Thoughts on Worship

These posts are copied from our C&C Worship Blog

After the band/tech retreat a couple of weeks ago, I started thinking that I would like to share with you what I am reading about worship. I think many of you might be interested. And, in all honestly, writing about what I am reading and thinking is helpful to me. So hopefully you will find this helpful and interesting.

Like most other things in our culture, ideas on worship change rapidly. Some things remain the same. The purpose of worship will always be to glorify God and in Christian worship specifically we worship the God as must fully realized in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Some aspects of worship vary from tradition to tradition. For instance, an Episcopal service will always include some form of Holy Communion whether it is a formal traditional service or a charismatic contemporary service. But many other things change as we seek better ways to reach out to new generations and to those outside the church.

So every week or so, I plan to share with you some of the current thinking and ideas on how to continue to reach new people through worship. I think you will find yourself nodding in agreement with some of the ideas I will share. Some ideas will surprise and challenge you. And still others you may not agree with. But I share these to help us all as we seek to both worship God fully and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In order to have a conversation, we all need to speak the same language. So I thought I would start by sharing some words and definitions that are being used in worship debates today.

Emergent worship -- a movement that seeks to form worship in a way that reaches out to postmodern people, especially those outside the church. Emergent worship seeks to be missional, experiential, and relational. In other words, emergent worship is about a relationship with Jesus Christ and with a community of faith that reaches out in mission to the world around us. Emergent worship seeks to engage people by allowing them to participate in worship in various ways using a variety of senses. Some of the names associated with the Emergent movement are Brian McClaren, Leonard Sweet, Rob Bell, and Dan Kimball. Wikipedia actually has a very good article on the emergent movement at Emerging Church Movement


Post-modern -- this term is equally difficult to define and some Christians use it in a very negative way. According to sociologists, the late 20th century saw a shift in values and even ways of thinking about what things have authority in our lives. Post-modern thinkers reject institutional structures, black and white teaching, and claims of superiority or exclusivity of ideas. You can probably see right off why this is threatening to some Christians. Other Christians, however, seek to find a way to speak to these thinkers on their own terms.

Pre-Christians – this term refers to people who have not been introduced to the gospel of Jesus Christ and are open to hearing it. Traditional preaching and evangelism techniques assume that most non-Christians simply need to hear the gospel clearly and they will be compelled to respond.

Post-Christians – this term refers to people who think they know what Christianity is all about and have rejected it. They may or may not have actually ever heard the gospel, but they have strong feelings about Christ, Christians, and the church. A common comment among this group of folks is, “We like Jesus, but we don’t like Christians or the church.” We now live in primarily a post-Christian culture.

Okay, there is more to come, but this is enough to start our conversation.

What do you think? Do you know any pre-Christians or post-Christians? What are the questions they are asking about faith and the church?

See you Sunday for some Cappuccino and worship!!!!