Resurgence
This is Part 1 of a three part series
Is a Worship Service More Like a Concert Hall or a Banquet Hall?
Glenn Lucke is the creator of Docent Research Group, which provides customized research for pastors, churches, and parachurch organizations. He has been doing sermon research and consulting pastors on constructing their sermons for ten years.Isaac Wardell is the Creative Director of Bifrost Arts and the Director of Worship at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a graduate of Covenant College.
Glenn Lucke: Isaac, in the last year since the remarkable Bifrost Christmas album released, you’ve been in some cool situations with some interesting people. Any stories?
Isaac Wardell: Well, a few months ago, we were invited to take part in a worship conference with David Crowder, Louie Giglio, Matt Redman, Bob Kauflin, and a number of other writers and thinkers on the subject of worship.
That event was a new one for Bifrost. Folks who have been following our work will know that we generally teach and lead worship in groups of 50–100 people, using little or no amplification, and working with people to see worship as more participatory and less of a spectacle.
That part of our message is challenging when leading worship for thousands of people on a big stage with all the trappings of the concert arena. But we found that challenge to be really worthwhile, and it made us think a lot harder about the core message of our project. Ultimately, we were so encouraged by the warm response we received in that context, and it has us feeling very optimistic about direction of music and worship in the coming years.
As far as a particular story, here’s one: At an event this year with Francis Chan and other well known leaders, I led the congregation in a prayer, in which I prayed through Psalm 104. Afterward, a number of people, including pastors and worship leaders, came up and asked if they could get a copy of “that beautiful prayer.” Repeatedly, I’d answer that it’s just Psalm 104.
One pastor even pushed further: “But where can I get that setting of the Psalm?” and I answered “the NIV.” That interaction really underscored to me the problem of so many churches regularly not using the Scriptures–the Psalms in particular–as a framework for our worship services.
Framework for worship
GL: That brings up the question—if we’re not regularly using the Psalms in particular or the Scriptures in general—what are we using as a framework for worship services?
IW: In many larger churches (and I work at one, so I’m aware of the difficulties) it seems to me that we often take our cues from the larger media culture. That is, the feel and rhythm of our services is designed with the sole purpose of making people feel at ease; we use familiar technologies and cultural cues so that our people know when to laugh and when to applaud. But we sometimes use the Scriptures themselves so sparingly, in such small sound bites that we people can construct those little Scripture sound bites into whatever constellation fits most comfortably into already-determined lifestyles.
To counter these tendencies, many smaller churches that see themselves as counter-cultural outposts, taking a stand against the “spirit of the age,” often adopt a more formal classroom model for worship. In this model as well, churches inadvertently bear witness to the false notions that our emotions are suspect, and that the ultimate goal of worship is education and cognitive understanding.
So I’ve made the observation several times that the church today generally takes its liturgical cues from the concert hall or from the lecture hall.
This is Part 2
What Kind of People Are We Forming With Our Worship?
Thoughts About Liturgy
Glenn Lucke: What would you say to someone who says, “We don’t have a liturgy. We’ve left the traditional church world behind. We’re passionate about creativity, about excellence, and about connecting to people where they are.”
Isaac Wardell: That’s a great question.
First of all, I think it’s worth clarifying some terminology. To use the word “liturgy” is really just a fancy way of referring to our regular public practices of worship. Many readers of this will be familiar with this viral internet video last year from the folks at North Point Church:
In this video the North Point folks spoofed their own worship practices and poked some fun at some of the more predictable elements of the contemporary/relevant worship format. What I found most interesting about the video was that the spoof was really only possible because the viewer’s familiar with this set of highly specific “liturgical” practices, even in a service that seeks to be spontaneous and approachable.
Concerning the more general question about creativity and connecting to people where they are, here are a few thoughts:
One of the main points of our new worship curriculum is that corporate worship always has both an expressive and a formative quality. That is to say, that worship, properly understood, “meets us where we are” in the way that the music and forms of our service allow us to express our love for God with authenticity and in a way that stresses the accessibility of our Savior.
At the same time, however, we also must recognize that in addition to worship expressing our love, worship also forms our love. When we enter into worship week after week, our hearts are actually being shaped and taught how to adore him, how to give thanks for his goodness, how to confess our sins, and how have hope for the future.
So the great challenge of creativity and excellence in worship leading, it seems to me, is to lead God’s people in worship that is deeply expressive, and at the same time forming us into the kind of worshipers that God would have us to be.
Are We Thinking Much, If At All?
GL: I may be misunderstanding what goes on in the many churches I visit across the country, so I want to be explicit with this caveat: this is my impression, formed by anecdotes, and I may well be wrong.
My impression is that almost all of what lead pastors, worship pastors, worship teams, and creative teams focus on is the expressive aspect of worship. I wonder a) how many leaders and b) to what degree these leaders give attention to the formative aspect? Do they realize that the forms of worship are shaping people? I deeply believe that worship is primarily about honoring our Covenant King, but worship also acts back upon the worshipers. When you talk to pastors and worship leaders about the formative aspect, what kind of responses to do you hear?
IW: I think that your observation is correct, and that most pastors and church musicians are not thinking much, if at all, about the ways that we are forming our congregations over time.
It seems to me that one of the ways that consumerism has really afflicted the church, is in the urgency and pressure that churches are under to deliver an “experience” at every single service that will keep the attendee coming back. The result is that we grossly overestimate what is possible in a 75-minute format, and we tragically underestimate what it is we’re doing in a 20-year format. It strikes me that most of Jesus’ illustrations for spiritual growth are botanical illustrations—seeds, branches, vines—and that, by implication, Jesus is stressing that our long-term spiritual health may not be so much about mountaintop experiences as about faithful practices and obedience.
So all that is to say that when it comes to the corporate worship, it seems there is an enormous amount of literature and teaching on how to improve or maximize the experience of worship, but a relatively small amount of resources that really address what kind of people we are forming with our worship, over the course of their lifetimes.
This is last segment of a 3 part interview
Liturgy, Music, and Space
Deeper than contemporary conversation
GL: You’re hosting a conference this March. Tell us about it.
IW: Over the past three years, I’ve visited over a hundred churches around the country, everything from conservative reformed churches, to broad evangelicals, to Anglicans.
Generally, we’ve done very short events, in the form of a workshop or an evening hymn sing. Consistently, the feedback we’ve gotten is people asking for the institutional means to start fleshing out these concepts in their own congregations. So this year, we’ve spent the last 7 or 8 months writing a 12-week curriculum for Sunday Schools and small groups, and taught it at our own church. During March 29–31, 2011, we’ll be presenting this curriculum for free and teaching pastors and church musicians how to teach it, at a conference in St. Louis, MO.
The curriculum and the conference are both named “Liturgy, Music, and Space.”
The conference will also feature some presenters and musicians who share this vision or have been influential to the development of the curriculum—Nicholas Wolterstorff, Bryan Chapell, Kevin Twit, John Hodges, Greg Thompson, and also musicians, The Welcome Wagon.
The conference is very inexpensive, with discounts available for employees of smaller churches. Our hope is that we’ll have many folks attend whose congregations are wrestling with difficult worship questions, who are looking for something richer and deeper than the old traditional/contemporary conversation.
Jesus doesn't need a dramatic entrance
GL: I told a pastor about the Liturgy, Music and Space conference and the pastor asked me how participating in this conference would help him and his worship leaders lead the congregation in connecting to Jesus. What would you say to this pastor?
IW: At a very fundamental level, I’d say that to talk about connecting to Jesus is to talk about worship. That is, that corporate worship is one of the most basic means we have of loving Jesus with our bodies, our words, and hearts.
But to be a little more specific, here’s a way to think about it: In evangelical circles, there’s often an enormous amount of emphasis on what I’ll call “Damascus Road” experiences with Jesus—that is, experiencing Jesus dramatically in our lives and seeing our lives’ fundamental trajectory reordered by Jesus’ lordship. These are often conversion experiences, or re-dedications in which we can point to a specific moment when we connected to Jesus in a pivotal way.
And, of course, these experiences are a wonderful gift from the Lord that we all affirm together. However, one of the ways we sometimes neglect Jesus’ work in our lives is what I’ll call “Emmaus Road” experiences with Jesus. Many of your readers will be familiar with the Gospel account of Jesus appearing to two of his followers after the Resurrection—walking with them, talking with them, and ultimately breaking bread with them—without them being aware of his presence.
Many of us have a tendency to watch and wait expectantly for Jesus to appear in our lives dramatically, even to the extent that we do not notice that he is walking with us, teaching us, shaping us, even in the mundane experiences of our lives, and in the regular act of worship. It’s our hope through talking about this aspect of knowing Jesus that we’ll actually awake congregant’s sensibilities to seeing Jesus at work constantly in our churches, both in the excitement of “revival” moments and also in the stillness of our weekly prayers and confessions.
