“Contemporary” worship
Boomers: Welcome to Traditionland
I confess: I’m a boomer, though I really don’t like my generation very much. Maybe that’s why it sort of tickles me to see us get what’s coming to us in worship styles. Here’s what I mean by that:
1. “Traditional worship”
We boomers led the charge in the 1980’s “worship wars.” We despised the out of date “traditional worship” of our parents. They had a single “song leader” as if the congregation was a choir, and they had a single huge wooden pulpit in the center of the stage, and worst of all they used hymn books and sometimes sang parts! We would have none of that obsolete worship and so we insisted the church “get with the program” and adopt our own “Praise and worship” mode of worship. The older folk dragged their feet. We called them “carnal.” They fought back. We fought harder and longer. We won. Eventually the countless Boomers simply overran the oldsters line of resistance and we were able to set up our own worship preferences in the temple. We called it “Contemporary” worship.
2. “Contemporary worship”
We were proud of our accomplishments. No longer was our worship service hampered by outmoded forms of expression. Now we were “contemporary” and ready to “reach out to the lost.” Indeed, that was always our first argument for changing anything—we said, “The church is all about reaching the lost—this is the kind of worship that reaches them!” Ahhhhh… and we liked our worship style. And it seemed like it might win the lost too even though throughout my generation’s leadership Christians have consistently lost ground as a percentage of the population. But it seemed to reach out. And, if we had stuck with that old-fashioned style of our parents it would be even worse, right? So we waged battles and finally won the war. We installed “contemporary” worship. We got everybody to sing simple songs in unison. We projected the text on large screens at first, then when we built our “Boomer Boxes” we had fancy automatic screens that dropped from the ceiling or were built into the brick walls. We shot the “song leader” and replaced him or her with nice-looking men and women we called the “praise team,” each with their own personal microphones. We added a “praise band” and dumped the organ and piano, exchanging it for the “boomer keyboard.” We moved the giant pulpit into a storage room and our pastors became “communicators” able to excite, motivate and entertain us better than Jay Leno. Most of us have now built a new “worship center” on the “boomer box” plan, done with quality and excellence, complete with wrap-around seating and a fancy computer we can use to manipulate the lighting and mood of the audience. What a great job we’ve done! Ahhhhhh! How we love “Contemporary worship.”
3. “Hard Rock Café” worship
The only trouble—we forgot “contemporary” is a moving target. The definition changes with every year, even month. Now we boomers are the “oldsters.” Our innovations have become the traditions. Now along comes the next generation and they despise our fancy “boomer boxes” and want something we think is messier. They are not satisfied with our upbeat brightly lighted services, and prefer worship that is far more pensive—even mournful. They turn down the lights and put candles all over the place—we boomers say things like, "Are they worshipping the devil in there?” And they laugh at the boomer keyboard and have made the guitar dominant in worship music. They grin at our “first class worship centers” and see the ideal worship center as a noisy place with a hard floor with a bezillion artifacts hanging around—from signed folding chairs to old guitars and ancient icons on the walls. One boomer woman said, “They call that a worship center?—it looks more like a Hard Rock Café than a place for decent worship.”
Which is my point. What comes around goes around. Welcome to traditionland my fellow boomers. We have become our parents. We are the “traditional worship” service now, and we’ll see if we can be as elastic as we expected our parent’s generation to be.
Have you seen evidence of “Boomer contemporary worship” becoming the “traditional service? So, what do you think?
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