Our case studies of niche churches have been of specific generational (e.g. boomers), affinity (e.g. Cowboy), and ethnically based congregations (e.g. African-American), but our conclusions can be generalized. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, author of Brand Jesus: Christianity in a Consumerist Age, summarizes our concerns: “As Paul writes in Galatians 3:28, the unity of Christ trumped all of the principal divisions of Roman society: tribe, class, and gender. No identity marker matters as much as Christian does.” He continues, “We must therefore be concerned about market segmentation infiltrating the church. It has resulted in two unacceptable outcomes: utterly homogenous churches representing consumer-based ‘clusters,’ and homogenous groupings within larger churches.” A wiser ecclesiology, we think, would have all generations, races and affinity groups embrace the church’s own liturgical culture, using language, music, and forms that are biblical and “catholic,” and which give concrete expression to the “communion of the saints.” A wise ecclesiology would embrace a common worship.

Reformed worship is both “transferable” and “flexible,” as J. Ligon Duncan observes. “Reformed worship has worked and is working in every situation and culture where there is an historic Protestant church committed to scriptural principles of worship.” he argues. Duncan provides global examples, from the Peruvian Andes, to West Philadelphia, to Dundee in Scotland, to Malawi in East Africa, to Eastern Australia, to Japan, to Israel; among Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Anglicans. There are churches, Duncan says, “on six continents, first world and two-thirds world, ministering to every conceivable class of society– (that) are following in the train of historic Reformed Protestant worship.”

This kind of unity is possible when it is recognized that the church has its own biblical, catholic, and organically developing culture through which its form of worship and ministry is expressed. Rather than dividing and excluding through new worship services that cater to popular styles and tastes, it is wiser for the church to maintain a significant measure of uniformity of worship, expressed in the forms of its own ecclesiastical heritage, through which the diversity of its peoples can unite. “Only a church which resists being merely of one generation (or ethnic culture, we would add) can be relevant to them all,” Gene Veith reminds us. Only a church with a common and catholic worship can facilitate the communion of all the saints.