you, the only truly existing God.” There’s no doubt as what is most truly fitting and right: it is to praise God.

(slide 20)I would like to give a little comment here on what I often see in Methodist churches in America which are not doing Contemporary Praise and Worship. Despite how something in the bulletin might be labelled a “hymn of praise” or an opening “act of praise,” I often find hymns and texts in these spots that do not seek to honor God. They exhort us; they call us to worship; they give testimony of our experiences; they speak about our dreams and aspirations; but oftentimes they do not actually praise God in any sort of clear way. Perhaps that flippancy about praise that I sometimes see in churches is why I appreciate this common strength between the ancient church and Contemporary Praise and Worship.

(slide 21, white)Speaking of the prayer to consecrate Communion, let me highlight a common element between past Christians and Contemporary Praise and Worship: they both realize sometimes that praise should just capture the heart and be less concerned about capturing the mind. In other words, there are times when the human soul should just be overwhelmed with the greatness of God revealed in Jesus Christ and the resulting words of praise are more ecstatic than they are carefully rational or rich in theological content. Consider this ancient piece, for example, from Communion prayers: (slide 22) “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Some of you may recognize that as a piece whose technical name is the Sanctus. But consider what it actually is: it is an ancient praise chorus, pieced together from several small biblical texts, that praises God in a burst of ecstasy. How similar, it seems to me, it is to many of the contemporary worship songs that people today sometimes complain about not having much content. But I would rather see the allowance for ecstatic bursts of praises that are more about overwhelmed hearts as a strength, something shared in the ancient church and in Contemporary Praise and Worship.

(slide 23) This emphasis upon praising as the main activity leads me to the second strength that ancient Christians, especially those from the earliest centuries of the church, would acknowledge about Contemporary Praise and Worship: it is an understanding that the church’s time together should be spent in a flow of activity which has it engaging with the living God, not simply gathered as in a business meeting checking items off of a list. (slide 24) (On a few occasions I have actually seen fellow worshipers hold their bulletins and use a pencil to check things off on the bulletin as the service progressed, almost like checking objects off of a shopping list.)

(slide 25) The models for organizing praise and worship taught by Eddie Espinosa in 1987 are wonderful examples of the thinking that has characterized at least the praise and worship river. The goal in gathering was not simply to get things done, one after another, but to engage in a flow of activity that brought about deeper engagement with God. Indeed the term “praise and worship” itself highlights the fundamental flow of activity in all the models: from praising to worshiping. The emphasis was upon activity with and before God, not upon simply getting certain objects taken care of.

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I believe the earliest description of an order of worship and of the basic character of a worship service has a similar sensibility in that it emphasizes essential activity. The description is a famous one from Justin Martyr in the mid-second century. Let me show it to you. Please follow along as I read it:

(slide 26) On the day called Sunday, there is an assembling of those who live in cities or the countryside, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. Then, when the reader has stopped, the presider in a sermon admonishes and invites us to the imitation of these good things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers to God. (slide 27) And, as we said before, when we have stopped praying, bread and wine and water are brought, and the presider sends up prayers and thanksgivings in similar fashion, to the best of his ability, and the people give their assent, saying “Amen.” And there is a distribution and a partaking by each person of the food over which thanks have been given. And the food is sent to those who are not present by means of the deacons.”

Notice how Justin laid out his order of worship by actions. In other words, Justin’s description envisions an order of worship as a series of essential activities that flow from one to the next. (slide 28) Notice all the verbs (that is, actions) he uses to describe the order: gather….read….admonish and invite…stand….offer….present….offer up….assent….distribute and receive. These activities are where Justin puts the emphasis in his description of what Christian worship is. Of course, Justin does mention a few things or objects like memoirs and prayers in the order of worship. But go beyond the surface of his words and you will see essential activities. In contrast, how often have you seen people treat the printed order of worship as a list of objects that can be checked off like groceries being bought on a shopping list?

I think Justin Martyr from the second century would appreciate Contemporary Praise and Worship’s emphasis on a service as a series of actions. He might be upset, I believe, by certain essential actions not present in Contemporary Praise and Worship, but that is another point, one I will touch on in a few minutes.

Let me point out two other things that Justin would see as common between his ancient church’s worship and Contemporary Praise and Worship. Because the general historical development of worship tends to be away from these two elements, later Christians might not recognize them but Justin is early enough in church history that he would. (slide 29) The two elements are a sense of the time for worship being open-ended and having prayers be extemporaneous. Let us talk about the first: open ended time. Notice what Justin says about the length of the readings from Scripture: the readings went on for as long as time permitted. How long was that? He does not say but it does suggest the stopping points for the readings were not predetermined. That meant someone somehow had to have a feel for the room and what was happening among the people and what seemed fitting for that time and place. It is not hard to imagine the similarity between Justin and the sort of discernment of timing a good worship leader does in terms of what the Holy Spirit might be doing in the room: does it seem right to loop back to that chorus and bridge one last time or is it time to flow into the next song? Justin’s worship leaders and modern ones might be able to share notes.

The other dimension common between Justin Martyr and Contemporary Praise and Worship is that prayers are extemporaneous. Justin says the presider at the Lord’s Supper prayed according to his ability. He seems to envision a scenario where part of the presider’s skill set was to take sound content for worship and frame it into a prayer to which the whole congregation could say “amen.” And thus it

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remains in contemporary service after contemporary service: the worship leaders and pastors will need to frame prayers extempore. Hopefully, their ability allows them to do this in a way fitting for their churches and for God. Let us move on.

(slide 30) I think another common strength in Contemporary Praise and Worship which ancient Christians might applaud is the strong participation that has often been found in Contemporary Praise and Worship. The strength of participation has been overwhelming in many contemporary churches. Recently I was digitizing over a hundred tape recordings of worship in the 1980s from two Vineyard congregations in southern California. One of the most striking things is the fullness and richness of the congregational singing. The quality of the singing is even more amazing when you realize the lyrics were not being provided to the congregation in any way. (slide 31) These congregations were helped by a few dynamics that facilitated their singing. First was that most of the worshipers belonged to small groups, each of which had their own guitar-playing worship leader and the song repertoire was common for the entire congregation. In other words, their weekly small group meetings served as a kind of congregation-wide choir rehearsal for Sunday morning. They were also helped by the fact that the melodies of the songs were pretty straightforward as were the lyrics. The structure of the songs helped a good bit, too, because there is much repetition built into the songs through repetition of phrases and a cycling through a small number of verses with chorus. In fact, one repetition technique the songs employed were by being call and response songs. Either the vocalists would sing a phrase which was then repeated by the congregation or the men in the congregation would sing a phrase which was then repeated by the women. Finally, what helped the singing in these two Vineyard congregations was that the songs articulated what the people wanted to sing. They had been formed in a way so that the songs expressed what it was the people loved about God.

(slide 32, white) Ancient Christians as well as many of our early Protestant originators would recognize these qualities and applaud the strength of people’s participation, including congregational song. The reason for commonality is because these elements are common when there is worship in an oral culture where texts cannot be mass produced (or, today, mass projected) and you have to rely upon certain techniques to allow large scale participation. Consider, for example, how the service began in sixth century Constantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey). There was no way to provide all the worshipers with a text and, regardless, everyone entered the space together during the first song (and it is hard to hold a text steady when you are moving and being jostled in a crowd). What that ancient church did are things the Vineyard congregation would recognize. (slide 33) A group of vocalists were already in place and they sang (perhaps a soloist) the content of Psalm 95. What did the people sing? They had a short chorus (Holy Immortal, have mercy on us) that they sang as a response to every verse of the Psalm. (Remember that an order of worship based upon Psalm 95 is one of the models outlined by Eddie Espinosa, who was one of the worship leaders at one of those Vineyard congregations. And so, he would probably really resonate with this specific ancient practice.)

(slide 34) Early Protestants who emphasized the importance of congregational singing would appreciate the quality of singing in both the ancient church and Contemporary Praise and Worship. Facilitating a way for the people of Geneva to sing the Psalms well was a high priority for John Calvin, one of the foremost early Protestants. And John Wesley led a movement, the Methodists, that in many respects was carried on the shoulders of strong congregational singing.

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But past Christians would applaud more than just the singing in the participation of Contemporary Praise and Worship. They would applaud and recognize as a strength the multiple ways the contemporary worshipers participated in a full, conscious, and very active way. (slide 35 with animation) Consider this picture, for instance, of worship from the 1980s. Here you can see a thorough engagement of the worship leader in worship. Notice especially the body and the emotion. (animation) Now let me show you a representation of a worship from the ancient church. Do you see any similarity? I do.

As scholars have been doing more work in ancient Christian worship beyond the liturgical texts to the social dynamics of the worship they have described just how interactive the worship was between worshipers and those who led them. They have described just how loud the worship was at times and how robust were the emotions that they expressed. One author, for example, has described just how loud the congregation was while Augustine was preaching in North Africa in the early fifth century. Similarly, an expert in ancient Eastern worship has said patterns of behavior for a congregation were not totally dissimilar to other large-scale public events. And such evidence is not hard to find. (slide 36) Consider this description by Egeria, a pilgrim to Jerusalem in the late fourth century. She is describing the congregation during the bishop’s sermon on the sacraments: “The bishop relates what has been done, and interprets it, and, as he does so, the applause is so loud that it can be heard outside the church. Indeed the way he expounds the mysteries (the sacraments) and interprets them cannot fail to move his hearers.” Applause and shouting so loud it can be heard outside the building. This is a level of participation that much of Contemporary Praise and Worship shares with the ancient church.

(slide 37) The priority of praise; an order of worship as a flow of essential actions; and the dynamic participation of the people, especially in congregational song. These are three areas of strength past Christians would recognize in Contemporary Praise and Worship and would applaud.

But there are some things often found in Contemporary Praise and Worship that past Christians would worry about, things that they would question, areas that they would see as weaknesses. Let us look at these.

(slide 38) Here is the first question I think they would raise: where is God the Father? Past Christians would wonder about the marginal place God the Father has in much of Contemporary Praise & Worship. Their concern would not as much be about calling God as “Father” but how solitary the current portrayal is about divine activity in creating and redeeming. To put it simply, in many current services it appears Jesus does everything by himself. It is not as much a denial of God the Father as making him irrelevant. And so they would also wonder if Jesus Christ has not displaced God the Father as the primary recipient of praise and worship.

This marginalizing God the Father can occur in several ways. The first involves who gets named and addressed in the most popular songs. (slide 39) Take a look at the most popular songs of the last thirty years and there is a clear picture: Jesus Christ gets explicitly named much more than God the Father (and the Holy Spirit) and worship is directed to Jesus Christ much more in these songs. (slide 40) Among the most popular songs in the United States, for example, God the Father is clearly mentioned in less than one in every five songs and directly addressing God the Father in prayer occurs in less than one in every ten songs. In comparison, half of the most popular songs make a clear reference to Jesus Christ and about one in every five is a direct address to him in prayer. This preponderance of making God the Father marginal is what would be called in tennis an unforced error. A little bit more intentionality and

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editing would bring the song into more classic patterns of naming and worshiping God. A song will be going along well, talking about God in a way that one would think it is about God the Father, and then the chorus or bridge will make sure that all of this is about Jesus. That is where the unforced error is.

Perhaps what they would see in the song would be tied to very common prayer practices in many Contemporary Praise and Worship Services. Many times all of the praying during the time of congregational singing will address all prayer, whether spoken or in the songs, to Jesus Christ. It is truly Jesus only during the song set. But as soon as the music is over there will be a switch: the praying will be directly addressed to God the Father.

Past Christians would be mystified by this sort of pattern. (slide 41) What is much more common and classic is for two kinds of Trinitarian dynamics in the worship content, especially in the prayers. The first is a kind of equal worshiping of all three Persons, saying something like “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.” Notice even here, however, that the naming of God the Father comes first. This sort of material often appears at the very end of prayers or as a separate, stand alone act of praise. Here is an example from around the fifth century, a petition: “Guard us from everything evil, and preserve us for continually pleasing, worshiping, and glorifying you, the Father, and your only-begotten Son, and your all-holy Spirit, now and always, and for ever.”

The second kind of dynamic is to specifically aim the worship at God the Father and to offer it through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. That way is a kind of reflection back of God’s saving kindness for us, which comes from God the Father through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. For example, the early Protestant Reformer, John Calvin, loved this approach in his prayers. Here is a section of the opening prayer from the service he created for the churches in his area: “O loving God and Father, full of compassion, have mercy upon us in the name of your Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, By wiping away our sins and stains, free us and make the gifts of your Holy Spirit grow in us daily.”

With this sort of understanding, Calvin and other past Christians would be wondering what it is that many of our services are talking about. They would ask us, “Where is God the Father in your worship?” They would say the marginal place of God the Father is a weakness in our worship since he is not marginal in the portrayal of salvation in the New Testament.

(slide 42) I think the second question past Christians would ask also deals with prayer: where are the intercessions? That question would quickly be followed by another: is there a broad enough range of prayers? And, perhaps, even a more fundamental one: is there enough prayer in the service? Their concern would be that worshipers in Contemporary Praise and Worship services have dropped out several kinds of prayer that are important to fulfill their role as a church and to be fully honest before God. Sometimes praying at all seems to have been dropped except as a way to transition between more important elements like singing and preaching.

With respect to the absence of intercessions, what would strike most past Christians is the current failure to ask God on behalf of anyone who is not in the room. Many services do not intercede or ask for anyone not in the worship space. And many times the things asked for do not go beyond what those in the room see as pressing needs.

And past Christians would be considered about the amount of praying in a service as well as the loss of certain kinds of important prayers like thanksgiving, confession of sin, and lament.

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(slide 43) Again the songs are a good window into prayer tendencies in services, especially since they often are the main ways that praying is taking place. Here is an analysis of the types of prayer expressed in some of the more popular contemporary worship songs, both early and more recent. What predominates is praise (not surprisingly), praise-like statements that honor God, petitions for ourselves, and statements rehearsing the relationship between us and God. What is missing is thanksgiving (the first blue column), adoration (the third blue column), intercession, lament, and confession of sin.

Past Christians would wonder about that because prayer, in a range of kinds of prayer, is like the concrete foundation upon which the whole service rests like a building rests on its good foundation. Indeed, the services during the years 400 to 500, the time when we first start getting surviving written records of the texts for worship services, show the nature of the services felt very much like an ongoing dialog between God and God’s people. To prepare for today I tried to sit down and count the number of prayers in an ancient service called the Liturgy of St. James. I had only gone a few pages into it and the question that kept arising was this one: “What is not a prayer?” And holding a critical place in this prayer dialog in ancient services was at least one major intercession in which the church prayed for the world. It was an approach to prayer that sought to match the breadth of Jesus Christ’s own lordship and prayer ministry.

(slide 44) If past Christians would wonder about prayer in Contemporary Praise and Worship, they would also wonder about the basic content of our worship. Here is what I think their question would be: is the narrative being told about what God has done in Jesus Christ a good and full enough story? That question could be related to a second one: is the narrative being told an honest enough one about humans?

Those questions are particularly applicable in Contemporary Praise and Worship that derives from the River Gap, which you will remember is the line of development that was concerned about overcoming the gap between people, culture, and the church’s worship. In many instances, approaches to Contemporary Praise and Worship with this sensibility would emphasize trying to assess what people thought was relevant. They would ask questions about what people felt were their needs and begin worshiping planning from that point. Of course, no one past or present would argue that the church should intentionally aim for being irrelevant to people in worship, but it is a fair concern to wonder if everything that modern people feel exhausts everything that should be talked about in the worship of God. (slide 45) It is easy to think about critical things in the Bible that could be easily overlooked since there is little felt need for them: confession of sin, unjust structures of society, the redemption of the whole created order, the nature of our future resurrected body, and the nature of the last judgment.

More generally about Contemporary Praise and Worship, I believe past Christians would be concerned about the breadth of the content in contemporary service. I can imagine them visiting and pondering questions like these: (slide 46) how much of the Bible could someone not know and yet not be lost in this service? They might wonder whether our services asked us to know anything from the Old Testament, God’s work prior to the coming of Christ, other than knowing that God created the world. They might wonder, too, whether our services asked us to know anything about Jesus Christ other than he died and rose again. They might wonder, too, whether our services glorify God for the breadth of his saving work: it is the entire order of creation that is being redeemed in Jesus.

I believe they would wonder about these questions because past historic Christian worship often had an expansive view of God’s activity. In addition, the rhythms of the year unpacked the saving

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significance of Jesus’ entire birth, life, death, and resurrection including his circumcision, naming, presentation, miracles, and Ascension. And the rhythms of time allowed worshipers to walk through a variety of postures of the soul before God.

Take the shape of time over a course of the year. By around the year 400 a yearly rhythm existed that shaped Christians in a transition from humility, preparation, and honesty about sin to glorious celebration of events in the life of Christ that changed the direction of the world: Christ’s Incarnation at his birth and his Resurrection.

(slide 47) And past worship materials typically portray a very big God doing very big things through Jesus Christ. Consider the portrayal of the significance of Christ’s resurrection in the famous sermon attributed to the fourth century preacher, John Chrysostom. Here is an excerpt:

Let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it. He destroyed Hell when he descended into it. Hell took a body, and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven.

What Chrysostom said about Christ’s death and resurrection is not that different from the themes that come out in Charles Wesley’s early Methodist hymns on Christ’s birth: Jesus, the holy child, / Does by his birth declare, / That God and man are reconciled, / And one in him we are. / Salvation through his name / To all people is given, / And loud his infant cries proclaim / A peace between earth and heaven.

And Chrysostom would recognize the image of power that Wesley places even in the small infant hands of Jesus: Gaze on that helpless object / Of endless adoration! / Those infant hands / Shall burst our bands / And work out our salvation: / Strangle the crooked serpent, / Destroy his works for ever.

So far I have mentioned three areas that I think past Christians might think are common weaknesses in Contemporary Praise and Worship: What happened to God the Father? What happened to the praying? And what happened to a big, full narrative about what God is up to?

(slide 48) There is a fourth question I think past Christians would pose to us in Contemporary Praise and Worship today: is it good to make music a new sacrament? You will remember how the association of praising God with experiencing God’s presence has been the dominant idea in the River Gift in the development of Contemporary Praise and Worship. This is the line of development that emphasized praise leading to worship. By the late 1970s this association of praise to presence had become very closely tied to the music, specifically to extended times of congregational singing. And so in this approach to Contemporary Praise and Worship music became a kind of sacrament, a normal means of grace to experience the presence of God.

That would trouble past Christians for a variety of reasons. It was not that they did not appreciate music or emphasize singing. It was not that their services were not full of singing and music. It was not that past Christians did not experience God’s presence when they sang. It was because music does not have as close as connection to Jesus Christ as do the things most Christians use as the normal means to encounter God’s presence: baptism and the Lord’s Supper, water, bread, and wine. Those things Jesus handled, spoke about, and commanded. To those things Jesus attached promises. And

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those things have a tangibility, a concreteness, to them that speaks to Jesus himself having a body. That is important because in the coming resurrection God’s salvation will be seen in our own human bodies.

Past Christians might wonder if some have placed such a reliance upon music (and the emotions it generates) to be the way God is experienced that music has replaced Jesus Christ as the main mediator between us and God the Father. Remember how the songs are usually directed to Jesus, not God the Father. “Come and rethink the main dynamic in worship,” past Christians might invite us, (slide 49) “Come to God through Jesus Christ, not to Jesus Christ through the music.” Accepting that invitation might help relieve the pressure I have heard many musicians say they feel from the expectation and demand to make God present to a congregation. There is only One who can do that, past Christians would tell us, and his name is Jesus.

Let me close with some comments that are even more imaginable. If the Christians of the past could rise above their own immediate context and gain a view of larger trends in the history of worship, trends that sometimes take centuries to develop, what warnings might they sound for Contemporary Praise and Worship?

One might be on a dynamic which could erode the participation that has usually been found in Contemporary Praise and Worship. From time to time in the past there has been a dynamic by which worship as a common activity of the whole congregation gets more and more relegated to the pastor and to the musicians. What was once common becomes the domain of a few. (slide 50) And so past Christians might sound a warning for those churches who create an environment by control of sound, by lighting, and by an increased difficulty of music that makes it seem like all the important worship activity is occurring on the platform. If the members of the Body of Christ cannot see each other and hear each other, how is it corporate worship? Participation has been strong, but it might not remain so.

Another warning might be given about the danger of awe or, perhaps better said, the danger of trying to produce awe. Normally we would think worship that creates a sense of awe in God would be a good thing. Normally it would be. But Paul Bradshaw, a scholar of worship in the early church, has pointed out in the 300s and 400s, after the legalization of Christianity, more and more people began to flood the churches. In order to try to make an impact of this surge of people, churches began to intentionally find ways to make worship really spectacular. That has occurred from time to time in history. The dangers are in turning worship in to an entertainment spectacle, losing the ability to discern God’s presence in the quiet and simple and losing the expectation of encountering Christ in each other, in the simplicity of the sacraments, and in the simplicity of a pure Word of the Gospel. Past Christians aware of the danger Bradshaw talks about might warn us about becoming too reliant upon the building, its technology, and producing overwhelming music that rivals any rock concert. The danger is not in being in awe of God; it is in being in awe of being awed and forgetting that the key thing is to worship God in the beauty, not the spectacle, but the beauty of holiness.

(slide 51) And with that I come to a close. Thank you very much for your attentiveness today.

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