04/25/2024
One of the problems endemic to Christian worship today is the assumption that forms don’t matter as long as the substance is unchanging. The same is written in every church growth book.
“It’s not the style that matters.”
But the style DOES matter, because the style IS the substance we receive in worship. The two are inextricable, inseparable.
While this applies to most any aspect of liturgy – language, architecture, order – I want to talk about musical form just a bit. The music used in liturgy is not just a liturgical cargo truck. It isn’t just packaging. The style must fit the substance. And the medium of modern pop music, crafted to the appetites of consumers by those who want you to buy it, does not lend itself to the transcendent beauty of the gospel. It actually subverts it.
Hans Boersma says: “The liturgical medium is the message. Contemporary worship music is often banal. No matter the content, the form by itself trivializes what takes place in the liturgy. We keep trying to put asunder what God has joined together—medium and message, form and content—but invariably the divorce does not end well.”
Some of you might remember John W. Peterson’s gospel song, “Jesus Is Coming Again.” The text, as with most gospel songs of the era, is not theologically stout or poetically beautiful, but there is a nugget of truth: Jesus IS coming again. But the form Peterson uses is a campy tune in a waltz-like rhythm.
Does that fit the biblical account?
“Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”
Suffice it to say, when Jesus returns, he will certainly not be waltzing. Contrast Peterson’s work with Charles Wesley’s “Lo, he comes with clouds descending,” usually paired with the dramatic Welsh tune HELMSLEY.
The text is deeply theological and biblical. The tune is stately, beautiful, and dignified. No waltzing Jesus here. Instead of honky-tonk piano (or whining guitars and lead singers, for that matter), it’s best accompanied by the pipe organ, which according to Boersma, conveys that “God is sovereign and puny creatures are not.” This form carries the substance with dignity and authenticity.
The form of the liturgy matters because the form itself is part of the substance. We cannot divorce the two. Our failure to realize this has led us through decades of liturgical folly, and has left us with a church that is parched and confused by the poverty of contemporary worship and preferential worship formats.
When we say style doesn’t matter, we are teaching the idea that the truth of the gospel is found in the feelings those styles conjure in us.
When we tailor our forms in accordance with what we think will resonate with people instead of what frames the liturgy with beauty and dignity, we are crowning ourselves lords of our own hearts.
It’s not just a mixed message. It’s a totally different message, which the church is writing on worshipers’ hearts.
Pardon the grammar, but, “What you win them WITH, you win them TO.”
