Contemporary Worship

This kind of thing is why contemporary praise and worship will ultimately implode and fail God’s people completely:

Formal language and “perfectly read” prayers are not recommended for contemporary worship. People appreciate the touching sincerity of informal prayer. “Heartfelt” prayer also teaches/models simple prayer language that anyone can use at home, in the car, the office, etc.

This was a footnote in a contemporary order of service that was mis-forwarded to me in an email. Let’s take a look at the underlying assumptions:

Prayer is ultimately directed at people

Prayer is primarily interested in emotional appeal.

Prayer is simply better when it’s less eloquent.

Biblical fear of God ought not to enter the equation.

“Formal” and “heartfelt” are mutually exclusive descriptors.

Praying as our Lord taught his disciples to pray is neither touching nor sincere.

Contemporary worship does, in fact, have rules–or at least rules of thumb: the more order there is, the less “heartfelt” the worship may be.

Worship is to be appealing and instructive to people. Forget about all that transcendence of God stuff and those sacrament thingies.

A silly pastor I must be. I always thought God heard prayer, and that he acted for, in, and upon his people in worship.

Edit: This is not to go and denigrate extemporaneous prayer. Certainly it is as valid and as heard by God as is the Our Father. But I do take exception to the assertions that are made in this email. It ain’t about how good you feel when you hear the pray-er pray. It’s about the mercy and grace of the Triune God who hears and answers prayer. And any prayer, prayed in faith, is pleasing to God (1 Pet. 3¹²).

Word Alone

Yesterday I had the privilege of meeting one of the leaders of the Word Alone movement within the ELCA. It was a pretty phenomenal conversation, and one that I hope to continue in the near future.

We think we have problems in the LCMS. Well, we do. We’ve got pretty significant problems. In the case of the ELCA, in terms of its public statements of doctrine, it is difficult to consider them to be Christian at all.

I don’t have space or time to go into all their difficulties, for they are many. But consider Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson’s assertion that there are “two irreconcilable, but equally valid interpretations of Scripture.” Basically, one is that Scripture is Law and Gospel and normative; and simultaneously (and irreconcilable with the first) Scripture contains gospel (lower case g intended), and the rest of it is the historical record of how to apply that gospel in a given social context. Hence, homosexual acts (or any other societally sanctioned behaviors) are not condemned by Scripture.

I don’t line up 1:1 theologically with Word Alone, but I applaud and support what they are about. And to be quite frank, if you’re not praying for reform in the ELCA and other sideline denominations who buy into this kind of heresy, then start. There are faithful Christians in the ELCA who have chosen to stick it out and work to combat these false teachings. With the official leadership as it is, they’re fighting an uphill battle and could use your prayers.