The Contemporary Church

Newspring is a huge church in our area, and like many megachurches today, they have constructed their worship service to reach the unchurched. The service is not really a worship service, but a rock concert followed by a sermon which is often a comedy routine. As someone recently commented to me after attending there for a few weeks, it is all done on a "kindergarten level." Here are a few words from John Armstrong that explains the Newspring phenomenon and one reason why it is misguided. (This is an excerpt from an article titled The Contemporary Church, by John A. Armstrong)
http://glenwoodhills.org/etc/printer-friendly.asp?ID=623

The Destruction of Congregational Worship

The whole "seeker sensitive" approach presumes that the Lord's Day church gathering is principally for recruiting the unchurched, or evangelizing the lost. This idea can be traced to the "revivalism" of 19th century American experience, where the focus during this era was then moved from the church gathering to worship God, to be edified, to receive the sacraments and to enjoy fellowship with Christ and one another, to "drawing the net," or getting decisions from the lost. This new "seeker-sensitive" approach is just a sharper and more carefully defined (dare we say, "neatly packaged") version of the same approach. It is clearly not Reformational, but even more importantly it is clearly not Biblical.

While we try to entice the world to come to church to hear the Gospel,the New Testament proclaims a powerful church worshipping God going out into the world in order to reach lost (cf. The Book of Acts). True revivals have historically proved again and again, if they prove anything at all, that a revived and healthy church reaches a dying and lost world through its own awakened people. The real problem is that we have a dying and sadly unhealthy church in the late 20th century and we are trying something, it seems at times almost anything, to bring back life. The new way to do this is to attack the "traditional" church and suggest that our problem is to be found in what we do on Sundays. It is argued, "Contemporaneity will bring back the crowds, thus the life of our church." The real problem, however, is not what we do (i.e. in the so-called traditional service), but that we do what we do without power, without careful thought, and without integrity and passion. But a very important question begs to be answered: What really is the biblical reason for the church to gather in public meetings on the Lord's Day? A simple reading of the Scriptures gives an unmistakably clear answer--God-centered, Scripture-directed worship. The New Testament plainly teaches that our corporate worship is for God. Stated in the extreme, for the sake of clearer understanding, public worship will always follow one of two models:

1. Anthropocentric
   
2. Theocentric

A human focused worship service sounds oxymoronic but it is, in reality, a valid description when you carefully listen to the descriptions given by the teachers of the "seeker-sensitive" model. Where does this model begin? We are urged to focus on the target, i.e. the audience, or the human person. Remember the driving question behind all of this approach is: How can we design our service and shape our ministry in worship so it will be inviting to the person we desire to reach?

The Distinctives of this Approach to Worship are:

1. It produces a different kind of preaching--exposition is "too heavy," thus we need story-laden anecdotal messages, or "McLite" services, as one has called them.
   
   
2. It thrives on strained attempt to "be relevant." Anything much more than 20 years old is considered useless. Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, has said on several occasions that he will never quote Charles Spurgeon in his public seeker services. Why? He confidently assures fellow ministers that Spurgeon is outdated and will not speak the language of their modern hearers. I for one am concerned that this creates, intended or otherwise, a "reverse elitism": We are the ones who communicate with our age, but does it not follow from this that Isaiah, Jesus, Paul and John are also irrelevant? They did not have Subarus, after all. The unfortunate result will be a generation that thinks the evangelical movement came from nowhere - with no heritage or roots.
   
   
3. There is, in this movement, evidence of a consistent and radical pragmatism. The audience is "sovereign," as we have seen. Why are we in this particular place, doing what we are doing on this particular day? For whom do we gather? The new approach seems to answer, "For man!" The result is a corruption of theology at virtually every point. Take doctrines like human depravity, unconditional election and perseverance. What place do these have in making people feel good about their church experience? What is happening in many large and fast growing churches is profoundly troubling. All of this does not bode well for sermons which will be based upon careful biblical study. An example of this was a sermon I heard in a "seeker- sensitive" service where the pastor preached on the question: "Why Did Moses Strike the Rock?" The answer had nothing to do with the text or the context. What he gave as an answer to this question was the result of psychotherapeutic interpretations of Moses' behavior which were the result of parenting and its influence upon his early childhood years.

A theocentric worship must begin with God, quite obviously. It must begin with an awesome, holy, Creator, who is both transcendent and immanent. He is pure, altogether holy, and dwells in unapproachable light. Those who worship him must realize that he is an all consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29) and therefore, Christ's mediation must be central if we are not on the basis of, to be destroyed in his presence. This approach to worship asks: What does God require of us? It answers, with biblical warrant, that God wants us to worship him in the stupendous truth of who he is and what he has accomplished, not on the basis of what we feel or believe we need (cf. John 4:23,24). Have you ever noticed that Jesus does evangelism by issuing a call for radically God-centered worship! Does this Word also tell us how we are to worship, and what we are to do? The answer of most is, No. This means, practically, that we are free to do whatever we please as long as we are sincere. The Protestant Reformer John Calvin feared this same kind of movement in his day. He observed that "given man's propensity to fashion and worship idols," man will invariably worship such idols if worship is not regulated in some sense by God and his Word.

This historic approach asks: Where does worship begin? It answers, with no hesitation, "With God!" It asks, further, the profound question: How can we shape our public worship in order to glorify God, give Him praise, and trust and delight in him alone? Yes, we must understand the times" (1 Chronicles 12:32), but this does not mean we must start with the times, or surrender to the times, or adopt the trends of the times in the place of revealed truth.