Tag Archives: liturgy

Worship a la carte

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So how do we deal with differing tastes, differing convictions, differing needs and differing desires? When some want variety and others predictability? Or when some want nothing but modern praise songs and others want classic hymns? Or when some want stoicism and others want passion?

Some of the answers:

  • Majority rules—whatever most people want goes
  • Tradition rules—whatever we’ve always done goes
  • Age rules—the younger folks can do it their way when their time comes
  • Separate but equal services—one service for one group, another for the other
  • Worship style determined by each week’s praise leader—different men in the congregation take turns leading, with each one determining what style will be used that week
  • My way or the highway—if some folks don’t like it, they can find themselves somewhere else to worship

Are there other suggestions? What’s the best way to handle our differences?

Liturgy vs. variety

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C.S. Lewis was no fan of change within worship services. He wrote, “Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best—if you like it, it ‘works’ best—when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it.…But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself…” He goes on to quote an unnamed source that said, “I wish they’d remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even Teach my performing dogs new tricks.” (The Joyful Christian, pp. 80-81)

Personally, though I highly esteem Lewis as a thinker and a writer, I don’t agree with his views on familiarity in worship. I find that familiarity often breeds unthinking repetition. It becomes too easy to “go through the motions,” without being aware of what we’re doing or why. We say things without even thinking what they mean. We sing without being aware of who we’re singing to (is it a song of encouragement to my brothers or a song of worship to God?). We instinctively reach for our checkbook while sipping the homogenized grape juice from the plastic cup.

I think that we need change at times if only to make us aware of what we’re doing. My high school choir director used to say, “A rut is just a grave with both ends knocked out.” We need to be conscious of the forms of what we’re doing and the meanings behind those forms.

What do you find to be true? Is change a distraction or a call to awareness? Is routine an aid to worship or a hindrance to our worshiping with our minds as well as our actions?

[Edit: Changed the title of the post; had used “spontaneity,” which really didn’t fit]