In the spirit of the Reformation, my fellow Patheos blogger and church musician Jonathan Aigner has posted 95 theses on worship. He has posted them not on a church door; rather, he has posted them on his blog, Ponder Anew, which is devoted to discussions of worship and church music.
I’ll re-post the first few, but please click the link to read the rest of the 95. (It won’t take long.) Jonathan, I believe, is an evangelical, so it is interesting to me as a Lutheran that he is coming to these conclusions.
I’d like to hear a Lutheran take on these theses. To be sure, many of his theses apply to current “worship wars” controversies among Lutherans too, but we have a specific theology of worship that can help us sort through issues like these. (Whether we follow that theology is another matter, I suppose.) But do you see anything in these 95 Theses that goes against that theology? Do you see anything here that calls us back to that theology?
From Jonathan Aigner, 95 More for the Modern Church’s Door: Sparking a Worship Reformation in the Entertainment Church:
- The didactic purpose of congregational singing has been a part of Christian worship since the beginning.
- Therefore, it is part of the work of the people, not to be some kind of jesusy entertainment.
- Corporate worship is about telling the Christian story again, anew, and afresh.
- Worship is not just another program or ministry of the church.
- Christian worship in its simplest form is radically relevant and inclusive, as its invitation is extended to divine image-bearers from every walk of life.
- Therefore, worship is more important than any ministry of the church, even than the sacred cows of children’s and youth ministry.
- The purpose of this worship is to be shaped into a Christian community, called out by our creative and redemptive God.
- Christian culture is confused by the difference between corporate worship (liturgy) and what it likes to call a “lifestyle” of worship.
- Corporate worship will vary between denominations and cultures, but it’s never dictated by an appetite for entertainment, or it ceases to be Christian.
- The reason church attendance is declining is because cultural Christianity is declining, not because there is something wrong with the church’s historic liturgical pattern.
[Keep reading. . .]
Illustration by Manuel Strehl, Martin Luther damaging the Wittenberg church door, Flickr, Creative Commons License
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