Kinds of
Worship Services
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Kinds
of Worship services
Your piece on 50's-60's worshippers was
superb! However in most of your writing about worship styles you show strong
bias toward change, the unchurched and the next generation. I fact all over the
web I can find a ton of writing on emerging worship but very little on any
other style. The net message from your writing and from most others is: Get
with the program and start chasing the next generation's whims in worship. Your writing on 50's 60's worshippers got me thinking about
how we might seriously try to reach all generations instead of only the latest
whims in worship styles. So my question is this: If we offered a broad range of
worship formats to meet all the needs and preferences of today's worshippers
what would the list include--what type of worship formats should we consider?
--Pastor
Interesting
question. I will try to
summarize the formats but first I must admit that you are right in charging me
with bias toward change and the emerging generation. I get the first from my
boomer blood and the second from my occupation. But you are wrong about a bias
toward gearing worship for the unchurched--I think seeker worship is an
oxymoron. But to your question: what are the most popular formats for worship
services if a church seriously tried to meet the needs and preferences of most
worshippers?
1. Charismatic Worship. By far the fastest growing and most popular
format of worship today in
2. Boomer Worship. Boomer worship is "Charismatic-lite." It skims the cream off the "Praise and
worship movement" and copies the popular worship bands like Joy and
Delirious but stops short of full charismatic worship. Boomer worship is
upbeat, bright, joyous, and the congregation is urged to clap with the music
and people go home feeling better about themselves and each other. It runs on a
minute-by-minute schedule, is heavily programmed--even the prayers and segueways are carefully scripted. The leaders of boomer
worship often have "rehearsals" and try to mimic a worship-concert.
Attendees come expecting to be lifted in spirit, to have a joyous and bright
atmosphere, and to hear an interesting and practical communicator. The upbeat
music of boomer worship (Shone Jesus Shine, We bring the sacrifice; As the
Deer…) relies especially on the songs of the 80's and 90's with a few recent ones
mixed in. Boomer worship appeals most to upscale professional middle aged
people who make church attendance a regular habit along with a few score of
other habits in their productive and busy lives.
3. Gospel Revivalist Worship. Gospel worship builds a service around a
Billy Graham type evangelistic atmosphere that many boomers grew up on. Gospel
worship is likely to hearken back to Fuller's Old Time Gospel Hour style
and includes a quartette or trio atmosphere and matches nicely the Moody Bible
Institute radio station. It is grown-up gospel music. All the music is not
pre-1980's music: for it includes lots of Bill Gaither and more recent songs
that have been given honorary gospel status along with the older songs. While
some of the music is older this style of worship insists on doing gospel music
with absolute excellence--sometimes including full orchestration and recent
arrangements. Unlike Charismatic and Boomer worship, gospel worship makes full
use of a choir--and usually offers several massive cantatas or pageants each
year. The atmosphere is upbeat yet traditional, the preaching fervent, and
gospel songs like Heavenly Sunshine,
or How Great Thou Art get a great response. The focus is often on the
fervent sermon that is convicting and guilt-producing and the service is
supposedly designed for the unsaved—to get them “under conviction” and to
persuade them to come forward at the end of the service. There is often an
altar call or other expected response that might lead to pure living. This
format of worship appeals to both blue collar and professional people, is
especially popular in the South, and is dominant among churches with Baptist
leanings.
4. Seeker worship. This style of worship offers a service
designed with the unchurched person in mind. Eliminating foreign elements the
unchurched person might not understand and offering an interesting and
practical sermon, seeker worship uses the worship service for outreach--to
bring the unchurched into church and give them time to consider Christianity in
a non-threatening atmosphere where an unchurched person will feel "at
home." Seeker worship is credited to Bill Hybels,
but the movement has gone far beyond his own vision and now includes so-called
"secular worship" and "Worldly worship" designed as the first
step a person might take toward considering Christianity as a life option. The
music holds much in common with its secular counterparts and the service is
likely to use film clips—even from R-Rated movies and lots of coffee and
doughnuts--even during worship. is Some question if
seeker worship should even be categorized as worship and argue it should be
considered evangelism or outreach, not worship. Seeker worship is especially
attractive to second generation Christians who are bored with their traditional
home church and want "worship that is cool enough to invite my friends
to." It is also effective at actually reaching the unchurched and offering
the first step toward associating with God and the church.
5. Pedagogical worship. Teaching is the focus of pedagogical
worship. Worshippers in this format do not come so much to sing as to listen.
They come to hear the gospel and respond with belief and obedience. Preaching
is the focus and scripture is central. The musical portion of the service is
not more of a warm-up or introduction to the real reason to gather--to hear the
word of god preached. The sermons are carefully prepared and give the
worshippers "something new to chew on" every week. Worshippers do not
so much expect to feel something as to learn something. They
expect to respond not so much in an altar service as in deeper belief and
obedience. In place of several minutes of singing this format might repeat the
apostle's creed or the Lord's Prayer together. Words spoken often take
precedence over words sung in pedagogical churches and the lyrics of all music
are examined more than their popularity or catchy tunes. Pedagogical worship is
especially popular with educators and people who consider themselves thinking
people and "come to church to hear God's word, not to shake hands and
emote." This style is popular with many main line churches and almost all
reformed churches.
6. Word & Table Worship Evangelicals have supposedly been on the
7. Cowboy Worship. Perhaps this does not even deserve a
category but it gets a listing because it represents at least a score of other
worship formats churches have found meets the needs and satisfied the
preferences of various groups of worshippers. Cowboy worship,
or "Country-Western worship" is half band-jam and half square dance.
It has been around for a long time and has included songs popularized by Elvis
or Tennessee Ernie Ford as miuch as classical
Christian singers and is its own brand of “seeker-sensitive” worship
style. In the past they sang Life is like a Mountain Railroad or Just a closer walk to thee but in
today’s world where the lines between rock and country music are increasingly
blurred it may sound as much like Rock music as country. It is informal--jeans
are almost-required dress, and the format is often offered on Saturday night
and sometimes gathers more men and women in the service--if you can call it
that. While it is only a blip on the statistical screen, it is worth listing to
remind us that wherever there is a sub-culture in society at large, there
usually develops a worship format that is designed with that sub-culture's
preferences and needs in mind.
8. Emerging Worship. Sometimes called postmodern worship,
Generation Y worship, or millennial worship, this style is not yet fully
developed so we can't yet fully describe it. Whatever you say about the style
you can be sure it is not boomer worship. The atmosphere is sometimes
melancholy, the songs sometimes pensive, most of the lights are turned off and
candles appear all over the sanctuary. Indeed, this worship style is not noisy so much as reflective. It is more a "sanctuary" or
refuge than the boomer model of a "Locker room preparation for the
week." Emerging worship has lots of participation, objects to look at,
tactile activities, and often regular communion. Mystery is in and the
atmosphere is almost as if the worshippers are having their own personal
devotions simultaneously. But all this is tentative--the pattern is still
developing.
9. Blended Worship. Popularized by worship guru Robert Webber,
blended worship attempts to weave together a little bit of this and that to
produce a worship format with something for everybody. Sometimes it works and at other times it
merely provides a little bit of satisfaction and a lot of irritation for
everybody. Blending worship is sometimes
like trying to reach people of eight different language groups by dividing up
the service into eight parts, each with a different language--everybody gets
some of the service in their native tongue, but everyone also gets most of the
service in a strange tongue. But it is a
useful label and it is hard to oppose.
However, frankly most churches use the label to stick on a service they
are trying to change--from one format to another and thus “blended worship” is
the means by which they transition from more traditional pattern into something
more contemporary, or sprinkle in some oldies-but-goodies to quiet down the
oldsters resisting more modern styles.
In a few cases blended worship actually becomes a style of its own, a
sort of pidgin language that everyone learns to speak while worshipping. It appeals
to migratory professionals and churches in transition. Like radio stations that play a little bit of
country, a little bit of rock and roll, a little bit of rap and a little bit of
classical music, people tend to change channels when their own musical language
isn’t playing.
If these are the basic formats
most evangelicals work from in planning worship there are some immediate
observations: First, few churches can
seriously attempt to offer them all.
Which means a church must chose which format (and thus which audiences) it will
focus on. The good side of this it may
raise our sights from our own local church to “the Christians in X city.” That is, perhaps each town and city needs all
the worship formats for helping all kinds of people worship in their ‘native
tongue.” If a church down the street is
doing a slam-dunk job at cowboy worship launching a new worship service with
that ethos may not be as wise and launching one for the classical music crowd
(e.g. pedagogical worship). Few churches can become true shopping malls—dozens
of churches under one roof. Most senior
pastors can’t bear the thought of too many worship services that do not feature
themselves as the preacher—thus for most churches there will be one or two of
these formats that prevails. Others in town will specialize in other
formats. Second, we need to be careful
about assigning “generations” to each of these styles. It is true that there are general clusters by
generations, but (as Leonard Sweet is now saying) generational thinking is
passé. They change too fast and there
is too much overlap now. Sure you can
guess which generation will especially like rap or pop or classical music, but
there is so much overlap we can no longer make certain generalizations. Some of the emerging worship patterns are
finding great connection between generations.
And many young people might be considered to be followers of
“Alternative worship” patterns—whatever the masses are doing they seek
something different.
But with those two thoughts in
mind, the above is a general listing of the most popular formats of worship
today in the church
So what formats would you add to
this list?
So what do you think?
________________________________________________________________________
February 2003. To suggest additional insights write to Keith@TuesdayColumn.com