Northern Plains Anglicans: Read this if you might head to church... or even if you are one who stays away

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Just found a fascinating critique of contemporary Christian "worship" via a tweet from Wyclif. He gave a link to InternetMonk.com's blog [check out the comments here-music and worship are always a hot topic!-PD] about the "big worship goof" among Evangelical Christians. A few snips:

We have, within a matter of 50 years, completely changed the entire concept of what is a worship service. We’ve adopted an approach that demands ridiculous levels of musical, technical and financial commitment and resources.

We have tied ourselves to the Christian music industry and its endless appetite for change and profit. We have accepted that all of our worship leaders are going to be very, very young people...

Worship has now become a musical term. Praise and worship means music. Let’s worship means the band will play. We need to give more time to worship doesn’t mean silent prayer or public scripture reading or any kind of participatory liturgy. It means music.

Even singing is getting lost in this. As the volume and the performance level goes up, who knows who is singing?

"Liturgy" was a secular Greek word meaning "an act done for the public good." The first Christians found it useful as an explanation of worship - the action by which the church comes to be and is visible to the world. the rest photo