Fresh Worship

Following an annual gathering of worship and music leaders last year, the design team met to go over the evaluations. One pastor wrote quite critically of the worship services, complaining about the use of organ rather than keyboards, guitars, and drums, and the prominent role played by the large choir rather than a singing worship leader and praise team. He also didn't care for other admittedly rather traditional elements of worship and liturgy. We discussed his evaluation and invited him to join the design team for the next year's event. He was surprised, but accepted the invitation.

At the first design team meeting for the next event, the pastor spoke out often, always in favor of change. His favorite word was "fresh." He said we needed fresh worship, fresh music, fresh style. We needed to see worship with fresh eyes. I finally asked him what he meant by fresh. Could he help us understand by defining or illustrating it?

As we talked, it became clear that he had a better idea of what fresh IS NOT than he did of what it IS.

• This "fresh" apporach to worship does not use organ, and it prefers electronic and rhythm instruments.
• It does not include much music written more than ten years ago.
• The choir is replaced by a small rehearsed group of soloists, each with a hand-held microphone.
• The language of songs and prayers is decidedly current, making frequent use of contemporary cultural references and images.
• Congregational lyrics must be projected and songbooks and song sheets banned so that people will focus on and be led by the worship leader rather than burying their eyes in a book.
• Worshipers are encouraged to be free with bodily movement, gestures, and physical expression of the emotions they are feeling and of the sense and mood of the lyrics of songs and prayers.
• Worshipers are encouraged to express this physicality both communally and privately. There are times when the group may all raise hands, close eyes, sway side to side; and there are times when an individual must be lost in private physical experience of the presence of God. The style of the music prompts, leads, and promotes this physical expression.

This pastor was also was critical of our use of the full liturgy during the closing service of Holy Communion the previous year: "Too many words … too much reading … too many symbols and images that don't mean anything to people today," he said.

As we have struggled through the worship design process for this year, attempting to listen to and be sensitive to this pastor's suggestions, I have been more sympathetic with his suggestions than some on the team. I'm aware that different people experience worship differently. My struggle in the process has been to accommodate the diversity of styles reflected by the diversity of people who will be at the event and to keep the committee from dissolving into disunity and dissension.

I also find, however, that I greatly resent this pastor's hijacking of the term "fresh." Some of his suggestions are newer than the worship styles of the past. Many are certainly contrasting in style, method, and content. They are different, but they are not "fresh." Fresh implies that what it is replacing is old, stale, tired, bland, and perhaps lacking dynamism, life, vitality, and deep meaning. While I admit that worship may indeed lack these qualities in some places and at some times, I have also frequently witnessed contemporary ("fresh") worship that is shallow, entertainment-oriented, focused on individual gratification, manipulative, open only to a particular constituency determined by age, race, class, culture, or location.

We need to continue the conversation, but without the disparaging and incendiary adjectives.