Book Review: A History of Contemporary Praise & Worship
By John Hooper
This book opens with the following scene:
A band on a platform; music derived from some style of popular music; vocalists and instrumentalists front and centre; informality; hands raised in the air; an extended time of congregational singing; reliance upon electronic technology featuring screens, projectors, and large soundboards; updated English and other nods toward establishing accessibility and relevance for worshippers; and the pastor nowhere to be seen until the time for the sermon. (page 7)
This is the world of contemporary worship, and this fascinating and well-researched book traces its history and theological roots. Both authors have extensive knowledge of their subject and write with remarkable detachment, to the point that having read the book I still could not be sure whether or not they support contemporary worship. Having looked at other sources I now believe they do, but their objective approach makes the book an honest, trustworthy and valuable resource.
While they confine themselves to North America, the picture they paint will be familiar across the world because their subject has become a global phenomenon. Some of the names and organisations that feature in this history are familiar, such as John Wimber and the Vineyard churches, Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, the Jesus People, Youth for Christ, the Charismatic Renewal movement and the Church Growth Movement. It is a history that we probably thought began in the 1960s, and that was certainly a pivotal decade for worship practice, but Prof Ruth and Dr Lim take us much further back.
Praise and Worship
The authors have adopted the term “Contemporary Praise and Worship” as a fusion of two distinct strands that converged like two rivers. The first is “Praise and Worship,” a movement within American Pentecostalism that began in Vancouver in the mid-1940s and was quickly associated with what became known as the Latter Rain Movement. It had its own distinct liturgical theology based principally on their understanding of Psalm 22:3 but also making use of Hebrews 13:15 and the worship of the Davidic and Mosaic tabernacles. Believing God to inhabit the praises of His people, Praise and Worship taught a direct causal link between praise and the presence of God. Praise became the vehicle to bring God down, preparing the people to worship Him.
The centrality of music in “Praise and Worship” was such that, over time, musicians became a kind of priestly class whose purpose was “to usher or lead people into God’s presence” (page 45). By the mid-1980s the now familiar term “worship leader” had been coined and became well-established in many churches both within and outside of Pentecostalism. Originally the role of “worship leader” was not simply to lead worship, but to lead the people into the presence of God so that they might worship Him. Interestingly, the now ubiquitous projection equipment for “song lyrics” was intended “to free the hands for raising and the bodies for dancing as part of a Davidic pattern of worship.” (pages 298,289).
Contemporary Worship
The second strand is “Contemporary Worship,” a term rather more familiar to UK Christians. The underlying theme of this strand, as identified by the authors, is one of “liturgical pragmatism.” In other words, while the content of the church’s message is fixed, i.e., the gospel, the best and most effective means of communicating it varies according to time and culture. The effectiveness of those means is measured by the numbers of attendees, conversions and church members.
In tracing the origin of these ideas the authors give us a telling quote from one of Charles Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion, published in 1835:
[The apostles’] object was to make known the gospel in the most effectual way, to make the truth stand out strikingly, so as to obtain the attention and secure the obedience of the greatest number possible. No person can find any form of doing this laid out in the Bible. It is preaching the gospel that stands out prominent there as the great thing. The form is left out of the question. (page 173).
Finney was concerned by “the gap he saw between old forms of worship and the people he wished to evangelize. He strove to bridge it.” (page 172). It is the bridging of that gap that “Contemporary Worship” is all about. In 1827, a few years before Finney, Aimee Semple McPherson had written in the same vein, “Religion, to thrive in the present day, must utilize present-day methods. The methods change with the years, but the religion remains always the same” (page 178).
Content and form
Both Finney and McPherson made a distinction between the content of the gospel and the form by which it is expressed, and it is one that many others have adopted. On the grounds that God has stipulated the content but not the form, the latter is considered “malleable in order to be fitting to contemporary people” (page 189); “even though the message of Christ is the same, the method must change to be contemporary” (page 203); “all forms are morally neutral and thus potentially usable for proclaiming the gospel” (page 207); “an analysis of people should determine the particular form of worship…. Forms should fit the people.” (page 223).
Some talked of designing worship that spoke the “heart language” of the people (page 232,242,251). Another believed that the gospel “needs to be wrapped in the cultural forms of the people the church hopes to present it to” (page 250). And yet another wrote, “What was relevant in the 16th century in terms of the medium of the day is not relevant today. Certainly the changeless message remains the same. It is a matter of stylistic changes, not substance changes” (page 265).
If it puzzles us that we can go into a church service today and hear a perfectly good sermon and yet find it wrapped in the context of worship groups, bands, informality and all the other features of “Contemporary Worship,” here is the explanation. At the root of that experience is the theology of Aimee Semple McPherson and Charles Finney.
Three steps
At the centre of “Contemporary Worship’s” form lies music-making because the gap between Christian music and the musical culture of the people to be reached, and the closing of that gap, is considered key. But it is not the only factor. Let me quote directly from the book as the authors identify three traits of Contemporary Worship:
The first trait was an updating of English from the archaic forms derived from the King James Version. This change was foundational, matching the time period’s general trend in the explosion of new versions of the Bible …. “Contemporary Worship’s” propensity for the colloquial matched a shift occurring more broadly in culture concerning what was heard as true, authentic speech. (page 227).
Mark that! The first step toward “Contemporary worship” was a change of language, born out of a “need for understandable communication” (page 202). The second was a drive to relevancy, addressing the needs and lives of people, and the third was the use of music drawn from the popular music of the day. Linguistic vernacular goes hand in hand with musical vernacular (pages 208-209), and always it is the vernacular of youth.
Accompanying this was the introduction of electronic multimedia, visual art, informality in both dress and behaviour, movement and people participation, but the change in music was central because it involved a complete overhauling of Christian praise. The advocates of “Contemporary worship” view all “inherited forms of worship” with deep suspicion (page 265), so hymns have been replaced by worship songs or praise songs and limited instrumental accompaniment has given way to a band centre-stage and an entertainment culture. This has necessitated a “technological infrastructure” (page 299) to support it, a whole industry devoted to the writing, publication and copywrite control of worship lyrics and music (page 300), and even to educational programmes with certificates and degrees for worship leaders (page 302).
Youth culture
During the momentous sociological changes of the 1960s the gap between worship and people widened to what some considered crisis proportions. A youth subculture found traditional worship dull, boring and detached. My own recollection of the youth culture of the 1970s is of something that I much preferred to avoid, but churches felt constrained to move with the times and introduce youth specific worship. Lasting from 1965 to 1985, this was the first of two distinct “waves” of contemporary worship that Prof Ruth and Dr Lim have identified. The second ran from 1985 to the mid-1990s.
A raging river
The authors tell us that some voices were raised against the increasing secularisation and worldliness of modern worship, but by the late 1990s “Praise and Worship” had converged with “Contemporary Worship” to become a “raging river.” It flowed through small towns and major cities crossing ethnic and even evangelical/liberal divides. Independent churches as well as many from the mainline denominations – Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Reformed – adopted the new measures of Contemporary Worship. Neither did it contain itself to the USA.
It is a river that still flows, a river “in which the Protestant worship world still swims” (page 309). If appeal continues to be made to the principles of Charles Finney and his successors, particularly their distinction between content and form, then worship will never settle. Finney’s own “new measures” eventually became “old measures” (page 174). For as long as people, tastes and cultures change, so worship form has to change to keep up, and that is recognised by the advocates of “Contemporary Worship.” Inevitably at some point it will become mainstream and old, perhaps even dull and boring, in contrast with the culture of the people. And then what? Creativity and innovation are ever necessary. The bridge constantly needs rebuilding (page 195,206,208).
“Contemporary worship” and the Bible
Where do the advocates for “Contemporary Worship” find their Biblical basis? While “Praise and Worship” derived its underlying theology largely from Old Testament sources, especially Psalm 22:3, the theology of “Contemporary Worship,” if we can call it that, hinges on a part of just one New Testament verse. Again and again, it is Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 9:22 that are quoted: “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” The weight of modern worship and all that we know to be associated with it is made to hang on those words. One advocate of “Contemporary Worship,” Bill Hybels, saw in those words of Paul the church’s rationale for adopting the “language, clothing, customs, and lifestyle” of the non-Christian people he sought to evangelize, “so as to make himself a more ‘credible witness’ to them” (page 266). Another, Rick Warren, used the text “to argue for an apostolic approach of allowing the target to determine the best way to evangelize” (page 266). That target is, of course, the unbeliever, so it is the unbeliever who determines how the church is to evangelise.
The advocates of “Contemporary Worship” claim that there is no Biblical principle regulating the form of Christian worship. That form is to be shaped solely by cultural and pragmatic considerations. They would argue further that since the culture of the present is to be the determining factor, worship’s form must be for ever changing according to the shifting musical tastes of the people the church is trying to reach. Or to put it another way, worship must keep in step with the spirit of the times.
Concluding thoughts
This book is an eye-opener. It exposes the man-centred thinking that lies behind the changes we have seen in evangelicalism over the past fifty or more years, and the Finneyesque theology that underpins it. From cover to cover the book claims to be about the worship of God and yet “Contemporary Worship” is revealed to be not really about God at all but about man. Its aim is not to worship God in the way that pleases Him, but in the way that appeals to the fallen, sinful, unregenerate masses.
Around half-way through the book the authors make a statement that gives much food for thought. Concerning the early days of “Contemporary Worship” they say, “The use of worship for evangelistic purposes was found in Finney’s insistence that the salvation of souls is the goal of all practices of Christian ministry” (page 172). Instead of being an end in itself, worship had been reduced to an evangelistic tool. Instead of the focus being on God, it was now on man. Of course, there are countless examples of worship being used worthily for evangelistic purposes and they have not led to anything like “Contemporary Worship,” but the underlying point is a serious one. It takes us from the “how” of worship to the much more basic questions of “what” and “who.” What exactly is worship, and who is it for?
The last chapter introduces us to a book bearing the title Worship Evangelism: Inviting Unbelievers into the Presence of God. It was written in 1995 by an American worship leader who was becoming concerned by what she saw. She wrote, “the very essence of worship has been quietly removed” (quoted on page 293). It might be more accurate to say that the One who has been quietly – or not so quietly – removed is God Himself. This is a book I can warmly recommend, with the reservation that it may be actually promoting, not critiquing, “Contemporary Worship.”
A HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY PRAISE & WORSHIP – UNDERSTANDING THE IDEAS THAT RESHAPED THE PROTESTANT CHURCH. Lester Ruth and Lim Swee Hong. Baker Academic, 2021; 350 pages, hardback. Price range online: £19.50 to £29.99.