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Why Use Contemporary Worship?
The statistics quoted above would indicate that if your church switches to contemporary worship, your attendance may grow. There is nothing wrong with that, especially if it involves attracting people who do not presently attend a Bible-believing church. I would suggest, though, that a more noble goal is to worship God in a way that is as meaningful as possible to as many people as possible and still remain true to the word of God. Music written during the lifetime of its intended audience (i.e., contemporary) tends to be more meaningful to most people than music that is much more dated.
It can be too easy to jump on the bandwagon when everybody is doing the same thing. If the churches on both sides of yours move to contemporary worship, you may feel like "we need to do this before it's too late." But good things done for the wrong reason have a way of self-destructing. A worship program that self-destructs has the potential to hurt a lot of people in the process, especially its proponents.
Why Not Use Contemporary Worship?
Contemporary worship is not for the faint of heart. A song-leader and a piano player (and an optional organist) are all you need to have hymn singing. But these same people are not nearly as likely to be very useful on a contemporary worship team. If that is the case, they will feel rejected and hurt if they are displaced. You will have to put together a worship team, arrange to project lyrics, obtain new music, provide sound and musical equipment, schedule rehearsals, and deal with a hundred details that just seem to pop up out of thin air. Your pianist who played the hymns might not have been a Van Cliburn, but you could at least depend on him or her for a certain degree of musical excellence. Now, somebody's nephew wants to play the drums on the team and you can just feel the whole thing sliding out of control.
And things can very easily get out of control. In fact, control issues will almost certainly cause some (and probably most of your) headaches. Nothing turns people nasty faster than introducing change and taking away something they like.
A Parable for Our Time
Remember the "new" Coke™? In the 1980s, Coca-Cola announced that they were replacing their formula with a new one that had been heavily market-tested. People liked the new Coke better than the old Coke in test after test. But when Coca-Cola said they were going to discontinue the old Coke, the public outcry was so intense they completely backed down. Many of the people complaining could not choose the old Coke over the new Coke in a blind taste test. They either couldn't tell the difference, or actually liked the new Coke better. But to them, that was irrelevant. They wanted their old Coke because it was a part of their culture. For them, eliminating the old Coke was "un-American".
What can we learn from this phenomenon that applies to worship? People do not mind you giving them a new choice, but they may resent it bitterly if you take away something old, especially if it has a long tradition. People will tell you they want their children and grandchildren to come to church and learn about God. They will even admit that this goal may require some changes. But if you tell them that you are taking away their hymns, they may respond the way people did when the new Coke was going to replace the old Coke. "If improving the music means taking away the hymns, then we don't want the improved music."
There are many who say that we owe it to the younger generation to pass on to them the rich heritage of traditional Christian music. Every congregation must eventually face this issue and decide how important it is to them (as opposed to other things) and what actions may be needed to pass on that heritage. Obviously, the main worship service need not be the only place where this happens. Children can be taught hymns at home, in Vacation Bible School, Sunday school, youth group or other church services. Of the five hundred or so hymns in the typical hymnbook, only a small fraction may actually figure into the "rich heritage" we need to pass on. Subtract from these the Christmas Carols and patriotic songs that children will learn anyway and a manageable list of well-known hymns is left.
Blended Worship
Many churches have solved this problem by adopting the approach called blended worship. These churches incorporate both contemporary worship music and hymns into their service. Large churches may retain the piano, organ and choir for anthems and use a worship team for contemporary songs. They do this because it appeals to the culture of their congregation.
Worship forms are important on several different levels. On one level, they are a part of our culture. But they also have meaning on a second level, a personal, spiritual level. A third level involves their aesthetic appeal. Those songs that appeal to us on all three levels-cultural, spiritual and aesthetic-are likely to be the ones that have a long life and are passed to succeeding generations. As we learn new worship songs that then mean a great deal to us, we will pass them on to our children as well. If we are honest, we will admit that future generations must find worship songs that are meaningful to them, not just to us. And that is happening. Statistics show that while the number of churches using blended worship is growing, the number using contemporary worship is growing faster and the number with traditional worship is shrinking. These numbers would indicate that many churches are transitioning through blended to contemporary worship.
A Modern Culture of Worship
As many conservative, evangelical churches begin to embrace contemporary worship, they find that they are unprepared to make the transition. This difficulty is due to their lack of familiarity with contemporary worship. Since their Pentecostal and Charismatic brothers have been using mostly contemporary worship music for many years, conservatives can learn a lot from them. Unfortunately, the divisions within the church make this difficult. Many evangelicals may not even know any Charismatics and may not feel comfortable attending one of their services. It may take some time, but conservatives should investigate and discover which churches in their area have "good worship" and go on a fact-finding mission.
Suppose that an uninitiated conservative evangelical-we'll call him Bob-attends his first Charismatic worship service. What follows is an attempt to describe a composite, Charismatic worship service from Bob's viewpoint. The worship is quite different from what Bob is accustomed to. While the church looks about the same, some differences are apparent at the first glance. There are more and different musical instruments present. There is likely to be a drum set, piano, electronic keyboard, guitars, conga drums and other percussion. There may be horns and woodwinds and even some string players. There may be some highly colorful and shiny banners hanging around the perimeter. In fact, there may be quite a lot of them.
After the briefest of formalities, the worship team appears. There are usually a large number of singers and musicians and, in larger churches, a choir. There is a microphone for each singer (except in the choir) and speakers and music stands strewn all over the platform. The amount of electronic equipment and other paraphernalia devoted to music and worship seems overwhelming compared to Bob's church with its piano, organ and one microphone. In fact, to Bob it looks more like a recording studio than his idea of a church.
The worship leader welcomes the people and asks everyone to stand. They encourage everyone to participate and may even encourage what Bob finds to be shockingly uninhibited displays of emotion including the raising of hands, shouting, jumping, dancing, kneeling and other behavior more reminiscent of a major sporting event than anything else in Bob's experience. Bob is looking around for some familiar points of reference now, but he is not finding them. There are no hymnbooks in the audience, the pastor is incognito and the worship leader is unbelievably young and casually dressed. In fact, Bob may be looking around to see when things are going to formally start when he realizes that they are never going to get formal and they've already started.
A projector is turned on and a slide is projected on to the front wall. All it has are the lyrics to a song Bob has never heard. "How can I sing this?" he wonders. "There's no musical notation." Indeed there isn't even a bouncing ball, but everyone in the congregation joins in heartily and Bob finds his place in the song on the wall with little trouble. The first time through, he is not too comfortable, but the worship leader keeps repeating parts of the song and soon he can sing it well enough to keep up.
That is, he can if he stands still-and he does. But with so many other people clapping and swaying to the rhythm of this very bouncy and up-tempo song, it can be hard to resist at least clapping a little. When the song ends, the audience applauds. This much exuberance stops Bob in his tracks, but not the worship team. They continue to play through the applause as Bob is clearing off his seat to sit down. No one else sits down, though and the band starts up another song that is nearly as loud and vigorous as the first. In fact, they didn't really start it up, they just kept playing and the worship leader started singing so that they just sort of flowed from the first song into the second. If the projector operator had not had to change slides, Bob would not have been sure it wasn't part of the first song.
This goes on for quite some time with each song seeming to become more tender and focused on the worshiper's love for God. The tempos get noticeably slower and the volume softer. Often, there seem to be more repeats. Bob begins to get a little tired from standing for so long but few others seem to mind it. In fact, he notices that many others in the congregation are singing with eyes closed and hands upraised. While he might feel completely conspicuous if he did that, no one seems to be noticing anything about the ways others are worshiping. In fact, Bob is a little uncomfortable because he is afraid he will stand out by not raising his hands, but a quick glance around shows that there are others who aren't either.
At some point the worship team launched into a song that Bob had already heard. In fact, it was one that he thought was pretty good and that he was considering for use in his church. He joins in the singing of this one with a little more confidence and by about the third time through it, he notices that he has tears in his eyes and, while that is hardly unusual here, it's never happened to him before.
Another odd thing happened that he wasn't too sure about. Between two of the songs, the worship team played something pretty simple and people were singing words that were not on the projector anymore. Things seem spontaneous and yet somewhat planned at the same time. Not knowing what to do, he just waited for the next song to come up. Eventually, it did and, later the singing ended. He was relieved to finally get to sit down, though when he did, he noticed that some had already been sitting for some time, not having waited to be directed to sit down by the leader. At this point, any number of things might be going on, but in a short time the sermon begins.
The sermon is the part of the service most like what Bob is used to. In fact, it is not very different at all and Bob is about ready to think that things are not so strange here when the pastor invites people to the front for prayer. Unlike an evangelical service where the invitation is pointed, definite, and addressed to unbelievers who want to become Christians, this is a much broader invitation for prayer, anointing, and the laying on of hands. Bob is not at all sure who has been invited and he is already a Christian, so he does not go up. A lot of other people do though. Many more people are involved in ministry at the front besides just the pastor. Bob waits to be dismissed and notices that a lot of other people are leaving. He'd like to stay and talk to members of the worship team, but they seem to be mostly at the front, so after a while he wanders out. The singing part of the service went on for quite some time, although the time passed more quickly than he would have thought. Now he is hungry and tired and, no wonder, he's been there an hour longer than the folks back at his church.
Over his next meal and for the next several days, Bob has a lot to think about. How much of what he has just seen is applicable to him and his church?
Applications of Charismatic Worship to Evangelical Churches
Clearly not everything Bob has experienced in this worship service is going to happen at his church and they certainly would not go over well if they did. Bob has learned firsthand that there is a big difference between what his friends at church think worship is and what the people at this Charismatic church practice. He had come to learn, but what exactly did he learn? What were the most effective parts?
First of all, the worship team impressed him. That style of music cannot be done with just a piano and organ. Plus, the worship service as a whole was much more powerful than the individual songs. Leaving aside the spiritual component, he could see that the music alone, done this way, is effective in drawing people in to want to worship. In fact, now that he thinks about it, the service at his church seems designed to separate things into many pieces that don't work together very well. In the Charismatic service, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Finally, the projector seemed to work well as a way to focus people's attention on what was happening without having to fumble with a book.
There were some elements however, that Bob could easily see were not applicable to his church. All that standing was tough to handle (and yet the time went by quickly and the other people didn't seem to mind). Still, this would not do in his church. The dancing and banners and gifts of the Spirit simply would not help people in his church focus on worship. And the length of the service would frankly horrify some of his friends.
Being hopelessly analytical, Bob made a list of the things he thought could be applied to the worship service at his church:
* Worship team with full band
* Upbeat songs at the beginning
* Songs flow from one to the next with several in succession
* More intimate worship songs toward the end
* Songs that are all generally more interesting and contemporary sounding
* Lyrics displayed via projector or big screen TVs
* More audience participation
Cautions
Looking at his list, Bob decides that nothing on it is the least bit controversial. Nobody back home should have a problem with any of it. But on second thought, there might be a problem. The whole being greater than the sum of its parts, the feel of the service would be very different from what it is now and that could be a huge concern. Or, to put it another way, everything about it is at least a little different. Add these differences together and the result is very different.
Indeed, to use what Bob has learned without upending the apple cart, he and his worship team are going to have to move very slowly as they implement the changes they are contemplating. What is more, Bob may have to include one or two hymns each Sunday so that he is not perceived as taking them away. In fact, the path that lies before Bob, and anyone that would attempt to move their church into contemporary worship is full of pitfalls.
The remaining chapters will assist a worship team to become their best and avoid the possible dangers. Many of these dangers result in mediocre performance instead of excellence. However, there is one trap that threatens the successful team more than the mediocre one. In many small or medium sized churches, it is perfectly acceptable to stand up and sing your favorite contemporary worship song off-key with an out-of-tune guitar and people will smile, pat you on the back and say "nice try." But if you put a tight band together, pray hard, work hard and lead the people into the presence of God-some folks might feel much more threatened because they can see that 'this contemporary thing' really does work and is here to stay. At this point, they will require reassurance that their needs are not going to be ignored. If they remain fearful, it will most likely require a word from the pastor to assure them that they have not been forgotten but that the next generation must not be ignored either.
Once contemporary worship becomes accepted some folks in the congregation will be blessed in a new way. They may raise their hands in worship. Some will develop a passion for worship. These changes, and the fact that contemporary worship has its roots in mostly Charismatic and Pentecostal churches can be very unsettling to more conservative believers. It is easy to underestimate the magnitude of the fear that many conservative evangelicals have of the excesses that have existed within some Charismatic and Pentecostal churches. Unfortunately, I do not believe there are any easy answers. Here are some observations, though, that may help:
* Not every church is cut out or called by God to have cutting-edge worship. Some churches are leaders and others are followers. If you find yourself trying to lead people faster than they are willing to go, either you are moving too fast or you need to go where the people will not hold you back. If that means starting over or joining an existing program at a position of lesser authority, you must be willing to do that.
* You cannot change the direction of worship, or even maintain it, in the face of opposition without the strong support of the entire pastoral staff. Churches that are conflicted over worship issues require strong direction from the pastor. If your pastor will not fully support contemporary worship and stand up to those who would oppose it, you should consider going elsewhere.
* Gradual change and constant teaching from the pastor can diminish fear. If the congregation trusts the pastor and knows that he will protect them from excesses, they will feel much safer. The entire pastoral and worship staff must be unified in this approach. If some are seen to be "more charismatic" and others "more biblical," then fear will result and factions will form. Effective safeguards exist to prevent the excessive behavior of any worshipers from offending others. If these are known to be in place, they can be a great comfort and prevent trouble.
* However, you can control God right out of the picture. Obviously, there needs to be a balance between allowing a move of the Holy Spirit to occur and permitting absolutely anything to happen. Satan will use either extreme to prevent us from worshiping. We need to be continually on our guard against the insecurity and need to control that would snuff out any genuine movement of God on the one hand, and against extreme manifestations that most people would find offensive on the other. We need to let God be God without giving the devil a foothold.
There is truly nothing to fear in contemporary worship if it is done well and with sensitivity to God and the worshipers. In churches that are unified in their desire to worship God and be culturally relevant, these issues do not arise. If your church has decided to move into contemporary worship, you can expect some opposition. Some of those opposed will likely try to return to traditional worship. If your church holds fast, they may leave. Others will learn the pure joy of dwelling in God's presence. They are described in Psalm 89:15-18: "Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O LORD. They rejoice in your name all day long; they exult in your righteousness. For you are their glory and strength, and by your favor you exalt our horn. Indeed, our shield belongs to the LORD, our king to the Holy One of Israel."
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