why can’t we all just get along?: part 1

March 30, 2007

About a month ago, I was invited by my alma mater - Missouri Baptist University - to come and speak on the topic of worship for individuals connected to the new Worship Arts major they unveiled last fall. In all, I spoke to about 20+ folks - the committee hiring a director for the program, interested students, traveling music ministry groups, etc.- and it truly was an honor. I would like to post my presentation - Why Can’t We All Just Be Reconciliators: A Third Way - in parts over the next week.

A quick disclaimer: This was about a 45-minute presentation dealing with what is commonly called the ‘worship wars.’ It is impossible to sum this contentious issue up in that amount of time, but I did my best. I bring this up to say that these posts over the next few days will be my presentation verbatim. There are some holes I need to fill in. You can help me with that with comments and questions. I will probably extend the series with that in mind. Also, my presentation is heavily indebted to Earl Creps and his new book, Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders. [By the way, a full-length review of Creps' book is forthcoming on this blog.]

Here is the first installment:

I have just a short time with you tonight, so basically, I want to talk about one thing so we can have time for some questions afterword. How can diverse worship styles and contexts coexist within evangelicalism from one church to another?

Now, if you’ve been involved in a church, whether be on staff, volunteering in a ministry, or as a congregant, you know that churches are a breeding ground for perfection. Churches are perfect places filled with perfect people. And these perfect people have a way of putting together perfect ministries with airtight theology and methodology.

And as a result, these perfect churches have absolutely no conflict. And these perfect churches think that the other church down the street is just perfect too. Right? It is a good thing we don’t have conflict and are perfect.

Alright, obviously I’m being a little facetious. There are no perfect churches and if you find one, a little piece of advice, don’t go to it. You’ll mess it up.

Before we talk about if diverse worship styles can coexist from one church to another, I think we need to talk about the underlying reasons for some of the conflict about worship.

In his book, Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders, Earl Creps, the Director of the Doctor of Ministry program and Associate Professor at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (AGTS) in Springfield, Missouri, says that generally, there are two competing impulses at work today in the church. He calls one group the preservationists and the other, the innovationists.

Creps says that “the preservation party contends very strongly for, what the Bible says, ‘the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.’ He goes on to say that failure to fulfill this sacred obligation is, from the preservationist viewpoint, a serious betrayal of trust.

This makes sense if we consider that we do becomes what we are over many years. Those serving God in a certain way for most of a lifetime naturally assume that their way represents a sacred path that deserves conservation. Changing it means giving up on not just favored methods but a whole way of life.

The problem of the preservationist practice is what Creps calls, “orthodoxy creep.” Creps says “preservationists tend to doctrinalize everything it touches.” That may sound harsh, but I’ve have experienced this first hand and thought it may be a generalization, it does not ring hollow.

Now the second group, according to Creps, are the innovationists. The innovative impulse represents a completely different orientation to toward faith. The innovationists are not only asking, “Are we orthodox in doctrine?” but “Are we effecting in culture?” I think what Creps means by this is that innovationists think, “Is there a way we can retain sound doctrine but meet culture where they are?”

But innovationists are not immune to a “creep” of their own. Creps calls the slippery slope for innovationists, “heterodoxy creep.” Where as the preservationists tend to doctrinalize everything, the innovationists, according to Creps, tend to pursue cultural adaptation to the point that it softens the core of the faith until it becomes undistinguishable in content from the surrounding context.

Now much of this can be called an oversimplification. This is a much more complicated situation depending on the context. In the real world, we could look at the difference in opinion on worship as a continuum with many intermediate positions between these two groups.

So this begs the question, how do we navigate the tension between these two poles? I would like to suggest a third way that is neither purely preservationist or innovationist.

This third way is what I call…

Stay tuned for the next installment…

Posted in church, emerging church, music, theology, worship