Reformation Faith Today

The Reverend Terry Johnson is the Senior Minister at Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia. Rev. Johnson has authored several books through the years on worship. His books include Leading in Worship, The Pastor’s Public Ministry, Reformed Worship, The Case for Traditional Protestantism and The Family Worship Book. You may see all his books here.

In IPCs May 4 newsletter, Rev. Johnson wrote an article titled A Modest Proposal. In the article he writes about the “new worship” that has swept through most of evangelicalism and wishes for a return to traditional Reformed worship. His modest proposal is for the practitioners of the “new worship” to have a new denomination. Read on to see the full article. I must confess that I am very sympathetic to his dilemma. Maybe he is right. What do you think of his proposal? 

A MODEST PROPOSAL

When I was in college our Bible study pastor would occasionally bring along a colleague whom we today would call a “worship leader.” He was talented with a guitar. He would play softly and lead us from one song to another over a period of 15 to 20 minutes.

“Oh how he loves you and me.

(repeat)

He gave His life, what more could He give?

Oh how he loves me.

(repeat twice)

Oh how he loves you and me.”

This and other slow paced songs would be sung, without interruption aside from verbal encouragement from the song leader, in order to set the mood for the retreat, or Bible study, or prayer meeting, as the case might have been. I can remember being quite emotionally moved by the experience, and wanting the same for others. I took the memory of it with me to theological college in England, even buying a guitar in Bristol with the aspiration of being able to bring about the same effect on others that our worship leader had had upon us. I also took recordings of Maranatha Music choruses with me to England, and then to my internship in Scotland, even as I practiced strumming the guitar, hoping I might be the agent through which this new worship might be experienced in spiritually dead Britain.

Six months of the Prayer Book, a month of Sundays interning in Scotland, and a quarter attending a Reformed Baptist church in Bristol, dissuaded me. Exposure to the deeper things of God in the Anglican liturgy, in the Scottish Metrical Psalms, and in the free prayers of the pastor of the Buckingham Baptist church moved me spiritually to a new level and a new understanding. It also led me to reinterpret my previous experience as emotionally self-centered and self-indulgent. I rejected the music-driven emotionalism of college in favor of the word-driven passion of traditional Reformed worship.

Apparently I have walked the road less traveled. Over the past 30 years we have witnessed the triumph of the new worship. Charismatic in its origins and often combined with a contemporary praise band comprised of electric guitars, drums, tambourines and other assorted non-traditional instruments, the new worship is well-nigh universal among evangelical Christians. Its dominance is clear from California to Wheaton to the megachurches all over the South and Southwest. With some variation, congregations are being led by praise bands and worship leaders, not organists and ministers. Typically the worship leaders are very young. Apparently they have to be. With the exception of aging Boomers, only the young are able to keep up-to-date with the music. Their leadership is often painfully immature. High-energy music is usually followed by soft “love songs to Jesus,” as one commentator has called the genre. Congregations sing as the leaders do: standing, eyes closed, hands uplifted, more moaning than singing. Periodically there are words of encouragement: “Yes, Jesus; we love you Lord; we praise you Father; we lift you on high;” etc. The singing stops when the emotional mood is right or time runs out. Then the worship leader prays a spontaneous, exceptionally familiar and uncomfortably earnest prayer of the “just really” variety: “Lord, we just really want to praise you God, Father; you are everything to us Jesus; we, love you Lord; and we just really want to meet with you, Lord, Father, praise you Jesus. Amen.”

This is what evangelical worship has come to. Gone is the traditional hymnody. Gone is the Scripture reading. Gone is the rich biblical praying of the pastor. Long gone is the metrical psalmody. Expository preaching is on its way out too. What’s left? A new way of worship. A new way of relating to God. I know of no precedent for this in the last 2000 years of church history, lest it be the Gregorian chants of medieval monks with their extended repetition and mantra-like hypnotic state. It has invaded all the denominations and is ubiquitious in youth gatherings. Participants may come dressed in flip-flops and shorts, lattés in one hand, snacks in the other. The new worship mood is informal, comfortable, and casual.

It does not seem to occur to anyone that they ought to dress more respectfully, or that they ought to leave their food and drink at the door, or that romantic love songs are not suitable for expressing our love for Christ, or that rock and roll is not conducive of divine reverence. No, the new format has become a new orthodoxy, beyond question or challenge. The fundamentalists who would have been offended by guitars and cut-offs were long ago silenced. The new worship has triumphed.

Years ago Emily and I went with the Parrishes to see the movie, “The Apostle.” Robert Duvall, you may recall, plays a Pentecostal preacher who, shall we say, had lots of problems. As we walked out I remember thinking, “I no longer recognize my country (William Jefferson Clinton had just been elected) or my religion.”

Maybe its time to give the new worshipers a new denomination. In former times denominations were formed over worship issues. Anglicans wanted strict adherence to the Prayer Book, the Presbyterians and Congregationalists didn’t. Let’s create a new denomination for the new worship. As it is right now, one never knows what one will get when one walks into a Baptist or Presbyterian or Lutheran church. One may get the traditional service. That would be nice. But one just as likely won’t. I’ve gotten to the point where the first thing I do is look up front to see what the church is set up to do. If multiple mics are standing, the tell-tale signs of a worship team, I head for the exit.

Many of us don’t want to worship in the fashion of the new worship. We don’t think it is best, and we don’t like it. We fled the new worship for refuge in traditional Protestantism. Now the new worshipers are invading and increasingly controlling our new home. As they do so they are even accusing the traditionalists of being emotionally repressed and quenching the Spirit. Whatever are we to do? Can we put them all in their own denomination and let them worship happily together while traditional Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Anglicans worship as they always have? It’s a modest proposal, but, alas, unlikely. Meanwhile, I no longer recognize my country, or my religion.

—Terry Johnson