All of us have personal preferences. Some prefer blue over
green. Some prefer a trip to the beach over of a trip to the mountains.
Some favor grits over hash browns, country music over rock, and
almost everyone favors the home team over the visitors.
But whereas we smile at our some of our preferences, our religious
preferences are often quite a different matter. For some reason,
our own special religious traditions and experiences tend to concretize
our ideas of what God's preferences are and aren't. Nowhere is
this more true than in the area of worship styles. How quickly
our preferences become biases. And how easily our biases become
walls which keep us from the larger Body of Christ and from fuller
expressions of worship.
Understanding the nature of of our own preferences and biases
is essential in becoming the worshiper God is looking for. The
term "culture" is very useful. Culture is the sum total
of a group's set of preferences and distinctives... their "folkways."
Every individual and group is part of a culture.
Worship and culture are very closely related. It is interesting
that the root word for culture is cult, which is simply a system
of worship or devotion. You could say our culture reflects our
worship. We should neither despise nor deny our culture for it
helps to give us the initial parameters for personal identity,
but we must thoughtfully evaluate all our ways in light of God's
ways. When God says that His ways are higher than our ways,1 He
is saying that His divine culture is higher than our human culture.
The Lausanne Covenant of 1974 appeals for churches to be "deeply
rooted in Christ and closely related to their culture." "Culture
must always be tested and judged by Scripture... The gospel does
not presuppose the superiority of any culture to another, but
evaluates all cultures according to its own criteria of truth
and righteousness... Churches have sometimes been in bondage to
culture rather than to the Scripture."
Denominations within the Church are usually cultural divisions
before they are theological. They have to do with conflicting
folkways. A Presbyterian pastor made this observation: "Part
of the problem in coming into unity is that we have recruited
people into the personality distinctives of our own congregations
and traditions, rather than into Christ. As a result, their loyalties
are more to these distinctives than to Christ's Kingdom."
In the spirit of Lausanne, we need to evaluate our traditions
of worship - whether historic traditions or more recent renewal
traditions - in light of Scripture to see if we are adherents
of an approach to Christ or of Christ himself.
Toward Understanding Divine Preferences
Music powerfully communicates culture. That's why the Church's
music is so vital in communicating its life. Even the effects
of a vibrant sermon can be canceled out by lifeless music. Some
would observe that the music more accurately reflects the life
of the congregation than the words spoken.
What are we communicating culturally? Are our cultural preferences
in harmony with God's? Are there Biblical absolutes that should
govern our worship? At what point does diversity become heresy?
What kinds of songs should we be singing? Does God even care what
we do musically in the Church? If so, what are the parameters
of Biblical worship? Do our biases keep us from a fuller expression
of worship?
The easy, but incomplete, answer to these kinds of questions goes
like this: "God is only concerned with the attitude of our
hearts, not the forms of our expressions." Granted, the heart's
disposition is primary, but should we not allow God to transform
and enlarge our forms as well as our hearts? It's usually not
that our worship traditions are intrinsically wrong... just incomplete.
Consider these three statements as beginning points in this discussion
of Biblical patterns of worship:
Spiritual and Intellectual
Today some segments of the church specialize primarily in Spirit.
Favorite teaching topics in the Spirit churches are "Hearing
God" and "Being Led by the Spirit." Leaders encourage
followers to develop intuitive skills. Worship is generally spontaneous
and Spirit-led.
Other segments of the church specialize primarily in truth. Among
these groups, Biblical scholarship and critical thinking are held
in high esteem. Here worship is more orderly and structured.
Each tradition is suspicious of the other and often reinforces
its own uniquenesses to justify its existence. Facing these tendencies
is very difficult but very necessary.
Jesus said that true worshipers must worship in spirit and truth...
not one or the other. If we love to "flow in the Spirit"
but are impatient with the process of making careful observations,
we are not yet the kind of worshipers God is looking for. If we
are diligent students of the Word and yet we can't make room for
someone to base a claim on revelation, we are at odds with the
Bible we study.
If the worship in our congregation only attracts the critical
thinkers, it's time to do some critical thinking about our own
cultural preferences. If our congregation is attracting only the
intuiters or feelers, it's time to ask the Spirit to lead us into
all truth. Biblical worship is to be spiritual and thoughtful.2
Past, Present and Future
Some of us are more familiar with what God is saying than what
God has said, to the point that we disdain any reference to history.
I have heard this referred to as the Cult of Contemporaneity.
Someone asked me to evaluate a prophecy born out of a time of
prayer. One part of it quoted God as saying that He was not
the God of the past, but rather the God of the now. I suggested
that maybe God was saying He was not only the God of the
past, but the God of the present as well. After all, if God is
not the God of the past, who is?
Others are well versed in what has gone on before us and yet out
of touch with what is going on now. One pastor confidently told
me that nothing of any significance has happened in the church
in the last 250 years. Most likely the church he pastors will
be populated with those who are friendly to that point of view.
A third sub-standard alternative is to be so future oriented that
we fail to worship the God of the past and the present. We must
not try to confine God's kingdom exclusively to past, present
or future reality. Each are only partial containers of God's magnificent
glory.
Songs, Hymns and Spiritual Songs
Some charismatic churches tend to sing choruses to the exclusion
of hymns. Some traditional churches sing hymns to the exclusion
of choruses. And a very small percentage of churches has any significant
experience with spiritual songs. In contrast God's Word invites
us all to express our gratitude through all three song forms.
Because a psalm is a song, I am purposely using the word "song"
for the word "psalm." To sing a psalm is not the equivalent
of singing from the book of Psalms. The term psalm, like song,
can be used in a general or a specific sense. In the general usage
it could include hymns, just as there are hymns included in the
book of Psalms. A hymn is certainly a song.
In the specific sense however, a psalm -- or song -- would contrast
with a hymn. The hymn would be more formal; the song would have
a folk quality. Throughout the history of music, you have always
had these two kinds of musical expression. Today we have musicians
with "formal" music training, and others who have learned
their skills "on the street." Almost every church has
some of each.
Similar to what we today call choruses, a psalm, or song, is generally
simpler, shorter, more testimonial and less theological than a
hymn. A hymn would usually carry a greater sense of history; a
song, or chorus, would be more personal. The song is also more
contemporary and has a shorter life span. Songs and hymns contrast
like flowers and trees... both God's creation... neither more
important than the other.
The spiritual song is even more a song-of-the-moment than a song.
When Paul referred to singing with his spirit, he contrasted it
with singing with his mind, and said he would do both.3 This "less
rational" song form, the spiritual song, consists of spontaneous
melodies and words, inspired by the Holy Spirit and sung around
a chord or slowly moving chord progression. It has been referred
to as the song of angels because of its mystical, other-worldly
quality.4 Even as the Spirit is the believer's down payment of
the future age,5 the spiritual song must be a foretaste of heavenly
worship itself.
The genius of these three song forms is that each is uniquely
appropriate to express a dimension of God's nature, and each will
speak for a different kind of personality, as well as to the different
facets of the individual. The hymn corresponds to God's historic
nature -- "who was." The song corresponds to God's present
activity -- "who is." And the spiritual song corresponds
to God's prophetic nature -- "who is to come." The hymn
will satisfy our hunger for truth and depth of understanding;
the psalm will speak to our need for encounter and experience;
and the spiritual song will stimulate the prophet and visionary
in us.
The command to employ songs, hymns and spiritual songs requires
a greater cultural flexibility than we have had so we can enjoy
the variety of worship expressions. For instance, the youth of
the church will probably prefer a more contemporary style of worship
than the older ones. The common solution to this cultural problem
is to segregate the youth church from the adult church. The songs-hymns-and-spiritual-songs
paradigm begs for a different solution: unity within diversity.
This new paradigm allows the contemporary and the historic to
stand side by side and challenges our hearts to greater love.
We don't have to choose between being reverent or celebrative.
Be reverent and celebrative! Be objective and subjective! Structured
and spontaneous! Testimonial and theological!
Instead of affirming our own strengths and acknowledging the limitations
of other traditions, we must begin to recognize the limitations
of our own traditions and affirm the strengths of the others.
The result will be that our own preferences will be enjoyed by
others, as well as enlarged by others. Like an onion in the stew,
we will both flavor the other ingredients and be flavored by them.
All the while, we remain an onion.
Paradigm for the Future
The church of the future must become transcultural. The evangelical
church must learn to sing spiritual songs; the charismatic church
must rediscover hymns; and the traditional church must begin to
sing a new psalm. The young church must respect the older church
and vice versa. Bridges of cooperation and counsel must be built
between the black and white churches. The stagnating pools of
our cultural prejudices must be flooded by the river of His divine
purposes.
Accepting and practicing God's standard of songs, hymns and spiritual
songs in our worship is a simple but challenging exercise designed
to break us loose from our idols of ethnocentrism.
Where will all of this lead us? To the most exciting celebration
imaginable: the international, interdenominational, multilingual,
multiethnic celebration of Christ Jesus, the Son of God!
"After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." Revelation 7:9-10.
Dare we look upon what John saw: representatives from every
nation, tribe, people and language... declaring their praises
together with a loud voice... overwhelmed with gratitude for this
majestic King who had made them into a united kingdom!6 If we
can see that, we can see our destination. The heavenly vision
is that of worshipers of many different stripes who are more conscious
of the greatness of Christ Jesus than of their cultural distinctions.
If worship styles have been the source of divisions among us,
let's turn the tables and allow God's design for worship be a
source of unity among us. Let's pray that heaven's worship will
overtake earth's as we sing songs, hymns and spiritual songs.
1 Isaiah 55:9.
2 These two components are implied in Romans 12:1 in the phrase logikos latreia,
which is translated in the New International Version as either "spiritual
act of worship" or (in the margin) "reasonable act of worship."
3 I Corinthians 14:14-15.
4 Although spiritual songs are generally not written down, some have suggested
that the Gregorian chant is a codification of early spiritual songs.
5 II Corinthians 1:22 and Hebrews 6:4,5.
6 Revelation 5:9,10.
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