Why Reimagine Worship?

  • We live in a post-Christian, postmodern, narcissistic, neo-pagan culture which considers the church irrelevant. There are new questions being asked in churches.
  • Labels such as “traditional,” “contemporary,” and “blended” are outdated and irrelevant.
  • Megachurch worship often focuses on cultural relevance through entertainment and novelty lights, loud volume, and haze, rather than the presence of God.
  • Traditional churches often focus on maintaining their traditional style rather than cultural relevance, becoming ingrown and shrinking.
  • Millennials care less about traditional or contemporary styles than about having a genuine spiritual God-encounter with their church community.

What questions are churches asking?

  • Why is our worship attendance declining?
  • What is wrong with our worship services?
  • Why didn’t “going contemporary” accomplish what we thought it would?
  • What questions should we be asking about worship?
  • What does worship accomplish?
  • What does it take to do worship well?
  • How can our worship be relevant in today’s culture?
  • How can our worship be counter-cultural in today’s culture?

What problems have scholars observed?

  • Service is dominated by the pastor, with a lack of congregational participation. 1
  • Traditional worship has form without life; Contemporary “free worship” is engaging but shallow. 2
  • Lack of mystery, reverence, transcendence, or “otherness” of God. 3
  • Among pastors and worship planners, there is a deficient understanding of the priority of worship, the nature of worship, the participants in worship, the elements of worship, and deficient understanding of the “ontologies” of modernity and post-modernity, and how they undermine true worship. 4
  • Prayer and worship is directed to Christ rather than offered in, through, and with him. Worship is our action done in our efforts, rather than empowered by Christ’s power in his church. 5

When a church reimagines worship:

  • Christ is restored as the High Priest who empowers and mediates our worship of God.
  • God becomes the center of the church and its activities instead of the pastor, the programs, or individual preferences.
  • Worship is planned around God’s story rather than the theme of the week.
  • Experiencing God’s story drives the mission and service of the church.
  • All generations, ethnicities, and personal preferences are intertwined, honoring each other, rather than segregated by style preference or age group.
  • The focus shifts to the community of Christ more than the individual.
  • The church becomes a counter-cultural force empowered by the Holy Spirit, yet relevant to those seeking life transformation.

1 Robert E. Webber, Worship is a Verb: Eight Principles for Transforming Worship (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 3-7.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 John Jefferson Davis, Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 13.

5 Alasdair I. S. Heron, Table and Tradition: Toward an Ecumenical Understanding of the Eucharist (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), 82.