Questions About the New Era

I am really struggling with the thought of production vs. worship. I've been seeing worship leaders oggling and blogging over churches like Hillsong/North Point/Willow Creek's production, and wishing they had that money/production quality. I wonder if that is really what it is all about? It seems like church is becoming a show and people continually want to do what they are doing. I know this is cliche to think or say, but it is so true. For decades now we have seen a shift in church and we are now in the middle of a new reformation.

During the first Reformation, theologians began to notice a shift where people were not worshipping because it was all entertainment. The songs were too hard to sing because they were in a different language and also because it was a huge production in this other language - really the only people who were attracted to church were people who understood Latin, were artists, or were musicians who could sing along with the songs. People like Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin began to take notice of this. They saw that people were disconnected from the church because they were not a part of it - there was no participation. These men saw that the gospel was bigger than what the Catholic Church had made it out to be. What it involved was the participation of the people - literally a liturgy or "work done by the people". Matt spoke about participation in relation to Paul Tillich over on his blog which he linked to Jordan Cooper.

Today, most people cannot remember a sermon beyond the weekend. It doesn't stick. It is the same with a lot of the songs that we sing; they are difficult to sing or filled with performance and solos. It is a disconnect to people. Maybe the things we sing and hear at church aren't memorable because they are just regurgitations of what we had sung or heard the week before. Most tell us how to love Jesus, but not why we love Jesus. We are given the steps to loving Jeus, but not the story of how we got to this point in Christianity. How dangerous it is that we are told to love Jesus, but not how to follow him.

So what is the answer to all of this? I don't know. That's the beauty of the bloggosphere is that we can pose questions or ideas and see if anybody else has any ideas. I wonder if educating people will help? Maybe helping people discover the Christian story that they are a part of. Talking about the narrative that is the bible. Maybe singing songs that explain what we believe and why. Hymns are a good example of this. If you read some, not all, of the "old hymns of the faith", some of them truly explain what we believe from everything from the trinity to the atonement to why jesus calls us to serve. These are just a couple of ideas, I'm sure there are tons of ideas. I'm just curious as to how we got to this point and how we can get out of it.