Worship and Music Today
Tags: worship
Below is the opening introduction; download the entire article, Worship and Music Today, as a PDF here.
Amongst conservative Presbyterians these days a debate is heating up, and shall before long burst into open conflict over the worship of the church. While division is always a scandal in the church, this is one occasion when at least we can say that the subject is worthy of a good fight and even a denominational realignment. Nothing that we do is as important as our worship. The first four of the Ten Commandments provide proof enough of that, concerning themselves with the who, how and when of worship. If there is to be a fight, let it not be over the budget, or education, or form of government, or the drapes in the chapel. Let it be over how God is to be worshiped. This battle is one which must be waged, whatever the cost.
Generals typically fight the last war, and massacre their troops in the process. None of the Civil War generals, Southern or Northern, adjusted to the existence of the minnie, the rifled bullet which vastly improved the effective range of the infantryman's musket over that of his father's smooth-bore. The First World War is a tragic monument to the failure of the generals, Britain's Haig chief among them, to adjust to the invention of the rapid-firing machine gun. The generals of the Second World War were slow to adjust to the creation of the tank (hence the Maginot Line), the admirals to the invention of the aircraft carrier (hence the sinking of the Prince of Wales), the air force commanders to the invention of radar. In each case the leadership was caught fighting the last war. That is to say, they fought the current war using the strategy, the tactics, and sometimes the weaponry of the previous war. The winner in the next conflict is he who most quickly and effectively recognizes that the new war, even if fought against the same enemy, is being waged on a different battlefield.
The devil, like smart generals, never fights on the same front. He and they are always shifting their lines. At the turn of the century the devil launched an all-out attack on the Scriptures, seeking to undermine the confidence of the people of God in the word of God. Those taking the broader, more "reasonable", more liberal view invariably justified their doing so in terms of outreach. Modern men can no longer take the detail of the Biblical revelation seriously, they said. Science has discredited its account of creation, its historical data, its primitive cosmology, its angry and vengeful God, and so on. Consequently, if we are ever to commend the Christian faith to modern people, we must frankly admit the Bible's flaws and proclaim the essence of the Christian message, which is the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the infinite value of the human soul. Friederich Schliermacher, the father of theological liberalism, was an evangelist. His aim was to reinterpret Christianity so as to render it palatable to its "cultured despisers," to steal a phrase from the title of his most famous work. Indeed nearly every heresy in the history of the church has been promoted in the name of evangelism. Christian periodicals today make frequent reference to the "worship wars" being waged in evangelical churches. Read Brian Longfield's The Presbyterian Controversy, a brilliant, highly readable account of the modernist fundamentalist conflict of the 1920's, and you will be spooked by the parallels in the language used by the liberals then and the advocates of innovation and novelty in worship today. It seems to be the same battle, having merely shifted to a new front. What few seem to suspect is becoming clearer to us almost daily. None dare call it what it is. But what can we say about worship that is designed to entertain worldly people, that debases congregational singing, that eliminates Biblical exposition, that drops all but token prayer, that ignores the sacraments, that introduces dance, skits, video clips, an MTV format, and happy talks. They call it being "user friendly." They justify their novelties, of course, in terms of outreach. "We're reaching the lost," they say. Maybe they are. Or maybe on a new front, unbelief is amongst us once more.
Above is only the opening introduction; download the entire article, Worship and Music Today, as a PDF here.