9780310247593

What does worship look like? Is there just one truly right way to worship? Are there any wrong ways? To what extent should our unity as believers manifest itself in unified public worship? Sadly, disagreement over how we should worship our loving God has sparked some most unloving attitudes among Christians. Exploring the Worship Spectrum seeks to correct this. It provides a forum for presentation, critique, and defense of six prominent worship styles: -Formal-Liturgical - Paul Zahl -Traditional Hymn-Based - Harold Best -Contemporary Music-Driven - Joe Horness -Charismatic - Don Williams -Blended - Robert Webber -Emerging - Sally Morgenthaler This unique format allows those with a heart for worship to compare different perspectives and draw their own conclusions on what the Bible teaches. It engages the reader's faculties of critical thinking in a way that allows him or her to understand the various approaches to worship, carefully evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and make personal choices without adopting a judgmental spirit. The Counterpoints series provides a forum for comparison and critique of different views on issues important to Christians. Counterpoints books address three categories: Church Life, Exploring Theology, and Engaging Culture. Complete your library with other books in the Counterpoints series.

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Bible Translations

9

(2)

Introduction: Paul A. Basden

11

(10)

1. FORMAL-LITURGICAL WORSHIP

21

(36)

PAUL F.M. ZAHL

A Traditional Worship Response

37

(4)

A Contemporary Worship Response

41

(4)

A Charismatic Worship Response

45

(3)

A Blended Worship Response

48

(2)

An Emerging Worship Response

50

(7)

2. TRADITIONAL HYMN-BASED WORSHIP

57

(40)

HAROLD M. BEST

A Liturgical Worship Response

76

(3)

A Contemporary Worship Response

79

(5)

A Charismatic Worship Response

84

(3)

A Blended Worship Response

87

(2)

An Emerging Worship Response

89

(8)

3. CONTEMPORARY MUSIC-DRIVEN WORSHIP

97

(40)

JOE HORNESS

A Liturgical Worship Response

117

(2)

A Traditional Worship Response

119

(6)

A Charismatic Worship Response

125

(4)

A Blended Worship Response

129

(2)

An Emerging Worship Response

131

(6)

4. CHARISMATIC WORSHIP

137

(36)

DON WILLIAMS

A Liturgical Worship Response

153

(2)

A Traditional Worship Response

155

(5)

A Contemporary Worship Response

160

(3)

A Blended Worship Response

163

(2)

An Emerging Worship Response

165

(8)

5. BLENDED WORSHIP

173

(42)

ROBERT WEBBER

A Liturgical Worship Response

192

(2)

A Traditional Worship Response

194

(6)

A Contemporary Worship Response

200

(5)

A Charismatic Worship Response

205

(3)

An Emerging Worship Response

208

(7)

6. EMERGING WORSHIP

215

(36)

SALLY MORGENTHALER

A Liturgical Worship Response

231

(2)

A Traditional Worship Response

233

(5)

A Contemporary Worship Response

238

(5)

A Charismatic Worship Response

243

(4)

A Blended Worship Response

247

(4)

Conclusion: Paul A. Basden

251

(7)

Recommended Reading About the Contributors

258

(6)

Discussion and Reflection Questions

264

(3)

Index of Names

267

(2)

Scripture Index

269

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Exploring the Worship Spectrum Copyright © 2004 by Paul A. Basden
Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Exploring the worship spectrum : six views / contributors, Paul F. M. Zahl . . . [et al.] ; Paul A. Basden, general editor.—1st ed. p. cm.—(Counterpoints) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-310-24759-4 1. Public worship. I. Zahl, Paul F. M. II. Basden, Paul, 1955–. III. Counterpoints (Grand Rapids, Mich.) BV15.E93 2004 264—dc22 2003024153
The Scripture versions used by the various contributors are indicated on page 9, which hereby becomes part of this copyright page.
The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
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FORMAL-LITURGICAL WORSHIP
Paul F. M. Zahl
“It was during Dr. Bedell’s ministry and well into the 1860s that the Church of the Ascension was called the “Low Church Cathedral,” because, while its pulpit stood for a broad evangelical Christianity, it was marked by unusual fondness for good music and for a dignified service”. —James W. Kennedy, The Unknown Worshipper1
I believe in Bible-based verticality, which is another way of saying formal-liturgical worship. There is nothing like it for taking you outside your problems and also bringing you back to them a renewed person, better able to cope and to endure. Biblebased verticality is a glorious thing. This chapter seeks to offer its principles, its roots, and its virtues. It also seeks to parry some familiar objections to it.
Formal worship means dignified service that is not governed by the spontaneity of the moment or the spontaneity of the officiant. It means service in a form, within a mold. It is not off the cuff or as mood would govern. Rather, it accepts the constraint of a consistent and predictable pattern.
Liturgical worship means prescribed worship, service that is required for a given occasion. So if it is Sunday, you have a required act of worship for that day. If a baptism is to take place or the sacrament of Holy Communion is to be celebrated, you conduct the service according to a previously set format. You do not make it up as you go along.
Thus, for example, Episcopal ministers and most Lutheran pastors approach Sunday without giving particular thought to the shape of the service itself. It is formal (i.e., in the form given in a prayer book) and it is liturgical (i.e., set, depending on whether the service is to be one of the two sacraments or whether it is to be Morning Prayer, a service purely of the Word).2 There is freedom in worship within a form, just as J. S. Bach worked within specific musical forms like the cantata and the Mass, just as Shakespeare worked within the sonnet and Giovanni Bellini within the sacra conversazione and the triptych. Form is able, somewhat counterintuitively, to stimulate fineness and quality, even innovation and renewal, in the context of traditional givens.
At the same time, formal-liturgical worship rules out the approach that makes it up as you go along. It is true to say that a high percentage of nonliturgical, nonformal churches ad-lib from Sunday to Sunday. You are not able to know from week to week whether it is going to be a mother-daughter service, a stewardship service, an evangelistic guest service, a youth Sunday, or a Scouting Sunday. F. Scott Fitzgerald was not the first American novelist to write about Americans reinventing themselves. But thousands of churches reinvent the service, or appear to, every Sunday. That, at least, is one burden this writer, as a minister of a liturgical denomination, does not carry.
We are concerned here with formal and liturgical worship. We are thereby also concerned with vertical worship. Vertical worship looks up first, before it looks out. It is transcendent before it is horizontal. It is faced north before it looks around. This means that it is not pastor- or preacher-centered. It is, or ought to be, Word-centered. It is not “man/woman”-centered, nor is it concerned, in the initial situation, with community. It does, almost always, engender family feeling. The worship of which I speak is, to use the expressive German, senkrecht nach oben: straight up and down, looking right up.
The first principles, then, of formal-liturgical worship are its setness, its givenness, and its direction. It is not informal, it is not nonliturgical, and it is not horizontal. Nor, however, is it cold. Nor is it confining. Nor is it excluding, or non-user-friendly. How can this be?
LEX CREDENDI LEX ORANDI
Formal-liturgical worship must be based on the truth if it is to endure. In fact, if it is not based on the truth, it will finally fall down in pieces on the ground. If vertical worship is not rooted and grounded in truth, specifically Bible truth, then it should not stand. It should “morph” into casual and horizontal worship. The reason why many evangelical and/or Protestant Christians have rejected liturgical worship over the centuries is that they have associated dignity and formality with unbiblical Roman Catholicism or Anglican Catholicism or just high churchianity that seemed to exist at the expense of Christianity.
The Latin phrase that covers the philosophy of worship I am presenting here is this: lex credendi lex orandi. That means: What we believe determines how we pray. Quite a few liturgical scholars and theologians today want to reverse the order and write: lex orandi lex credendi, or how we pray (i.e., worship) determines what we believe. There are even some writers who claim that our belief systems come after and follow from our language of praise, whatever that is. This is an entirely opportunistic view of worship, which subordinates truth to practice. Lex orandi lex credendi must be completely rejected.
For Anglicans—yet it is important for all Christians who value forms of worship—the lex orandi lex credendi falsehood goes back to a “power play” in the 1970s by which the Reformation anthropology and Reformation Christology of the old sixteenthcentury Anglican prayer book were muted drastically in favor of a more contemporary picture of the Christian faith and the human condition. Anew and very different prayer book was the result for American Episcopalians. As soon as this prayer book was passed by the Episcopal Church’s General Convention (1979), everyone could announce with authority that the prayer book teaches thus and so. But which prayer book? By whose authority? The new one, just achieved? Or the old one, so convincingly and pastorally tested from the 1540s up until the 1970s? And yes, it has come true in experience that twenty-five years of praying the Christian faith in new words and new forms has created a very different church. Those liturgical politicians who piloted the fundamental changes in the 1970s could now observe by the 1990s, with some sad justice: lex orandi lex credendi. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Church people who now prayed Sunday after Sunday without the old confessions and penitential prayers became, well, a lot less penitential.
The fact is, theology has to precede the act of worship.

Excerpted from Cntrpnts Six Views Explore Worship: Six Views by Paul F. M. Zahl, Stanley N. Gundry
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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Exploring the Worship Spectrum : 6 Views

Exploring the Worship Spectrum : 6 Views

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