A few weeks ago, I was invited by my friend Wilson to share/speak on worship at UT CCF’s Worship Small Groups.  It is finally happening this week, as I will be visiting each of their 3 worship small groups to share about the issue of “authentic worship” in today’s postmodern culture.

If you’re interested and have nothing to do, come by and join us for the discussion.  I will be speaking on the same material at all 3 worship small groups:

1. Catherine’s group Thurs Nov.9, 5:30-7pm @ New College Wilson Hall Lounge + Music Room (WI building)
2. Jean-Luc’s group Sat Nov.11, 6pm @ TCBC (78 Beverley Street)
3. Wilson’s group Wedn Nov.15, 6pm @ New College Wilson Hall Lounge + Music Room (WI building)

Since I spent the last 4 hours typing out what I’ve drawn up in my head and from research, I thought I might share my thoughts here on the topic.  To figure out what authentic worship is, I’ll be sharing an overview of the current state of evangelical worship (imho), and a short exposition of Isaiah 6:1-8.  (Main commentators I read were R. Albert Mohler and of course, John MacArthur.)

A. Introduction

Since this is a “worship” small group, I am here to talk to you about WORSHIP—specifically, about:

• What worship is,
• What God desires that we do in worship.

I’ve grown up in the church, so over the years, I could easily say that there has been some confusion over this “worship” thing that we do in church and in fellowship (not that worship in and of itself is confined only to times during church services and fellowship programs.) It’s just that we’ve used a lot of modifiers and adjectives attached to worship to define what kind of worship we do: traditional, liturgical, contemporary, blended, seeker-sensitive, charismatic, praise and worship!

Furthermore, we live in an era where worship is now one of the most controversial issues in the local church. Some books even go so far as suggesting that the church today is in “worship warfare.” These 2 words together should cause us to tremble in humble, reverent reflection as to how we have come to this.  The issues of worship, music and instruments have caused many churches to have conflicts within itself between its own members and those who serve in worship ministry; many arguments and debates has risen over controversies as to how worship should or shouldn’t be done.

Recent trends and movements in the church is convicting us to the importance of this issue:

• “rave mass”es in the UK and Australia has drawn large crowds of youth jumping and dancing to hard rock music
  
• Some churches in the southern states advertise “country music” worship.
  
• Phoenix, AZ: Community Church of Joy—Entertainment evangelism/worship.
  
• We’ve seen the Crusade era of Billy Graham stay a while longer into today’s church calendar in the form of “Harvest Crusades” with many cool Christian rock and worship bands playing to attract thousands of people to come.
  
• The rise of the seeker-sensitive, purpose driven, and prosperity churches have brought in church buildings that don’t look like churches but in themselves are basically conference centres disguised as “worship centres” & even mega-sized sports stadiums—where an Orchestra, rock band, choir, dance team lead tens of thousands of spectators into a music concert supposedly directed towards God.
  
• More recently with the rise of smaller (Emerging) house churches, many are using box full of Candles all around the building with people sitting on couches, and singing a lot of the songs that we sing—traditional songs with refrains, new contemporary songs with choruses, really old hymns of the 1^st /2^nd century church… all mixed in with a weekly recitals of various Creeds in a very modern way. And it’s not our parents who are bringing back the traditions of the various denominations, but it is people like you and me—20somethings and 30somethings. It is this emerging generation that is very adamant with bringing back such old forms and liturgies of all the church traditions (Roman Catholic, Eastern orthodox, and all the branches of Reformed) into today’s Protestant church.

A common theme runs throughout too many of these modern worship movements.  There is, has been, and if we don’t stop it, there will be… a lack of theologically-informed worship music in the church. The influx of songs that lack theological, biblical and doctrinal depth is too popular in today’s worship music sets. A lot of songs focus on me me and me, sound like some love-song off of your local easy-rock radio station, and quite frankly, talk more about how we feel in our circumstances rather than who God IS and what He has DONE despite any circumstances that come our way. And as inviting as these songs are to get the teens jumping and dancing, they provide little solid biblical reasons as to why you should jump, dance or say “I love you I love you I love you… you are my best friend” to God.

More recently, Charles Colson wrote an article in the April 2006 issue of Christianity Today that presented an extreme opinion that the church is “soothing ourselves to death“, a serious warning the author wrote in response to experiencing “endless repetitions of a meaningless ditty called “Draw Me Close to You,” which has zero theological content and could just as easily be sung in any nightclub.” Colson’s article provoked numerous discussions on around the Christian blogsphere, some were positive, some negative, and others taking neither side. Regardless of what the different opinions about the aforementioned song are, theological/doctrinal/biblical adherence in congregational worship is the paramount issue facing our church music today. While telling God how we feel and expressing to Him our thoughts is right and good, these feelings are only reliable and true as they are rooted in who God is, what He has done, and what He has said to us.

(Part 2 coming soon…)

[Authentic Worship: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.]