Is contemporary worship REALLY the problem?

Show Notes

✅ Enroll in your first FREE theology of worship course by emailing me at [e-mail].

🎥 Contemporary worship is insufficient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNImoRWQE6U

📚 Here is a list of the books I mentioned in this video:
• Recalling the Hope of Glory by Allen Ross https://shorturl.at/9R73i
• Engaging with God by David Peterson https://shorturl.at/9xFGT
• Christ-Centered Worship by Bryan Chapell https://shorturl.at/9vCxC
• A Brief History of Christian Worship by https://shorturl.at/LzM7V

⛪️ My church: https://www.kingstreechurch.org/
🎹 My music: https://www.youtube.com/@calebpeterson

What is Study Worship?

"Let us offer to God acceptable worship."

Caleb: 00:00

Last week, I posted a video titled contemporary worship is insufficient in which I defined what I mean by contemporary worship. I explained what I believe to be God's three purposes for worship, and then ultimately argued that contemporary worship is insufficient to advance those purposes. Now, if you haven't watched that video yet, I would suggest doing that first before watching this video because in this video, all I'm going to do is respond to four of the comments that I received and kind of answer the questions or concerns that were brought up. Now, before I go into that, if you don't know me, my name is Caleb Peterson. I am the worship leader at King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio.

Caleb: 00:47

And I've created this channel so that I could study worship publicly with you so that together we can look at what it means to offer God acceptable worship. Not that we're not worshiping him acceptably, but that we can do so in a way that is more pleasing to him, especially as we dive into his word together. So if that's something that interests you, consider subscribing to this channel and I'd love to continue dialoguing with you like I'm doing here in this video. Also, you have seen some of my previous videos, you kind of found me in one of those, you'll realize this week that some changes have happened. Most notably, I changed the title of the channel from impractical worship to study worship.

Caleb: 01:39

Nothing has really changed. I'm just I'm changing the title to make it a bit more quickly understandable what I'm trying to do here. And hopefully, it will reach a broader audience that way. So let's go ahead and dive into your comments. The first one we have is from Christina Duncan.

Caleb: 01:59

She says, thanks so much for the video. I have a question. Could you suggest some books or resources for Christian musicians who want to learn the foundations of worship theology? And I say, yes, I do. The first one is Recalling the Hope of Glory, Biblical Worship from the Garden to the New Creation by Alan p Ross.

Caleb: 02:23

This is the book that's used in a lot of theology of worship classes in higher education. It walks through, like it says, what worship looks like from Genesis all the way to Revelation. It does focus more heavily on the Old Testament. So if you want a book that focuses more on the New Testament, I would suggest engaging with God, a biblical theology for worship by David Peterson. We are not related at least as far as I know, which is sad, but that's alright.

Caleb: 02:57

Again, he he focuses on worship as it's understood in the New Testament, really how all of worship climaxes in Christ. And then finally, I am putting together my first free course on theology for worship. And if that's something you want to enroll in, just email me at [e-mail] and I'll get you started in that right away. Alright. Let's go to the second comment.

Caleb: 03:27

This is from Hail to the Victors 21. I'm encouraged by you, Caleb, very thoughtful approach and a worthwhile discussion. Thank you. I would simply say that the simple problem of contemporary worship is that it no longer sees God as the primary audience and instead is focused on the congregation. When we fix that, everything else falls into place.

Caleb: 03:52

It is something I constantly need to be reminded of personally in my own worship before even considering corporate worship. And to that, I say I agree. I do believe that God ought to be the primary audience of our worship. Like in Isaiah forty two eight, it says, God says, I am the Lord, that is my name. My glory I give to no other nor my praise to carved idols.

Caleb: 04:18

So all of our worship ought to be directed at least ultimately to God. Now, I will add a bit of a nuance here. When we come together to worship God, which ought to be for him completely, we see that not all of our actions will be immediately directed toward him. And I get this, I guess one example of this is in Colossians three sixteen when it says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. So there's a lot of these one anothers that we find in the New Testament that we are expected to do in worship when we gather, and these are not stealing glory from God when we worship him, but rather this is how he expects us to worship him is that we do look to one another to teach and to sing and to pray and so on and so forth.

Caleb: 05:29

And I know this is probably not what Hail to the Victor twenty twenty one is saying, but I just wanted to bring that in as a nuance. Because in contemporary worship, they've actually said this exact same thing, except what it's devolved into is to a hyper individualism where when we come to worship God, the lights are all completely dimmed, where we're not thinking or looking to one another or each other's needs, but instead we're only singing songs that are personally directed toward God. I'm not saying that those songs that are directed toward God are are bad. Those should very much be involved in our worship as well. It's just it's more than just that.

Caleb: 06:13

God does expect us to interact with one another because he works through the members in the body for our good. So just wanna put a little nuance on there, but overall, yes, I do agree. Next comment. This comes from brown horsey one. I'm just gonna read the the second half here.

Caleb: 06:35

I agree with your three points. God's purpose in worship is to commune with his people, conform us to Christ, and to and can and to convict the world through us. Could you delve into the third point, convict the world through us? The pragmatism of contemporary worship is very disturbing, and I fear that in in an attempt to draw the unsaved into the church, we are in danger of forfeiting what the church is supposed to be and supposed to be doing. Thank you very much.

Caleb: 07:08

Well, thank you very much for bringing up this concern because it does highlight something that that I want to say which comes down to my specific wording here. So like you said and I say, God's purpose in worship is to convict the world through us. But that's something different than me saying that we ought to shape the the worship, shape what we do when we gather to draw unsaved people into church. One of my biggest burdens, is one of the big reasons why I started this YouTube channel in the first place, is to show not that or show that God is not only the primary recipient of our worship, but that he also is the primary actor when we gather for worship. So God is seeking to fellowship with us.

Caleb: 08:07

He is seeking to teach us, to build us up, and he is seeking to convict the world through us when we come and bring acceptable worship to him. So I'm not saying that we should we should do everything within our power to manipulate and hope that we, by our strength, convict the world to see that God is there and true and right. It's actually God who is doing this when we come to him. We see this probably most explicitly in Hebrews 12 starting in verse 22. The author of Hebrews says, you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Caleb: 09:19

See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. Alright. So the thing to see here is that the language is is is active. It's right now. You have come.

Caleb: 09:33

So when we come to worship, we don't come to an empty room until everybody fills it up. We don't come simply to a place on earth. When we worship, we are in spirit at the Mount Of Zion, in the city of the living God. And God is there. Jesus is there, and he is speaking.

Caleb: 09:57

All of this is present and active. So we also see this earlier in Hebrews Hebrews chapter four. Speaking of the word of God, it says, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Interestingly enough, that that very language is what we find in first Corinthians 14 in the verse that I used to argue that God's purpose and worship is to convict the world, which says, if all prophesy and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all. He is called to account by all.

Caleb: 10:43

The secrets of his heart are disclosed. And so that is because of the living and active word of God. And so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you. So, no, when I say that God's purpose for worship is to convict the world means that we ought to really try our best to shape the thing to get them into the service so that they so that we, by our own strength, convict them or convince them that God is there. What I'm saying is when we do come to God in worship and bring what we believe is acceptable to him, that through the gifts that he gives us, that he would make himself known, and that he would be the one who convicts the world.

Caleb: 11:35

So hopefully that clears up what I mean. Yeah. Because I'm not saying that we ought to to do everything in our power to draw the unsaved into church. That's not what I say. That's not what I'm saying when I say that God's third purpose in worship is to convict the world through us.

Caleb: 11:57

Alright. Let's go to the final comment, and this comes from Clay Johnson 1931. This one's a little bit longer, so we'll take it kind of bit by bit. Clay says, overall, I agree that these are issues where the church currently falls short. But are the reasons presented really unique to contemporary worship?

Caleb: 12:21

And he says, I would argue that they are not. And I would say right there as well with you, no. It's it's not unique to contemporary worship. The reason I set my sights on contemporary worship is simply because it's the most dominant model for worship right now. But these issues can certainly and do certainly exist in in other forms of worship.

Caleb: 12:45

But I wanna I know that after this, Clay gives three reasons to support his argument that contemporary worship is or that the the issues I presented are not unique to contemporary worship. So let's go ahead and look at them one at a time. First, he says, your first example of confession of sins. So just a recap, in my first video, I said that contemporary worship neglects significant ways that God longs to commune with us, like public confession of sin. So Clay says, a public specific confession of sins has never really existed in the Protestant church.

Caleb: 13:25

In many denominations since the Reformation, there has been a time for corporate confession, but it is most commonly done silently. This silent, what I would consider personal confession is still practiced in many contemporary churches today. So I agree it's an issue, but I would say that it has been an issue since about the thirteenth century. So I disagree with the the idea or the with this that public confession of sin in the in the way where we are either reciting a prayer of confession of sin or with a pastor praying a confession of sin for the corporate body hasn't been in the Protestant church. And I get that from Brian Chapel's Christ centered worship, where he goes through the different worship services in the Protestant church.

Caleb: 14:20

He looks first at the Roman story, what their services looked like, and then what what they looked like under Luther, and then Calvin, and then Westminster. And in all of those services, there was a time, especially at the beginning of the service for a separate public confession of sin. And I'll put this chart in the on on the video so you can see it better. But this gray line there is showing that in their consistent worship services all the way through the sixteen hundreds did include some form of public confession of sin. Now, what he's talking about here, this movement from an outspoken confession public of public confession of sins to this more silent confession of sins.

Caleb: 15:12

That transition happened in the eighteen hundreds with camp meetings. And I get this from James White, a brief history of Christian worship, where he says, these camp meetings that started, their primary goal was conversion of sinners. And so their services looked a took a particular pattern to aim for that. The first part of the service is a service of prayer and praise, which includes considerable musical elements. And then the second part was fervent preaching, which was the major event of the service, The sermon called the unconverted to conversion, sinners to repentance, and the godly to rejoice in their salvation.

Caleb: 16:00

And then the third part was a harvest of those converted or those recommitting their lives to Jesus Christ. So what this did was it took that that public confession of sins and moved it toward the end of the service, whether it be right before the Lord's Supper or afterwards in an altar call. And I'll do another video on this why I think that confession of sins, there should be should be near the beginning of the service. But in short, it's because as we look through all of the worship services in the Bible, confession of sins and cleansing are done at the beginning, which is an expected requirement for a deeper fellowship and engagement with God because God is holy and we should only approach him when we ourselves have been cleansed now by the blood of Jesus Christ. So, yes, I I don't think it's just a contemporary worship thing.

Caleb: 17:00

I think it's more of a post eighteen hundreds thing, but contemporary worship still has either left it aside or put it into a silent thing maybe right before Lord's Supper or at the end of the service. Here we go. On the next next portion, for your second reason, which let me remind you of that again. I said that contemporary worship suppresses significant means that God uses to conform us to Christ like the lesser musical gifts of the church. So this is Clay's response to that.

Caleb: 17:34

He says, that what I just said would definitely predate what he would consider, what I would consider contemporary worship. To play drums or an electric guitar in church would have been unthinkable. In many ways, contemporary worship is more inclusive of a variety of gifting than traditional worship when it comes to music. In the seventies, jazz music was considered sinful by many church leaders in The US, which actually pushed people not only out of the worship service, but out of the church and Christianity entirely. This is a big part of our former pastor's testimony as he was a jazz musician during that era.

Caleb: 18:10

As for sharing of gifts, I agree it's important. But as you said, you don't really know what that looks like in a larger church setting. So I would argue that it's not unique to contemporary worship. I would say it's simply using your gifts to serve the body which looks differently depending on the gifting of the individual. I'm not gonna be able to respond to every sentence here, but I do wanna respond to the particular musical aspects.

Caleb: 18:35

So I agree with you Clay. And actually your your comment made me go back to my video and realize that it seemed like I contradicted myself in in the one video. Because at the beginning, I defined contemporary worship as something that allowed various music musical styles. But then in my critique, I say, it dampens or suppresses those who have musical styles that don't match the musical service as it is. But these are not these are not contradictory.

Caleb: 19:08

Let me explain why. Although contemporary worship welcomes in new musical styles, it only does so based off of if the the outsider is either listening to that style of music or liking that style of music. It's not based on whether it's its current members either have giftings or skills in those particular musical styles. So I agree with you that contemporary worship has opened the floodgates to a greater expression of of music in its services, but it's it's actually to the to and in some in some aspect, if not mostly to the disregard of the particular giftings in the body, because what it's seeking to do is match what's out there and whatever matches out there is what we are going to have our people play. So even if somebody plays the organ in a hymn style, we're going to teach them how to play the organ in a contemporary style or same with piano or other things like that because the music needs to match the outside person.

Caleb: 20:25

Another part of this is even though contemporary worship has welcomed in all of these different musical styles, over time it has developed into mainly one small band of musical style. So, I think this comment I need to I need to make a whole another video to walk through this more. In general, I agree with you, but I think that there's a difference between what I'm saying in welcoming, looking at the members and what God has gifted them by his grace for the sake of the other members in the church, and not just what types of musical styles are we going to to look at. So, alright, we'll see. If that if that helps, let let me know.

Caleb: 21:09

But if if it didn't, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Here we go on the third point. The third, which let me remind you again, I said contemporary worship discounts significant teaching that God uses to convict the world, and that's what Clay is responding to here. He says, I agree the the the third, I agree, is a potential pitfall, but not inherent to contemporary worship. The commitment to adapt to contemporary concerns can actually lead it to convict people of concerns that are not as explicit in scripture in early church literature.

Caleb: 21:46

Issues such as the increasing number of people who identify as LGBTQ, Internet pornography, etcetera. Without an effort to adapt teachings in scripture, we will be unable to adequately discuss or understand these issues and lead people to conviction when appropriate. Now, I agree that there should be an amount a certain amount of effort given to take what the bible says and what it teaches and make it clear how that applies to the contemporary person. My concern is that as I have seen it when I look at it online or when I hear about it from others, is that a lot of pastors look first to the concerns of the world and then look to their Bibles to see how the Bible responds to that. Instead of first reading the scriptures, understanding its concerns, and then going to the people and finding ways that are understandable and intelligible to them to express what the bible says.

Caleb: 22:55

I think Clay, because I know you in person would agree with me on this. So I do think that there should be an effort given to show what the Bible teaches about modern day issues and so forth. I'm just concerned about getting the cart before the horse, about looking out first instead of looking in the scriptures, and then applying that out out there. So that's that's what I mean by that. And then finally, Clay says, for many of these issues laid out, I don't know if the church has ever gotten it entirely right.

Caleb: 23:34

But I do think the conversation is important so that we can constantly improve towards what God has called us to. And this I absolutely agree. I actually had a comment in Facebook forum that said exactly this as well, that all worship is insufficient. And to that, I say yes and amen if you mean it's insufficient to actually match the worthiness and the glory of God. Yes.

Caleb: 24:04

There's no way that anything we can bring him will actually be worth what he is worth. And that's why I say that that contemporary worship is insufficient to further God's purposes, the ones that he's revealed to us. It's not about saying that, oh, if you do this particular type of worship, then God is less pleased with you than over here. His pleasure in us is found only through his son in Christ. What I'm saying though is when we look at the models or the forms of worship that we do have in our churches and we see pitfalls and we see hindrances, like Clay says here, it's it's worth improving those if we can in a way that is led by the spirit and ultimately leads to more acceptable and more pleasing worship to God.

Caleb: 24:56

So there we go. Those are all of the the comments that I can respond to right now. Please continue to tell me your thoughts as I put these videos out. I'm not gonna do a Q and A video for every video I put out. Maybe I will.

Caleb: 25:12

I don't know. We'll see. This thing is just kind of gearing up, But I would love to to continue hearing from you, especially if you have any ideas for future videos. I will say next week or this coming week weekend, I will be preaching at my church at King's Tree Church. I'll be preaching on worship, so I will be posting the video of that sermon as my video next week, which should probably come out either Monday or Tuesday, so be watching out for that.

Caleb: 25:43

And then again, if you would like to dive more into theology for worship, have this free course that is about to be launched. I have to record it this week, but I would love to get you enrolled in that. You can watch it on your own time, and basically, it walks through the steps to for you to write your own theology of worship. So if that interests you, just email me at [e-mail], and I'll get you enrolled. Thanks for watching.