Competing Religions
“Anything special happening at church this week?”
Sunday worship competes with pan-thematic television, a leisurely brunch, or the self-imposed demands of golfers and soccer moms. These cultural “religions” influence the minds and hearts of the people we face each Sunday. In his contribution to Worship by the Book, Kent Hughes wrote, “The congenital twins of pragmatism and anthropocentrism have vastly influenced 20th century worship. . . . Corporate worship has taken the form of something done for an audience as opposed to something done by a congregation” (“Free Church Worship: The Challenge of Freedom,” p. 148).
The greatest danger of the entertainment mentality may not be liturgical capitulation, however. More insidious is the mind-drift that now equates competing events with worship. The choice is no longer between church (where I should be) and another event (where I really have to be). For many modern people, there is little reason to be in Christian worship at all beyond its immediate value to amuse or possibly inform.
- Are your people coming to be worshipers or to watch an event?
Up to this point, worship leaders might try to rationalize a victim mentality. The first four challenges come directly out of the culture in which we are called to do ministry. They reflect the demise of Christendom and the new quadrilateral of secularism, consumerism, pragmatism, and humanism. But institutional complicity in devaluing worship enters now.
The Demise of Music
“How much do we have to sing this week?”
In an article in Modern Reformation Gene Veith wrote, “Pop culture has a way of driving out both the high culture of serious artistic creation and the folk culture of authentic human communities” (“Lift Up Your Voice: Church Music and Contemporary Culture”). Nowhere is this more evident than in the church. Among our worship challenges is that we are expecting people to sing without teaching them how to sing. Our worship is in trouble, and we who know the craft of music have no one to blame but ourselves. But we can change this.
Music education in most public schools is dwindling or nonexistent, and participation in many community choruses is a shadow of what it once was.
So what? Nothing but the lack of ingenuity and vision for ministry on the part of church musicians is stopping the church from being the place where musical training flourishes—again. Instead, we have at least three generations of people whose idea of congregational singing is a low drone buried by the organ or the band. Judeo-Christian worship is built around singing. At the moment, music—the folk music of the “church folk”—is rapidly disappearing.
This article on five worship challenges we face originally appeared here, and is used by the author’s kind permission.
