The Evangelical Church of What’s Happening Now IV: Worship Imperialism

In this series, I am giving American evangelicalism a hard time.  And it will not surprise that I am adverse to typical American evangelical worship.

But I will admit something.

As much as I love traditional worship and have very limited patience with anything else, I freely admit there is an important place for modern, free form, and even loud worship.  I’ve gone through phases of my life where such was good for me, and I see how such forms are needed to reach and edify many.

I hope I did not just cause any readers to faint or go into shock.

Would it be a small thing to ask exponents of the Church of What’s Happening Now to have the same respect for traditional worship?  Could they admit that traditional worship is needed in the church?  Yet even in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), I see “Anglicans” who pressure those in the denomination to dispense with or modernize traditional worship (There’s a contradiction.) for the sake of outreach and to make congregations more diverse.

I tell you what’s not diverse – homogenizing all the congregations into the Church of What’s Happening Now.   ACNA as a whole is almost already there.  Oh, yes there are sizable traditionalist enclaves.  But at the recent Provincial Assembly (unless there was a side meeting I am unaware of), there was not one genuinely traditional service of worship.  The opening Eucharist came closest, but it had “praise” song after praise song, and instead of a Gospel procession, the Gospeler paced around the stage like a motivational speaker.  Couldn’t they at least had a Gospel procession?

But some of the Evangelical Church of What’s Happening Now (TECoWHaN) crowd in ACNA are not content with that overweaning influence.  They would shove tradition aside to be “missional.” Yes, watch out for those who use that word a lot.

Do such not realize that traditional worship attracts a wide variety of people, including young people?  Do they not realize that many, young and old, worship better in traditional structure?  Do they not realize that what is hip and with it now – or tries too hard to be so – will likely seem passé or even silly in a few years if not less? (See post-Vatican II Roman Catholic worship.)

That is a big problem with TECoWHaN worship – to be effective, it has to be constantly changed to what attracts people.  Ask those in fashion industries how precarious that game can be.  

Yes, sometimes innovations in worship have been a long term good.  The music of Keith Green, John Michael Talbot (at least his early music, which is all I am familiar with), and Rich Mullins come to mind.  But more often it becomes a bad joke in a short time.  All you have to do is say “guitar masses,” “liturgical dance,” or “U2-urcharists” to get an idea of that.

To drive out traditional worship to go for innovations is like tearing down a gothic cathedral in order to build a brutalist edifice.  You can too easily find yourself losing something beautiful that has attracted people for centuries to replace it with something that already repels.  

That applies double to Anglicans.  It is traditional Anglican worship that has attracted many to that tradition, including me.  What happens if our worship ends up looking too much like The Evangelical Church of What’s Happening Now?