She likes pipe organs, chants, kneeling, candles and incense.<\/p>\n\n
He wants to sway in the aisle with his hands lifted while the praise band plays a rock anthem from the Contemporary Christian Music sales charts.<\/p>\n\n
He likes a preacher who stands in a pulpit and, for 40-plus minutes, dissects a biblical passage to reveal each and every nuance. She likes someone who strolls about, with a wireless lapel microphone, chatting about how God touches people\u2019s daily lives and dreams. The children want to visit a new church that has a comedy team and the preacher shows lots of movie clips.<\/p>\n\n
Welcome to what researchers call the \u201cworship wars.\u201d Religious groups are struggling to reach people who live in the niches created by satellites, multi-media computers, music superstores, multiplex theaters and the omnipresent mall.<\/p>\n\n
Everyone says they want to \u201cworship.\u201d If they belong to same congregation, then the pastor, or bishop, or deacons, or worship committee eventually has to decide who will be happy and who will be mad. If a church makes major changes, many older members will vote with their checkbooks. If a church stands pat, younger members vote with their feet.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cSome people want a more liturgical service, with a sense of awe and a connection to the past,\u201d said the Rev. Dan Scott, pastor of the Valley Cathedral, a charismatic megachurch in Phoenix. \u201cSome people want a more contemporary feel, with a sense of celebration and release and joy. Some people want all of that at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Many seek the traditions of the apostles and saints of early Christendom. Others prefer traditions from recent centuries \u2014 bookish eras in which people regularly spent hours listening to orations on public life, morality and doctrine. Meanwhile, many in today\u2019s electronic-media-saturated culture think of a \u201ctradition\u201d as anything older than the World Wide Web.<\/p>\n\n
These groups clash whenever worship is put up to a vote. Meanwhile, others ask if the goal of worship is to please people in pews or God in heaven. And what about the past? Do the saints get to vote? The legendary Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton once stated the issue this way: \u201cTradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s crucial to study the past with open eyes, argues Scott, in his book \u201cThe Emerging American Church.\u201d A generation of older American church leaders \u2014 especially in pulpit-driven Protestant churches \u2013 has failed to see the big historical picture. It isn\u2019t normal for believers to sit quietly in pews, as if in school, he said. For centuries, worshippers actively participated in grand liturgical dramas and offered ecstatic praise.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t want to just sit there,\u201d he said. \u201cSo what is disappearing is the middle ground between the liturgical and the contemporary. That\u2019s the safe, middle-class, lecture-driven worship that so many people think of as \u2018traditional.\u2019 \u2026 You can\u2019t just lecture to people, anymore. That\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n