This is a follow-up piece to my last essay, which encouraged Christians to give grace to one another in the context of worship. In that essay, I argued that different forms of worship will appeal to different people, and we ought not to judge one another's preferences in that regard. Pretty straightforward, I think, but one of those good reminders that we all need from time to time.
It occurred to me, though, that a skeptic might object, "But what if there's a form of worship that is intrinsically better than others?--a form of worship which, regardless of personal preferences, ought to be held higher on its own merits?"
It's not an unfair question, though I think it's probably still just a way for people to argue for the rightness of their own whims. Those who argue that their form of worship is intrinsically better than others are not unified in a single opinion--rather, those from liturgical traditions argue for liturgical worship, those from evangelical traditions argue for evangelical worship, and those from pentecostal traditions argue for pentecostal worship. Everyone is pretty good at seeing the merits of their own form of worship and the weaknesses of the others.
Given the nature of my last essay, readers might expect me to take a fairly broad and permissive line on this question: just let everyone worship how they want to worship, so long as it finds support in the doctrine and traditions of scripture. My position is actually a little more assertive than that, though: I think churches should be giving their people opportunities to participate in all of the main forms of Christian worship. This isn't just an argument to pick the one you like and let others pick the one they like--this is an argument that we should be immersing ourselves in the whole vast and varied array of Christian worship.
This is the line taken by the Convergence Movement, a late-twentieth century outgrowth of both the Charismatic renewal and various liturgical movements, as they interacted with one another and the broader evangelical tradition. Much of it relies on the work of Robert Webber (whom I heard in person when I was in college), who wrote about the Christianity of the twenty-first century as the "ancient-future faith." And while the Convergence Movement has inspired a few truly wacky spinoffs--new denominations that seem more like the old heresy of Montanism than anything else--most of its outgrowth has been orthodox, vibrant, and deeply committed to both the riches of church tradition and the freshness of the Spirit's present work.
The underlying premise of Convergence strikes me as just about right: it identifies three major "streams" that have always been a part of the church's experience, but which certain movements and periods in church history have highlighted over the others. The three streams are (1) liturgical (or sacramental), (2) evangelical, and (3) pentecostal (or charismatic). The first stream focuses on the reverent prayer-life of the ancient Christian church and the richness of the physical symbology of worship; the second focuses on grounding the church in the teaching of the Word of God; and the third focuses on moving in step with the Spirit's work in the church. The argument is that each stream represents an authentic and powerful way that God works in his church, and that instead of insisting on one's merits over the others, we ought to be seeking the interconnected strengths of all of them. A good exposition of this view can be found in Gordon T. Smith's recent book, Evangelical, Sacramental, and Pentecostal: Why the Church Should Be All Three.
I want to add a supporting piece to that argument here, by rooting it in the theological vision of the offices of Christ, who is the head of his church. It strikes me that each of the three streams is aligned toward one of the offices of Christ, as traditionally identified: prophet, priest, and king.
Liturgical and sacramental worship is ordered toward Christ's office as the Great High Priest, leading the eternal liturgy in the heavenly tabernacle. Liturgical worship envisions itself as joining in the heavenly worship and participating in the eternal self-offering of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, who is both the offerer and the offered. Liturgical/sacramental worship is really good at fostering a sense of reverence and awe in worship, and of forging connections to the church through the ages, all the way back to the temple-worship of God's people in the Old Testament.
Evangelical worship, meanwhile, strikes me as being ordered toward Christ's office as king: it gives foremost attention to learning the will of the Lord by studying his commandments and faithfully, obediently applying that will to our lives. Like good citizens of any kingdom, evangelical worship takes seriously both the knowledge and the actions necessary to live out our identity as the King's own men and women. Evangelical worship is really good at promoting robust doctrine and clear-eyed theology, keeping the apostolic witness of the New Testament foremost in the mind of the church, and it produces a calm and concerted passion for seeing God's will done in the world.
Pentecostal worship is ordered toward Christ's role as prophet, the ultimate fulfillment of the office given by God to his people throughout the biblical period. A prophet was one on whom the Spirit of the Lord came, to speak the word of the Lord directly into the present circumstances of the people of God. One of the great expectations of the Messiah was that he would be the one who would pour out the Spirit not only on a handful of selected prophets, but on all flesh. Part of Jesus's Messianic reign in heaven is the impartation of the Spirit in just this way (see John 16:7-14; Acts 2:16-18). Pentecostal worship is full of vibrancy and laden with emotion, to the point where it pushes people out of their comfort zones--and that's also exactly what the ministry of the prophets did in the Old Testament. Pentecostal worship is good at harnessing the emotions of God's people, giving expression to their joy and their hope, and it continually keeps an attentive ear to what the Spirit is saying to the churches, not just in the biblical past, but in the present moment as well.
Now, most people are going to feel more at home in one of these three traditions, and not in all of them. Again, that just goes back to how we're wired differently, as I argued in my last piece. But even if we have a dominant preference, I think it may be important for us to keep dipping our toes in the other two streams as well. Each tradition also comes with its own weaknesses, after all--evangelical and pentecostal worship, for example, are just not as good as liturgical worship at fostering an atmosphere of reverence and awe at the holy mystery of the presence of God. Pentecostal worship gives such free rein to the emotions that it can be helpful if the more mind-oriented strengths of the evangelical tradition, rooted in scriptural doctrine, tempers it and ensures it doesn't go astray. Other examples abound. The strengths complement each other, and cover for each other's weaknesses: "A cord of three strands cannot be easily broken" (Eccl. 4:12).
This week, my church--whose dominant form of worship is evangelical--will be participating in a multi-church night of praise, where the free-flowing and emotive elements of the pentecostal stream will be in evidence, and we're also launching an optional liturgical service for any who want to experience it. I'm really excited about all of these: each service represents the strengths of these three great streams of the Christian tradition. (As a final aside, it might be worth mentioning that there's a corollary question in all this, too--is it better to "blend" all three forms of worship into a single service, as some Convergence churches try to do, or to offer separate services that highlight the strengths of each? I'm not sure about this yet, but I think there's merit to keeping them in separate services most of the time, if only to highlight the power of their distinctives, which would likely get watered down if fused.) The bottom line is this: our Messiah is prophet, priest, and king, and the history of the church has given us three grand streams of worship which align with the identities and offices of the Master. Let's make use of them.