The President of the Ohio District of the LCMS, Rev. Terry Cripe, has made some encouraging observations on the Ohio District blog. He makes the case that today’s “contemporary worship” shares a common thread with worship in the early church: the lack of specificity and clarity in worship about what we believe.
Rev. Cripe notes that some doctrinal clarity and specificity is creeping into contemporary music. One of the contemporary hymns we sang Sunday referenced John 6:41-54. I’m glad CCLI writers are starting to pay attention to content. There is still much room for improvement.
The whole article is good, but his question at the end is interesting:
So here’s my question – if much of today’s alternative worship services were begun with the intention of getting back to a simpler, no-frills, first-century style of worship, will the current movement reach the same conclusion of earlier ages – it wasn’t enough?
I’ve not seen contemporary worship sold to congregations as a method to get back to worshiping like we did in the first century. Contemporary worship proponents make their arguments in other ways.
President Cripe’s reference to getting back to a “first-century” style of worship sounds much more like an Emerging Church wish-list item, rather than that of contemporary worship proponents.
Scott’s right. Once you know the lingo there’s a lot of emergent talk going on right now.
My own opinion… Reformed churches strip the liturgy because of a strict adherence to the Regulative Principle, but many offshoots of Reformed theology (particularly Baptists, Church of Christ, Charismatic movement etc.) strip the liturgy specifically for the purpose of recovering a first-century purity and simplicity in worship. I know that during my formative years in a charismatic congregation, as we stirred up exuberance in worship there was an explicit desire to match the enthusiasm we believed the church of Acts must have had in their worship. They had just witnessed the resurrection of our Lord, they must have been the most happy, exuberant people ever. The Baptists practice “believer’s baptism.” Why? Because that was (supposedly) the practice of the first-century church. The Churches of Christ have adopted that moniker, because (they say) that’s what the first-century churches were called. So this “restorationism” is a theme among many of the Reformed stripe. And (coincidentally?) modern evangelicalism and contemporary worship come to the church via the Reformed stream of theology. (Yes, I am painting with a very broad brush.)
It may not be quite accurate to suggest that this particular argument gets a lot of playing time in the effort to promote contemporary worship, but I think President Cripe is serving the church well in pointing out that contemporary worship is related to certain “restorationist” tendencies in the Church.
A very informative comment, Eric. Thanks!
Eric echoes what I was about to write, so I’ll give an illustration instead
My experience with CC worship in college was people saying, “When I read the NT there is no liturgy mentioned, the hymns that appear are short, and it was an emotional, engaging kind of thing–”all things to all people.” Plus, we know that Christianity got messed up by Roman Catholicism during the time of Constantine. And oh? You disagree? Well, prove to me that these kind of songs are not what they were doing in the early church. You Lutherans have become complacent. Bring back that early spirit of Christianity that wasn’t so bound by rituals and the traditions of men!”
The Restorationist movement is a heavy influence on many Evangelicals–often behind the scenes, but it is there. But then again, I’m from Oklahoma where there are a lot of them, and they are strident. Perhaps we have to deal with those ideas more often around here than others do.