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Moving Beyond the Worship Service

For centuries, the worship service has been the primary gathering of the Christian church -from Catholic mass, to Reformation protestant worship services, to the traditional 1950s-style worship service, to the seeker-sensitive productions of the last two decades, to the more trendy gatherings we see today in emergent churches. I find it remarkable that the worship service has survived the two largest worldview shifts to impact the Western church-the protestant Reformation, and the present transition to postmodernism and the emergent church. Our epistemologies have changed, our ecclesiology has changed, our spirituality has changed, our approach to scripture and spiritual authority has changed, but the worship service remains fundamentally the same. We have revamped almost every aspect of how we do church, but not the central gathering, which has remained essentially unchallenged since Constantine.

An Unhealthy Ethos

Having people attend a worship service as the primary way of doing church communicates that being a Christian is about passively attending to someone else's ministry efforts. There has to be a pastor, who presents the information to be absorbed. There has to be a worship leader, who directs the praise of the church. There is little room for any involvement by the average person, save for trivial roles such as ushering, the occasional prayer or scripture reading, and, of course, paying for everything.

My father has years of training in biblical studies. In the worship service, he is given the opportunity to "serve" about three or four times a year. He might be asked to pass communion trays, lead a prayer, or read a scripture. That's it - things a nine year old could do. In fact, children are frequently called upon to serve in these roles, supposedly as "leadership training." He also teaches a Bible class, which is a much better use of his gifts, but this is clearly outside of the all-important worship service, and there are still relatively few ways people with other gifts can serve meaningfully in church gatherings. Where do artists fit in? Poets? Writers? There is not much room left for them in the worship service after we fit in the mandatory sermon, music, and announcements.

The pastor and worship leader (or, in my denomination, the preacher and song leader) are crucial because the unstated goal of the worship service is to facilitate a vertical interaction between the worshipper and God. In this model, instruction is sent downward, and praise is sent upward. Anything else that happens is incidental, or, as with announcements, a pragmatic necessity.

One of Many Options

Perhaps the most destructive effect of the worship service is to convince us that it's all there is to church – there are no other legitimate gatherings. Home gatherings and small groups are great, but they don't count as church, even in many emerging churches. The worship service is the only real church gathering. Among older churches, the attitude is "Attend church, and your life will be great." Robert Webber, in his recent book The Younger Evangelicals, points out how many aspects of boomer-generation church life were engineered to provide therapy for life’s problems. Look at the sermon topics in a seeker-sensitive church, and you will find things such as "Prayer = tools for solving problems" and "How to have a great marriage." Through sermons like these and uplifting worship music, the worship service promises everything we need to be successful Christians. If you want to go deeper, you can join a home Bible study or class, but that’s optional. Real church happens on the stage every Sunday....