Marva Dawn

    MY friend David Hendricksen told me about a restaurant in Greeneville, Tennessee, called Diedra’s. Its chef prepares only three choices for the main dinner entré each evening, and the restaurant is open only three nights each week for dinner. Since she has spent careful time designing and developing the feast, she will not rush around to make extra when what she has made is gone. As soon as guests have savored all of the day’s creations, no more will be offered — until the next time the place is open, for which the chef will craft three other possibilities. Everyone knows that to go there is to experience the finest skill. The chef’s work is superb — the food is artfully conceived, tastefully prepared, exquisite in presentation.
Contrast that with a large chain restaurant. No one cares what choose. Everything will be the same tomorrow as it was today. As soon as dish is emptied, another large tray of the same will be dumped into the heat or chilling bins. Ultimately, when there are too many choices, nothing matters.
Analogies are always inadequate — and this one certainly is because some people might interpret it to mean that congregations should offer three entrés or choices of worship style (the danger of which we discussed [last issue]). My point with this metaphor is the need for crafting, for carefulness, for the authority of the chef to choose how best to serve her customers. In the same way, pastors and musicians employ their finest artistry to create worship that nurtures the people of God with the splendor of God.
Certainly I am not saying (and have never said) that there is only one way to do worship well. I believe instead that there could be an unlimited multitude of excellent forms and structures and tools for God’s people to worship him (since God’s splendor is too great for us ever to capture it); but to choose what we do by means of an attempt to please the people is to lose carefulness. We can enrich everyone’s understanding of God with a wide variety of resources and careful planning, but to attempt to cater to everyone’s tastes is to wind up with hodgepodge.
I do indeed speak positively of the heritage of the Church in the catholic mass — primarily because so many worship or church-growth gurus are bashing it these days. The result of that bashing has been an almost knee-jerk reaction on the part of numerous pastors and congregations simply to discard the tradition without ever understanding why it has stood so well the test of time. I believe that our forebears in the Church were very wise to construct the historic liturgy as they did. It is thoroughly biblical, entirely God-centered, upbuilding to the community, nurturing of genuine discipleship — and it follows a brilliantly logical progression of thought that guides the worshiper from repentance and forgiveness into exaltation and then instruction and empowerment for ministry.
With the guidance of the Church’s tradition, congregational leaders can construct many ways to worship well. Several clarifications are necessary...if we want to understand the kind of leadership that worship needs in order for its participants to be Church.
Conducting the Symphony
The last thing churches should do if they want to worship well is conduct a survey asking members what they want for worship. What the people want might not be good for them, and our churches are in the business of forming Christians, not catering to consumerist choices.
This is certainly a countercultural stance, for everyone (it seems) thinks that the Church should be a democracy. However, the true Church has never been — and ought never to be — a democracy. It is, primarily, a Spiritocracy, a Body with Christ as the Head, a charismacracy (my coined word to signify leadership by those exercising Spirit-endowed gifts, charisma in Greek). What an odd thing to be in the era of the World Wide Web.
The great gift of the World Wide Web, everyone (it seems) declares, is that it democratizes the world. There is no such thing as authority, because everyone can participate equally. Cyberspace is a world of no footnotes, no hierarchies, constant destabilization of anyone’s input. Those who write about cyberspace recognize that the Internet will be hard on religions that emphasize authority and hierarchy. Now we live in the milieu of freedom and individualism.
However, critics also are beginning to recognize that the claims of the cyberspace world for equality and democracy are deceptive. It is not necessarily a world of freedom of access, but one controlled by the hierarchy of those with wealth and power. Furthermore, the lack of any authority amplifies the postmodern inability to know how to weight information — and so a person’s life becomes increasingly “virtual,” with more and more stacks of data without ordering or significance, with more superficiality and less of an attention span, more hype and less real experience, less humanity, less meaning. In addition, with the proliferation of web sites there is also a proliferation of garbage, so there is great need for some means of discernment, some test by which information can be evaluated.
In contrast, when we are being Church, our churches are not controlled by a hierarchy of wealth and power; rather, they function as a charismacracy with the authority of Spirit-given gifts in a Christ-centered Body to weigh, to order, to discern, to test according to God’s standards revealed in the Scriptures interpreted by the whole community. Since more and more people are finding it impossible to resist the lures of cyberspace, it seems to me to be a critical time for the Church to be very clear about our identity and not to be ashamed of offering our gifts of genuine authority, unfailing stability; trustworthy security, and true freedom. Perhaps worship is the most important realm in which the Church is significantly countercultural, for worship is under authority — first that of God and then that of the charismacracy.
Paul Dahlstrom and his seminary students in a course on “Worship: Traditions and Practices” explored the analogy of leading worship to conducting a symphony.2 Dahlstrom and the class participants discovered that church musicians often seemed to have a very good sense of the meaning of worship and carefulness in leading it. One student wondered if that might be because musicians have a score (that is, the printed music that gives them exact notes and markings for volume level, speed, mood, and so forth) which guides many of the particulars of their performance. The class ascertained that the leading of worship needed “a metaphor that somehow captured the purpose, organized the activity, and inspired dedication.”
The value of their metaphor of conducting a symphony is that it emphasizes the following aspects:3
Unity
Even though a symphonic piece often has three or four differing movements (usually one or two relatively faster segments and one or two slower ones), these parts relate to each other. The same is true of any kind of art; the elements of a painting, similarly, must work together — with enough variety for interest but not enough to make the piece incoherent. Even so the components of worship must be congruent with each other.
Movements
A symphonic piece varies widely in mood or tone or tempo between the individual segments or portions of the piece. Similarly, the timbre of confession and absolution is vastly different from the spirit in hymns of praise.
Progression
There is a flow as the symphony progresses to its climax and ending. So worship finds its high points in the Gospel reading and the Lord’s Supper, but the liturgy that surrounds them makes a progression from the entrance into worship to the dismissal into ministry.
The musical score
There are specific notes to be played. So worship has a theme, usually generated by the texts assigned for the day or chosen by the pastor. There are numerous possibilities for the score — thousands of symphonies to choose from, a wide range of texts. However, the performers must be faithful to the musical score, even as pastors must be true to the text. (Obviously the analogy can’t be stretched too far here because a musical score demands note accuracy far beyond the requirements of worship. Perhaps we can avoid this problem by seeing the composer of the score as the Church, with its arranger being a particular congregation’s worship committee.)
Diversity
Different symphonies require vastly different instrumentation. Even so, worship calls for a variety of musical sounds to display the rich splendor of God.
Numerous styles
Symphonic music encompasses a wide diversity of sounds and flavors from all eras and areas — from spare to lush harmonies, from romantic poignancy to marching brassiness, from jazz to Latin or African rhythms, from European to Asian melodies. Even so, the music of the Church entails gifts from all the people of God throughout time and space.
Relationships
The conductor’s highest loyalty is to the spirit of the music (for which the written score and the composer are valuable guides)   just as the worship leader’s superior authority is God (to whom the community and the Scriptures are reliable escorts). Other relationships are also essential in order for the symphony to be played well. A conductor works together closely with the instrumentalists, just as the pastor and musician in worship work with each other as teammates, and both work with the worship committee to plan and carry out the best worship they can craft for the sake of the particular congregation they serve.
Authority
The conductor exercises the authority that is necessary for the performance — otherwise each musician could go his or her own way — and the conductor is chosen for that position because of his or her understanding of the composers, their music, and how that music should be interpreted. Similarly, the pastor and musician are mentors to the rest of the congregation in the art of worship, and out of their expertise they exercise the authority of choosing and leading the elements of worship.
The Kind of Authority the Church Needs
This is not authoritarianism. It is the authority expressed by the centurion who had people over him and under him (see the accounts in Matthew 8:5-10 and Luke 7:1-10). It is never a unilateral authority, but always that of a grace filled community. We could have plenty of disagreements about some of the particulars of how this authority is played out, but what is essential is that it be the process of the Spiritocracy and the charismacracy.
It is the authority of the pastor who has daily devotions and a regular Sabbath to keep his or her spiritual life strong, who diligently explores and submits to God’s Revelation in the Scriptures and to the Word himself, who has studied the meaning of worship and its practice throughout the Church, who works together with the congregation’s musicians and worship committee to plan the best, most cohesive way to immerse the congregation in the splendor of God revealed in the texts for the day.
It is the authority of the musicians (be they guitarists or organists, flute players, singers, choir directors, or whatever) who have studied church music, who practice diligently to hone their skills, who study on their own and work with the pastor to understand the scriptural foundation for each worship service, who attend training seminars and research new resources in order to find the best music to immerse the congregation in the splendor of God revealed in melodies and hymn texts, choral anthems and instrumental pieces.
It is the authority of the worship committee composed of a diversity of people (of all ages, races, social classes, levels of expertise) who are all spiritually diligent people, engaging regularly in Bible study and worship practices, attending worship conferences or other educational possibilities, who are committed to working together as a team with the pastor and musicians, open to comments and suggestions from the rest of the congregation, eager to craft worship that immerses the congregation in the splendor of God through every element that the service contains.
In other words, this is the authority of the gifted community, under the Holy Spirit’s directions, talking together to create worship services that keep the focus on God, unite the members of the congregation into a genuine community, and form the believers to be faithful followers of Christ.
Under such authority the congregation cannot engage in battles over taste that make worship like the large chain restaurant, where nothing is prepared well and no one cares whether the customers eat anything good for them. Rather, worship will be like home cooking — only done by the chef at Diedra’s — so that the food is nutritious as well as a delight to the eye and the soul. It will be the Bread of Life that worshipers receive.
Every Church Is Liturgical
Lest the reader think that the principles enunciated here apply only to what are called “liturgical” churches, which make use of previous centuries of church ordering, let me add a few other clarifications. The continued bashing of “liturgical” churches by church marketers who say that “liturgy doesn’t appeal to contemporary people” is based on a misunderstanding of what liturgy is. The name leitourgia simply means “the work of the people.” Since most churches involve worship participants in singing songs and in silently or vocally joining in the prayers, all are liturgical, according to the original meaning of the word.
In our time, the word liturgy usually signifies a church’s ordering of its worship, and in fact all worship services have some sort of ordering. The pattern might not follow that of the traditional catholic mass, but most congregations usually develop customs over time that are generally adhered to week after week. Whether acknowledged or not, most worship services follow the habits of a liturgy.
Since the Scriptures repeatedly invite us all to join in the praise of the assembly, to sing to the Lord with thankful hearts, to pray and listen and heed, our question must be whether a particular congregation’s practices or liturgy invites participation by the entire assembly. Our goal must be to create the possibility for every person present to become actively engaged in the encounter with God. Never should only pastors or musicians be the performers.
Some denominations have more formal liturgy and use elements dating from the earliest centuries of the Church, thus sharing worship materials with other Christian communities throughout space and time. These traditional liturgies are not boring in themselves, but they can be made so when they are led without carefulness. While there is no absolute standard of how things should be done, the Scriptures call us frequently to faithfulness, to decency and order, to attentiveness. Pastors and musicians and congregation members all need to follow the score of the symphony (to reemploy the analogy above) with more of a sense of the art of engag-ing in the “music-making” of every aspect in worship. Whatever forms and styles are used, they must be appropriate and be employed appropriately.
A good example of this sense of litur-gy occurred one fall day in chapel at Gordon College in Massachusetts when the ordering included different kinds of involvement by all the people and drew on a wide range of resources new and old. A student ensemble led two cont-emporary songs — one a reminder of God’s presence and the other a setting of Lamentations 3:22-23. Since I was un-familiar with one of the songs and won-dered if others might be, too, I had asked the music team to make sure that before singing everyone present heard the words and the melody clearly; the stu-dents did a great job of introducing both so that all could participate. Others of-fered a call to worship and prayers that cultivated Churchbeing. Even the ann-ouncements, which were about service projects, tied in well with my sermon theme of the challenge to be a genuine Christian community in this postmodern world. We closed with the hymn “God of Grace and God of Glory.” Everything and everyone in the worship service — new music and old, prayers and message students and faculty — worked together to receive from God “wisdom...courage for the living of these days!”
Godly Authority in an Age of Opinion4
In a postmodern world, where few people believe that there is any absolute or objective Truth and most people want to reject any configuration of authority, theologians are easily accused of foisting their own opinions on others if we try to suggest that some things have been discerned by the continually tested consensus of the Church to be normative for Christian life and worship. I learned the importance of making clear distinctions concerning the nature of the authority church leaders exercise as opposed to mere opinion when at a youth convocation a charming high school student asked me to comment on a moral issue. After I had carefully described some of the moral dimensions involved in the subject, she turned away saying, “I just wanted to know your opinion.”
“That was not my opinion,” I responded. “If I had given you my opinion, I would have said the opposite. But I am under the authority of God’s Word, and I can’t escape the scriptural moral directives as the larger Church has discerned them.”
Of course, it would be easier to excuse all behaviors and let everyone choose whatever they want — but do we really love others if we allow them to rebel against God’s designs for his human creation? Rather, God’s immense love and mercy for us compel us to seek to be faithful to his Word. If our desire is to be formed by the narratives of the Scriptures to be God’s people, then we must use our best tools to study the Bible and be submissive to what is learned by the whole Church in its Spiritocracy. This does not make God’s Word oppressive, for the biblical narratives convince us that God commands what is good out of his grace and transforms his people into believers who want to live his best.
Similarly, I am convinced that we can draw some criteria from God’s Word by which to assess what we do in worship; by which to learn better how the gifts of God can be employed; by which to choose carefully the best forms and materials for biblically faithful worship; by which to defuse the conflicts between advocates of certain “styles” of worship, between the clergy and the musicians, between the professionals and the laypersons. Worship is a moral issue (that is, some choices are better or worse than others), for how it is conducted can form participants to be anything from narcissistically inward-turned to faithful in following Jesus in crucifying servanthood. What questions does the Word give us to help us, as the charismacracy of the Church, to think more theologically, biblically, and faithfully about worship? Throughout all my work on issues of worship I especially emphasize three fundamental criteria that I believe the biblical canon gives us for assessing what we do in worship and why — that God be the Infinite Center, that worship upbuild the Body, and that believers be nurtured in faith and life. These may lead to myriads of different choices in different parts of the world, but they never mean catering to everyone’s tastes. Instead, if these are our primary guidelines, we will discover God’s authority, under which we then will engage with all the Body in the process of exercising our authority to craft and lead worship according to the gifts given us to be pastors and teachers (and musicians) as gifts to the churches — until the day prophesied in Philippians 2:9-11, when the dominion of Christ is complete, and the medium and the message are finally perfectly one.
Notes
1. By far the strongest and most broadly ranged of the books...that expose the illusions of cyberspace is Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information, ed. James Brook and Iain A. Boal (San Francisco: City Lights, 1955).
2. The class sessions, the students’ discoveries, and Dahlstrom’s analyses are recorded in Paul T. Dahlstrom, Worshiping: Present and Future Hope (Lima, OH: Fairway Press, 1996).
3. Though various points are fleshed out in the rest of Dahistrom’s book, I have chosen to create my own list here.
4. This section contains part of my chapter, “Reaching Out without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for Postmodern Times,” in Confident Witness, Changing World, ed. Craig Van Gelder (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., forthcoming). My thanks to Craig and to Judy Bos, administrator for the Gospel and Our Culture Network for permission to use this modified version here.
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