Second Presbyterian Church

From the Pastor's Study
May 2004

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A couple months ago (February) I talked about PURPOSE and FORM in a church and how FORM becomes too important when the PURPOSE of the existence of the congregation is not clear. The bottom line is this: that members of a congregation tend to scrap about very minor issues when its PURPOSE is not clear. In order to better address what our PURPOSE is at Second Presbyterian I would like to say some words about worship. *

Worship is the heart of the Christian community. Worship is the heart of the Christian community when it has gathered together. What is worship? It is the experience of coming together, as a community, in order to encounter God as demonstrated in the crucified and risen Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. The heart of worship is experiencing the presence of God and offering our prayer and praise to Him. Therefore, to worship means we encounter God through the proclamation of the Word (scripture and sermon) and the proper administering of the Sacraments. From the beginning Christians have been gathering together to praise God, to give alms for the poor, to break bread, and to baptize converts. The task before us here at Second is to see to it that we maintain these proper ingredients of worship.

Now, it is only in the context of appreciating true worship (e.g. PURPOSE for existence) than we can properly discuss FORM of worship. The big argument over the past twenty years has been should we be "traditional" or should we be "contemporary." The proper answer is that the question itself is irrelevant. Why? First of all, what exactly is traditional worship? The best answer to that question is: whatever a particular congregation has been used to doing over a period of time. A traditional worship service in one congregation will look vastly different than a traditional service in another congregation. There is one common danger; some traditional worship is an empty shell of FORM that has lost is vitality, its life in the experience of worship.

What is contemporary worship? Contemporary worship is defined in opposition to traditional worship. This usually translates to guitars and keyboards with "praise" music, Christian symbols removed (too traditional), and the preacher can dress "professional casual." Frankly, this sounds like focusing on the FORM of worship rather than the PURPOSE of worship. In other words, contemporary worship is dependent upon traditional worship IN ORDER TO DEFINE ITSELF as worship! I don't believe this is helpful. The legitimacy of contemporary worship, however, is its attempt to breathe life into "dead" traditional worship.

Proper, Reformed/Presbyterian worship needs to recover its roots (renew its PURPOSE) and still be able to "think out of the box" when it comes to FORM. But the latter MUST be dependent upon the former; PURPOSE comes before FORM.

I shall have more to say about this and for your convenience I am putting these "articles" about worship, etc. on the website for reference.

*The following thoughts have been inspired by Professor Ronald Byars and his book, The Future of Protestant Worship.

Grace and Peace,
The Rev. Daniel E. Hale, D. Min.
Designated Pastor