Category Archives: Worship

Authorized worship

8 Replies

Last week, I pointed out some concepts regarding worship that I have come to reject. One of those is the idea of authorized worship. Thinking of worship as being “authorized” or “unauthorized” goes hand in hand with the Regulative Principle of Worship. One website expresses it this way: “If God has not authorized worship then there is no basis for it. However, if God has authorized worship, then it is to be regulated by His word.”

It was interesting for me to Google “authorized worship.” The first page of results were mostly from churches of Christ or other groups discussing churches of Christ. The last item on the page was a Google Books hit from the Christian Baptist, an article from Alexander Campbell laying out the idea of “authorized” and “unauthorized” worship (This particular article can be read on Dr. Hans Rollman’s site.. (There was also a page from a Seventh Day Adventist magazine, but it wasn’t actually about authorized worship, rather “who authorized Sunday worship?”)

It was also interesting to see that few of these articles actually seek to prove that there is such a thing as “authorized” worship. The Campbell article lays out a negative proof, that is it disproves the idea that “there is not a divinely authorized order of Christian worship in Christian assemblies.” Campbell says that if there is no authorized “order,” then nothing done in worship can be considered sinful. Therefore, there must be an authorized order.

Much has been made of Nadab and Abihu’s “strange fire”; for many, that’s one of the strongest examples of why we need to look for authorization in worship. (The example of Uzzah also gets used; interesting that both of these examples are frequently used by those who want to claim the entire Old Testament was nailed to the cross!) I spent a good deal of time with “the boys” a few years ago; feel free to read those articles. (And I’d better mention Eleazar and Ithamar, since I promised not to talk about two of Aaron’s sons without mentioning the other two!)

Other texts are thrown around here and there, but frankly, we use the term “authorized worship” because Campbell did. We inherited it from Restoration Movement leaders; we sure didn’t get the term from the Bible. And I don’t think we got the concept from there, either. It always worries me when we freely and regularly use phrases that the Bible itself doesn’t use. That’s not necessarily wrong (notice that I use the word Bible, a thoroughly unbiblical word), but it should raise caution flags.

Maybe I’m not being fair. Anyone want to stand up in defense of the concept of “authorized worship”? I’m all ears.

Mark Driscoll on the Regulative and Normative Principles of Worship

12 Replies

Photo by Ove Tøpfer; from Stock Xchange

Author/evangelist Mark Driscoll did a series of sermons on the topic of “Religion Saves and 9 Other Misconceptions.” The last sermon in that series had to do with the Regulative Principle, the hermeneutical approach that says that unless Scripture specifically authorizes something, that thing is prohibited.

Driscoll stated the theme of the sermon as a series of questions:

Do you believe that the Scripture not only regulates our theology but also our methodology? In other words, do you believe in the regulative principle? If so, to what degree? If not, why not?

He then went on to offer an evaluation of the Regulative Principle and its counterpart, the Normative Principle. Let me share his analysis of the two principles (some of this taken from this blog which summarizes the sermon):

  1. The Regulative Principle (Only do the things specifically warranted in Scripture)
    1. Strengths:
      1. Seeks to define worship by God and his Word
      2. Tries to honor the Bible and hold it in high esteem
      3. Draws a ditch between the world and the church keeping out syncretism, worldineess and paganism.
    2. Weaknesses:
      1. Separates worship in the assembly from worship in everyday life
      2. Insufficient. Doesn’t answer questions about things not mentioned in the Bible (service length, approved seating, order of worship)
      3. Legalistically applied making rules with extreme applications that are not in the Bible (Psalms-only worship)
  2. The Normative Principle (Things are allowed unless forbidden by Scripture)
    1. Strengths:
      1. Sees the bible as principles and gives flexibility for methods
      2. Allows cultural contextualization
      3. Treats gathered and scattered worship the same. When you live throughout the week you live by the normative principle
    2. Weaknesses:
      1. Opens the door to syncretism, the mixing of biblical principles with ungodly cultural principles
      2. Makes our enjoyment and not God’s pleasure the object of our worship
      3. Elevates unbiblical elements to the point where they squeeze out biblical elements

Driscoll goes on to say that he doesn’t fully follow either principle. He states his own view as

“All of Christian life is ceaseless worship of God the Father, through the mediatorship of God the Son by the indwelling power of God the Spirit, doing what God commands in Scripture, not doing what God forbids in Scripture, in culturally contextualized ways for the furtherance of the gospel when both gathered for adoration and scattered for action in joyous response to God’s glorious grace.”

Reactions?

How worship practices changed in the Bible

6 Replies

Travis raised an interesting point in the comments yesterday. He wrote:

Here’s another question I’ve been pondering. Maybe you can start a thread on this some day. We have passage after passage about not changing “worship” or adding to/taking from God’s word, etc. But in studies I’ve done over the past few months, I’ve noticed how much the worship and celebrations within Judaism changed through the centuries. Hannukah is a religious celebration (of a sort) and Christ took part (it appears He did. We have no record of Him rebuking those who celebrated it.). Also, the Passover feast changed significantly from its origins, adding the drinking of wine (nowhere mentioned in the OT), the reading of certain psalms, etc., and we see Christ celebrating the Passover on multiple occasions. In both of these examples, we see Christ later using them as teaching moments, first to teach “I am the light” (Hannukah) and second the institution of the Lord’s Supper during Passover. My question is, from these examples, does this signify acceptance on God’s part that we are not obligated to keep 100% what is specified for worship? We can change it, without penalty?

We do see a worship evolution in the Bible. Along with the things Travis mentioned, I think we can point to the synagogue as a major “innovation.” (The fact that the King James uses the word “synagogues” in Psalm 74 does not mean that the Old Testament “sanctioned” synagogue assemblies) There were also numerous Jewish traditions which are reflected in the New Testament.

Considering what we talked about yesterday, it’s helpful to me to see that the church didn’t try to start from zero. They continued with what was being practiced in their day and adapted it as necessary. For a long time (possibly until A.D. 70) the Jerusalem church functioned primarily as a Jewish church. Acts 21:20 tells us that the Jewish converts remained “zealous for the Law.” To some degree, worship continued to be related to the temple. We have in mind that all of that was immediately left behind, yet we see Paul participating with Jewish Christians in temple worship in Acts 21, to the point of planning to make an offering!

The early church took the synagogue format of weekly meetings and adapted it to their own needs. Early Christian writings show that Christians saw Sunday assemblies as a replacement for the Sabbath meetings of the synagogue. In Ignatius letter to the Magnesians, he wrote:

We have seen how former adherents of the ancient customs have since attained to a new hope; so that they have given up keeping the sabbath, and now order their lives by the Lord’s Day instead (the day when life first dawned for us, thanks to Him and His death.)

That’s what I see in the Restoration Movement. When early leaders of the movement sought to return to biblical practices, they took what was being practiced in their day and analyzed it in the light of Scripture. They didn’t start from zero. They built off of the practices in vogue in the 19th century in the churches they had been a part of: weekly assemblies centered around preaching, Sunday contributions, singing of modern hymns, etc. (Jay Guin had a wonderful post about this a couple of years ago; my searches of his site have proved fruitless, so if anyone can spot the post I’m talking about, please mention it in the comments section)

I do an exercise with my anthropology students, talking about the reactions a 1st-century Christian might have if he were somehow transported to one of our churches today. Personally, I think he’d be shocked to find out it was a Christian church! So much of worship and the trappings around worship have changed through the years.

As Travis asks, is that a bad thing?

Zero-based worship

33 Replies

So what if we could forget everything we know about worship, start from zero, and rebuild our worship experience from the ground up?

Yes, this is one of those purely hypothetical, impossible to achieve in reality, questions. No one could start from absolute zero. We all bring experiences and ideas from our past when we approach the subject of worship. The early church obviously did this. We necessarily do it. Everyone has certain things that they view as normal and essential, before they even begin thinking about what Christian worship should be like.

But what if we could wipe the slate clean and start over? Let’s say that we got a copy of Scripture (preferably not bound in black leather and free from verse numbers and chapters). If we could approach Christian worship from a completely objective point of view, what conclusions would we draw from Scripture alone? What practices would we discern as appropriate? What things would be seen as necessary? What would our assemblies look like, if we had assemblies at all?

It’s an interesting exercise to try and think about that. I’m not arguing that we should approach worship in this way; I’m not even saying it’s possible.

Still, I think it’s healthy to think about it. If a people with no experience with worship of any sort received God’s Word and wanted to live by it, what would their worship look like?

Photo by Ian Britton. Courtesy of www.freefoto.com

The difference between worship and Worship

10 Replies

Great input yesterday… I really appreciate it. I wanted to ask a related question to help me in my thinking on this matter.

A while back, one of the commenters here was sharing his view of the difference between worship and Worship. Lower case worship is the everyday stuff, like Romans 12:1-2 talks about. Upper case Worship is what we do during the Sunday assembly, essentially “the five acts”: singing, praying, preaching, Lord’s Supper and offering.

Can we make a biblical case for such a separation? Those of you familiar with the early Christian writings, did they see such a separation?

Some things that are appropriate outside of the assembly are inappropriate within the assembly. I fully recognize that. What I’m not sure of is the difference between acts of worship performed Monday through Saturday and acts of worship performed on Sunday.

Any insights?

Photo by Eugenia Beecher