In her book, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, theologian Marva Dawn argues that contemporary worship has succumbed to the pressures of the marketplace by making commodities of God and worship.
Marva criticisms of contemporary worship stem from her great appreciation and love of worship. Numerous passages make it obvious that she holds worship in the highest regard. For example, she writes,
Worship is the unique praise to God by the countercultural community that equips that community with a sufficiently deep sense of itself in relation to God that it can go from its worship into the world to effect social change. Furthermore, God's revelation, conveyed in worship through hymns, sermons, and liturgies, unmasks our illusions about ourselves. It exposes our pride, our individualism, our self-centeredness - in short, our sin. But worship also offers forgiveness, healing, transformation, motivation, and courage to work in the world for God's justice and peace - in short, salvation in its largest sense. (68-69)
To further underscore her perspective on worship, Dawn approvingly quotes William Temple's beautiful and all-embracive definition of worship. Worship is
the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of the mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose - and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable. (80)
Everything - mind, will, emotions, affections, attitudes - is caught up and employed in worship of God. It is this holistic vision of worship that causes Dawn to be frustrated with much contemporary expressions of worship.
Our media-saturated, technological society has shaped us more than we realize. Its influence has led to the reduction of divine worship to mere entertainment. "The entertainment mind-set is evidenced when people attend worship for 'what I will get out of it.' In such an approach, God is not the center of worship; we are." (124).
Worship is a counter-cultural, subversive act. The world should not set the agenda for the church. "If 'unchurched Harry' feels perfectly at home in our churches, then chances are that we have no longer an authentic household of faith, but a popular cultural religion" (292). The basic question should not be whether worship is comfortable, chummy, or entertaining, but whether "our efforts in worship lead to genuine praise of God and the growth of character in the members" of a Christian community (12).
As a counter-cultural act, authentic worship should not only exalt the true God, but also denounce false gods. Dawn suggests that we must denounce the gods of efficiency, money, celebrity, competition, and superficial happiness demonstrated in the constant need to be "upbeat". Since worship involves the whole person, both extremes of intellectualism and emotionalism must be avoided.
God - Father, Son, and Spirit - is both the subject and object of worship. God calls us to worship. That is the only reason we dare to approach God. Through worship we offer sacrifice to God. All of our acts should be done with the awareness that they are the church's offering to God.
Ultimately, through worship, we seek to please and honor God. God is the audience. The musicians and pastors are merely coaches. All in the congregation are the actors before God. Whether we realize it or not, we speak volumes about God by how we approach God in corporate worship and by what we do in God's presence.
Contrary to the market-driven mentality, worship is not meant to "attract people" but to "adore God." Worship should not be limited to inspiring happiness in its adherents. "[G]enuine praise of God depends upon truth. It is not just an attitude of appreciation or an emotion of well-being or delight" (87). This is further underscored when we realize that worship is meant to kill our self-centeredness and self-worship by reorienting our perspective to God (206).
Dawn criticizes those who assume that contemporary worship is the key to church-growth.
It is terribly na�ve to think that music is the main thing that attracts people to a worship service. The most well-known marketing specialists admit that personal invitations are the key, for encouragement to participate from a trusted friend 'builds upon an established relationship, which means that the recommendation or invitation springs from a credible source. (168)
She also exposes the truth that most so-called "contemporary" praise music is not really contemporary at all, but simply warmed-over 70's folk or soft-rock. This is not necessarily bad, since the goal is not to be contemporary but to be deeply meaningful. However, this does expose the Baby Boomer's influence in defining what is "contemporary" and "relevant."
Preaching is also an act of corporate worship. Preachers capitulate to our culture when their sermons are more entertaining than edifying.
"[Some preachers] would sooner entertain their audiences than risk being criticized for being too serious, abstract and boring." This leads to sermons that might make people laugh and cry, but don't necessarily enable them to know God better, think more clearly, or act in godly ways." (216)
This calls for preachers to challenge worshippers to a high degree of engagement and responsiveness.
Sometimes our sermons will be hard for listeners emotionally - they will afflict the comfortable more than comfort the afflicted. At other times, they might be hard intellectually (thought we must be sure this is not because we are failing to express the point clearly) because truths of the faith require deeper reflection than is the habit of many in our culture. (239)
Dawn challenges the conventional wisdom fueled by contemporary market analysis that suggests that "churches fail because of their ties to traditional belief and practice." (145). Tradition does not have to grow stale. "The major reason why tradition often grows stale is that we have failed to educate worshipers to know why we do what we do and who we are as a community carrying the faith together� We must constantly be teaching people what is happening and why, as well as who and whose we are" (149). As Christians, we are called to preserve and pass on what we have received, not constantly reinvent Christianity. Therefore, we should embrace ancient liturgies, rediscover the richness of church history, and seek to be shaped by and faithfully pass on the living tradition of the church.
Ultimately, what Marva Dawn desires in worship is what all good Christians should pursue: a complete engagement of all that one is with all that God is for us in Christ through the Spirit - worship that is not superficial, faddish, reductionistic, or, in her words, dumbed down. She writes, I "yearn for worship that will demand of me the strongest discipline, the most creative imagination, the most passionate emotion, the highest intellect, and the most rigorous will - in short, genuine adoration of God" (274). One does not have to agree with all of Dawn's critiques and proposed solutions to benefit from her God-centered, holistic, and counter-cultural insights into worship.
© Richard J. Vincent, 2004
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