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The other evening I sat down to finish The Bourne Legacy (which I’ll be blogging on soon), but first started to page through the books I had just received from Amazon. I turned to Chapter 2 of Robert Webber’s The Divine Embrace, and was immediately hooked. Even though the hour was late - normally too late for serious reading - I just couldn’t put the book down. Jason Bourne will just have to hang on for another day or two…

Chapter 2 of Webber is entitled A Historical Perspective I (AD 30 - 1500), where he outlines the history of Christian thought concerning the topic of spirituality, which he defines as “a lived theology.” His concept of spirituality is essentially the concept that I have been working under for the past few years, that the type of God that we believe in (or, who we believe that God is) determines how we will live our lives. Conversely, I also believe that the way we live our lives reveals what we believe about God (our theology). Webber strongly makes the point that theology and spirituality cannot - or should not - be separated from each other. They key, rather, to understanding spirituality is in a “lived theology … found in God’s vision of creation, incarnation and re-creation.”

Webber shows how the development of the creeds were more than just theological statements (in the modern sense), they were affirmations of the Biblical spirituality that was under attack by various heresies. The Apostles Creed is the most basic and fundamental of the creeds, countered gnosticism, which taught a spirituality based on freeing the spirit from the bondage of the fallen, physical realm. The Apostle’s Creed very strongly affirms the incarnation, and was seen by the early Church as a guideline for the Christian life, not just belief.

It is interesting, reading through Webber, how certain elements of the heresies of the early church are still around, challenging a true Biblical spirituality. In fact, much (and perhaps post) of evangelicalism functions under some form of one or more of these early heresies, and absolutely functions under non-Biblical post-medieval philosophies. Over the past year I’ve grown increasingly disillusioned with Evangelical theology and practice, as has been evident on this blog. As I’ve dug a bit more into the theological and philosophical history of the church, the Evangelical church seems to have less and less to offer. And, the post-modern, “emerging” church is in no better shape.

Webber, however, is doing something other than confirming what I’ve already been thinking, he’s pointed out some errors in my own thinking, that I thought I had already repaired. This is exciting… As I’ve just posted on skepticism and having our beliefs challenged, I am truly excited when I discover possible errors in my own thinking, and perhaps have an opportunity to correct those errors.

I’ll start posting a series on this book, outlining his main points and giving my own thoughts. As always, feel free to comment along the way.

In a recent post, I discussed the implications that a common contemporary worship style has on the community of the church:

… what I see happening is that our contemporary freedom in worship - to raise hands or not, to sit, stand, jump or twirl - plus the existential nature of the lyrics in our worship songs is undermining the goal of our churches, which is to create a corporate worship experience. I don’t have any sense of community with the people around me, who could be (and often are) engaged in any number of activities.

One of the things happening in our local church, ever since we got this new building without windows in the sanctuary, is that they turn down the lights during worship. It’s bugged my wife and I since they started it, but I haven’t said anything, as I’m already known as somewhat of a malcontent; I prefer to save my comments for more serious issues than “mood lighting.”

Well, today the pastor explained, for the benefit of visitors, why the lights are being lowered. It is to help us focus on God, the theory being that we won’t be distracted by our neighbors if we can’t see them. Now, this does address one of the points in the quote above, that we are involved in individual worship expressions. Granted, this shows some sensitivity in that area, but I don’t think they’ve thought the issue through from the standpoint of community. What the leaders are encouraging is now an even more individualized, existential worship experience. Not only we are to do our own thing, we are to try to forget that the rest of the congregation is even there. To me, this is absolutely counter-productive; that is, if you believe “church” is about corporate worship.

Those who work in early childhood education will probably understand what is called “parallel play.” Until a certain age, the most we can expect of toddlers is that they may engage in the same activities as other children at the same time. They are not playing “together,” they are playing along side each other. When they grow older, they are able to understand the concept of others as individuals to interact with, and corporate play activities begin.

This, of course, illustrates what I am saying about what is encouraged in existential worship. There really is no corporate worship going on; at best, it is “parallel” worship, and may not even be that. What is the point of coming together to worship, if it is to try to ignore the body and enter into our own little worship bubble? Why not stay at home? At least there, we could worship to songs of our own choosing, something that perhaps we could actually sing and mean. Part of the wonder of a confessional, liturgical worship style is that we are knowingly joining together with Christians the world over. We are Christians alone most of the week - on Sunday mornings, we are joined to the Church Universal. By reciting the creeds, by corporate recitation of The Lord’s Prayer, the many become one.

For 10 years or more, I’ve heard churches that I’ve been involved in lament the loss of community. Leadership conferences have focused on it, and church publications have discussed it. The small group strategy that worked 20 years ago is no longer working. Postmodernity is blamed (for everything, it seems). However, what do people expect, when the main focus of the corporate church is taken away, and we are encouraged to become more individualized? Why bother going to a building on Sunday morning only to be isolated? To make things worse, many of the songs are so personal in nature that not everyone can sing them. Many don’t affirm any universal truth, they affirm individual, existentialist experience. What if I, alone and in the dark, can’t join in with the experience being sung from the front?

As Marshal McLuhan said, the medium is the message. I believe it’s time to evaluate our medium of worship, to see what message we’re sending.

We had emo-worship in our church yesterday; at least the singing part of worship (think Dashboard Confessional). Song after breathy, angst-ridden, emotion-filled song delivered by the 20-something worship leader invited us to share in a series of existential experiences that were not necessarily our worship experiences. They were, perhaps, the worship experiences and emotions of a handful of song-writers unknown to any of us in our church. Or, perhaps they were written in the first person to show how someone might feel at a certain point. These emotions and thoughts may have been shared to some extent by the 20-something worship leader, or perhaps he thought people in the congregation ought to feel the way a certain song described. In any event, rather than being invited or led into a corporate, unifying worship experience by singing songs of universal truth telling about a Great God who does Great Things, we were invited to individually try to emulate some unknown persons’ existential worship experiences.

It seems that attending a worship service is like trying to pick out an anniversary card for your spouse. I pick out card after card reading tripe like “I don’t say ‘I love you’ as often as I should” before I find one that I can actually relate to. These “issues” the cards refer to may be the card-writer’s problems, but they are not mine. Likewise, in church I often wait 3 or 4 songs before they play a song where I can authentically sing along.

This is not the case all of the time in our church, as we have a variety of worship leaders, each with their own style and favorite (but often limited) arsenal of songs. At times it does seem kind of like an old top-40 AM radio station, where you could expect to hear the same songs over, and over, and over… And, like top-40 radio, there are perhaps 5 actually good songs in the bunch, and not necessarily those in the top 10 playlist. But, like the DJs on the cool FM stations, each worship leader has their own playlist, which helps to create some diversity. The problem is, it seems that more and more of the newer worship songs are falling into that existential emo category.

But then, I was raised Lutheran, where we sang meaty songs like A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, not to mention a pretty decent liturgy. Not that I’m stuck on hymns, mind you. Maranatha!’s The Praise Album (that dates me, I know) was a breath of fresh air. And, having been in and around the Vineyard since the mid-80’s, I am no stranger or despiser of worship choruses, even those sung from a 1st person perspective. I believe there’s a place for talking and singing about God, and also a place for singing to God. And, there’s certainly nothing wrong with someone writing about their current thoughts and emotions; certainly the psalms of David reflect much of this. What I have a problem with is when worship songs chosen for corporate worship focus on the experience or the emotion in place of any real thoughts about God. As far as I know, we’re not supposed to worship the worship experience, or someone else’s worship experience.

One of the points of liturgical or confessional worship, whether it be Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican or Lutheran, is unity. The Church joins together in a common confession of truth and worship experience that joins us not only with the others in the room, but with believers the world over. Dietrich Bonhoeffer even warned in Life Together that singing harmonies during worship detracts from unity, and only serves to emphasize individualism. I think he makes a very good point, although I think an argument could be made that harmonies can also demonstrate the coming together of diverse individuals - the Church becoming one.

However, as I have written before, what I see happening is that our contemporary freedom in worship - to raise hands or not, to sit, stand, jump or twirl - plus the existential nature of the lyrics in our worship songs is undermining the goal of our churches, which is to create a corporate worship experience. I don’t have any sense of community with the people around me, who could be (and often are) engaged in any number of activities. Nothing we sing joins us in a common confession of faith; they could be Buddhists for all I know (especially since very few of the songs have any theological content whatsoever).

In our attempts to be culturally relevant, relaxed and “natural” (I am reminded of the old A&W commercials: “come as you are, stay in your car“), are we in fact undermining our own goals of creating community? Is this why the church organization (read “club”) has become so important to us? I am suggesting that yes, this is what is happening. Our contemporary church liturgies are encouraging individualism rather than community, and as a result, organizational structure is replacing community.

I also suspect that this internal conflict that we’ve created is at the root of a lot of the Evangelical angst that is feeding the “Emerging” movements, as well as simply driving people out of our churches. Existential worship, leading to Evangelical angst, and the death of community. Thankfully, we know that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church. I don’t think our failures will prevail against it, either.