An Exhortation to Traditional Worship (Part 1)

By Paul Facey (The Other Paul)

Introduction

Before I became Anglican, I was a born-and-raised Pentecostal, attending a small independent Pentecostal church from infancy to around 10 or 11 years old, and Hillsong from then until the I was 21 at the start of 2021 (except for three years in another small Pentecostal congregation when my family moved to South Sydney. I also had stopped attending Hillsong for a period before consciously making the decision to find a new church). A year later, I would by chance meet someone who would invite me to her Anglican parish, which I have since then called home, adopting the tradition on which it was founded. The parish itself is not overly traditional; only the early morning Sunday service preserves a stripped-back liturgical style, while the others throughout the day and evening lean contemporary (albeit with far greater reverence than Hillsong, relatively speaking). Still, the modest taste of tradition in that early morning service was just what I needed, even if I had (and still do) desire a more full-on traditional experience; vestment, processions, and enough incense to cause an asthma attack. When I told one of my parish priests that I had moved from Hillsong, he remarked that it must had been a culture shock. I responded that it was actually refreshing, that I was looking for this kind of reverence in worship.

I lay out this summary of my story (the full version of which I gave here) in order to show that what follows is not the abstract theorising of a cradle-trad, but the result of well over a decade of experience in my formative years combined with reflection and correction by the word of God. It is my hope that this otherwise brief apology for liturgical worship will cause modern-minded Christians to think over their theology of worship and whether they should consider advocating for change in their own parishes, or (if it comes to it) a change of parish.

This will be the first of a two-part article series. Here, I will establish the nature of the question being explored, and then a comprehensive definition of the Traditional and Contemporary worship paradigms, including more detailed descriptions of their specific elements and foundations. The second article will take these established points and compare the paradigms to the Biblical witness on the nature of worship, and from there make the case for why Traditional Worship is Biblical and Contemporary is not.

Per the title, this will only be a brief defence of my position (the traditional Anglican one), so not every possible avenue and objection will be explored. Nonetheless, I believe this case to be in itself sufficient upon reflection for the reader.

I – A Statement of the Question

We will begin with first delineating what this two-part series does not argue for, then provide a precise statement on what the positive argument is.

The question to be pursued is not:

• Whether Contemporary or Traditional Worship is more conducive to numeric attendance growth.

• Whether Contemporary Worship is technically valid or a damnable error.

• Whether Christians can grow in spiritual maturity in churches with Contemporary Worship.

Rather, the question of this two-part article is to establish the nature of proper worship (its form and telos) according to Holy Scripture, and whether Contemporary or Traditional Worship more faithfully reflects such, and whether the less Biblical paradigm is not just relatively less Biblical, but properly un-Biblical.

With this made clear, we will begin with defining the paradigm of Traditional Worship.

II – Traditional Worship Defined

For our purposes, Traditional Worship (TW) may be defined as a structure for the Sunday gathering of the Church that employs a formalised order of service, comprised of scripted call-and-response statements between the ministers and laity, congregational hymns, and various forms of symbology (such as vestments worn by ministers, the use of an altar at the front, etc.).

The fundamental principle of Traditional Worship is the imitation of heavenly worship. As the saints and angels worship and will worship God in His heavenly throne-room, so we are to worship in anticipation of joining them in their ultimate state of worship. Fr. Paul Castellano in his book As It Is In Heaven – which elaborates in detail the Traditional (and biblical) paradigm of worship – explains this principle:

If you take the time to go through scripture with this particular focus in mind [of the experience of entering a traditional Romanist, Eastern, or Anglican church building], something should immediately jump off the page at you: the place where we are to meet with God, to pray to God, to hear the word of God, and to worship God is known as His house. Not only that, but God designed, presented to Moses, and instructed Moses to model His earthly residence upon His heavenly one. In other words, the model that God gave to Moses—the blueprint, the architecture, the design for His earthly dwelling place—is predicated upon His heavenly dwelling place. The tabernacle and temple in scripture are intended to be earthly replicas of God’s heavenly dwelling. Our models, then, of God’s dwelling place on earth should replicate, duplicate, and resemble to the best of our ability His heavenly home.

~ P.11

Having established a definition and foundational principles for Traditional Worship, we must now consider the concrete manifestations of this paradigm in a worship setting. We will explore this in a systematic manner by dividing the elements of Traditional Worship paradigm in these four ways: the form (the overall structure and framing of the service), the focus (where the attention of the congregation is drawn), the song (the form of music employed), and the summit (the high point of the service, its ultimate act). The same will be done for the Contemporary Worship paradigm in the next section.

The Form: The Sacred Play

The form of Traditional Worship may be described as a ‘sacred play.’ By this is meant that the divine mysteries of the faith and heavenly worship are ritually re-enacted in a set procedure, providing not merely verbal, propositional teachings on the faith, but visual, auditory, and sometimes even olfactory (pertaining to smell) communications, by means of incense. By this, the entirety of man’s being is drenched with the teachings of God and tactile participation in the divine life. 

Even more, this back and forth of the liturgy becomes a temporal instantiation of the Trinitarian life itself. Christ receives from the Father and returns to the Father in love through the Spirit. In the liturgy, we – the body of Christ – receive the words and promises of the Father through the Scriptures spoken and interpreted in the liturgy, and we thus respond to these promises by uniting ourselves to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. Through this sacred play we look ahead to what we will one day experience perfectly and forever, no longer through a glass darkly.

The Focus: The Altar

The visio-spatial centrepiece of Traditional Worship – that which stands in the center of the space and draws the primary attention of the worshiper – is the altar, or the table of the Lord (two terms, same thing). Since this is where the Eucharist is consecrated, and since Eucharist is the highest point of Traditional Worship, it is only natural that the altar occupies the center, just as the pulpit often occupies the center in Contemporary Worship spaces, since the written word is taken as the climax of the gathering.

The centrality of the Eucharist and thus the altar in Christian worship is argued to be of clear Scriptural and historic warrant; not by way of direct commands, but of theological principles worked out in practice. Such arguments will be summarised in the section on the Eucharist shortly, given the inseparability of the altar and the Eucharist.

The Song: The Heavenly Choir

The music of the liturgy is, as with all other elements, intended to glorify God as God. What this means here is music befitting the worship of a king; in fact, the greatest king. We therefore worship him with musical forms as we see befitting any other earthly king. Biblical and secular history attests to the use of choirs and trumpets especially in the praise of great kings, and sure enough we see Israel doing the same for God. Though often lacking the trumpets (unless one counts the pipe organ), Traditional Worship has carried on the practice of choristic worship involving the entire congregation of the people.

The traditional form of hymn/choir worship also draws from the principle of the Church singing as one body with one voice. We see this in the account of the dedication of Solomon’s Temple in 2nd Chronicles chapter 5, where it is said:

And when the priests came out of the Holy Place (for all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves, without regard to their divisions, and all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, their sons and kinsmen, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters; and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord), and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord,

“For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,”

the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.

~ 2nd Chronicles 5:11–14.

And the same is foretold in the worship of heaven in the Book of Revelation, with the four living creatures and the twenty four elders praising the Lord God Almighty before His throne, along with a great multitude (Rev. 4; Rev. 19).

The Summit: The Eucharist

The height of the liturgy is the consecration of and partaking in the sacrament of the altar, the Holy Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper. It is here that the Gospel message is instantiated and assimilated into the being of all who are present. Everything prior to this, including the readings from Holy Scripture, prepared the layman for this specific ritual, in which the Gospel initially preached to us in words was now received through our mouths and into our souls. Here, our union in Christ is affected. Even more, the Eucharist also draws from the earlier described principle of the imitation of heavenly worship. Our Lord Himself told His disciples “I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.” (Matt. 26:29) The relevant observation here is that He will drink of the fruit of the vine again in heaven. This is further confirmed by the angel speaking to John in the Book of Revelation; “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev.. 19:9).

Finally, the Eucharist is considered the summit of Sunday worship in the Traditional paradigm for a key reason. Christ gave Himself for us as a sacrifice once and for all, a perfect sacrifice for all sins past, present, and future. However, this was not applied automatically to all persons, but only to those who took hold of Christ by faith. Even further, this faith – contrary to how many moderns think – is not simply a platonic assent to the proposition that Christ is our saviour, but a fundamental disposition of trust towards God. Alongside faith, He has provided two means of grace – or sacraments – through which the benefits of His death are appropriated to us, those being baptism and the Eucharist. Baptism, being performed once in a person’s life, is not a regular feature of the gathering of the saints, but the Eucharist, being a recurring ritual, is. And since this Eucharist is the normative visible sign by which – when partaken in faith – we receive the benefits of Christ’s death and thus become united to Him, it is most fitting that this sacrament, this event, is made the centerpiece of the whole liturgy. This in turn justifies the prior feature of the visio-spatial centrality of the altar in the worship space.

III – Contemporary Worship Defined

A sufficient definition of Contemporary Worship (CW) may be articulated as follows: a paradigm of worship that utilises modern singing styles, instruments, musical arrangements, and varying orders of the service upon the premises that, first, the Sunday gathering is either fundamentally or at least in large part an evangelistic effort, and second, more unbelievers will be attracted to the Sunday gathering and be more open to hearing the Gospel when a casual culturally up-to-date atmosphere is employed.

As backing for my definition, I will first cite the description of Lester Ruth and Lim Swee Hong in their A History of Contemporary Praise and Worship:

Specifically, the theological idea of Contemporary Worship was a certain mindset of striving for effective outreach by Christians to others. Thus, Contemporary Worship’s compelling theological drives were, on the one hand, seeking to be faithful to a sense of evangelistic mission and, on the other, anxiety that one’s current worship practices were not contributing to a maximum faithfulness toward this mission. In sum, because Christians have a responsibility to fulfill their mission, worship should be changed if it is not effective in reaching and transforming people.

~ Lester Ruth & Lim Swee Hong, A History of Contemporary Praise and Worship, p.166.

Next, we will see this same rationale from one of the greatest pioneers of CW: Charles G. Finney. He writes the following in the 14th lecture of his Lectures on Revivals of Religion:

When Christ came, the ceremonial or typical dispensation was abrogated, because the design of those forms was fulfilled, and therefore themselves of no further use. He, being the antitype, the types were of course done away at his co[m]ing. THE GOSPEL was then preached as the appointed means of promoting religion; and it was left to the descretion [sic] of the church to determine, from time to time, what measures shall be adopted, and what forms pursued, in giving the Gospel its power. We are left in the dark as to the measures which were pursued by the apostles and primitive preachers, except so far as we can gather it from occasional hints in the book of Acts. … Their commission was, “Go and preach the Gospel, and disciple all nations.” It did not prescribe any forms. It did not admit any. No person can pretend to get any set of forms or particular directions as to measures, out of this commission. … [T]heir object was to make known the Gospel in the most effectual way, to make the truth stand out strikingly, so as to obtain the attention and secure the obedience of the greatest number possible. No person can find any form of doing this laid down in the Bible. It is preaching the Gospel that stands out prominently there as the great thing. The form is left out of the question.

~ Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, lecture 14. The Life and Works of Charles G. Finney, vol. 1 (2005), pp.236–237.

One final testimony I will add to these is my own. I was born and raised Pentecostal until the beginning of my 20’s, and thus for most of my life. Contemporary praise & worship was the air I breathed. Granted, the Pentecostal flavouring had additional emphases and ideas that would be lacking from, say, Evangelical Anglican CW, but the essential core of the Sunday gathering as an evangelistic effort that bridges the gap between the Church and the culture was there, especially at Hillsong, which I attended for more than 10 years. In fact, seeing how Ruth and Hong’s articulation of Contemporary Praise & Worship (as they call it) reflected my own life-long experience with extreme precision was what convinced me of the reliability of their book, and thus I employ it here in a way that I do not often employ secondary sources. It is these therefore these premises, as understood in the above quotes and my experience, that will be the object of comparison and critique.

Finally, as with Traditional Worship, we will list a number of essential or at least common elements in CW and explain their relation to the core principles of the paradigm.

The Form: Economical & “Authentic”

CW worship structures sometimes vary in the precise ordering of things, but two uniting themes are A: Economicality, and B: “Authenticity.” 

Economicality, in that the service is as simple in structure as possible, minimizing the effort required of the pastor, the band, various assistants, and the worshippers themselves. This economicality is not taken as a good in itself, but is rather resultant from the paradigm and its telos; the forms of worship are malleable according to what best attracts the unbeliever to the Church and keeps people in, so that they may receive the most exposure to the Gospel. As such, this economicality is for the maximisation of time spent in the reading and preaching of the word. In more Pentecostal/Charismatic contexts (whether formally so or even a parish of any denomination with such proclivities), the economicality also serves to maximise time and effort in praise and worship, in which individuals have the best opportunity to ‘experience’ the presence of God. Thus, some Pentecostal/Charismatic congregations may be very uneconomical in their praise and worship music; expensive instruments, elaborate sound-systems, even pre-programmed light shows and smoke machines. However, as with other CW traditions, economicality is still observed for the rest of the service; there are little to no formalised prayers, rituals, call-and-responses, lectionary readings (or even just reading passages chosen by the pastor), and other elements common to Traditional Worship. These are, at best, not ascribed much, if any inherent value, since signs and symbolism as such do not matter, at least not in the way they used to; only propositional revelation through the written word and (in some cases) ‘experiencing’ Christ in music.

“Authenticity” – and I am deliberate in the scare quotes, for reasons to be shown in the next article – in that the acts of prayer, praise, and worship are left largely unscripted (barring the songs). Ministers, prayer volunteers, and so on, speak extemporaneously; that is, they say prayers before the congregation or give opinions on scripture (inside or outside of a sermon) with the immediate words in their mind, or at most from some dot-points they wrote shortly beforehand. It is often considered dry, stale, ritualistic, “inauthentic,” when people just pray or preach from a pre-written, re-used script. But it is truly “authentic” when someone either prays “from the heart” with the words immediately in their mind or from a script that they themselves wrote. Again, like with the band as a focal point, I believe this element of CW is sometimes just a tradition assumed by Christians who have not reflected on the matter. But in my experience in this world, it is much more widely understood in its meaning and purpose.

The Focus (I): The Band

In many CW settings, the worship team/band is the or at least a focal point, the other being the pulpit (which I will discuss shortly). The seats and eyes of the worshippers are oriented toward a stage and a team of musicians. Reasons for this are not necessarily uniform; many churches, I would submit, perhaps do it just out of tradition, not knowing the why behind it. But when reasons are given, they tend to – and I draw again from my entire teenage and much of my early adult life experience on this – essentially mirror the rationale of Finney quoted above; it provides an open, accessible environment to unbelievers, bringing in certain familiar elements of the secular world to ease them in, and it just makes ergonomical sense given the form of worship (why have the band off to the side or the back? What will they look towards in the front? A popish altar?).

The Focus (II): The Pulpit

Virtually all CW churches that have the worship band as a focal point will also have the pulpit as the focal point; that is, at least, a portable glass/metal bauhaus lectern that an assistant brings onto the stage. But with some churches, especially those of a more consciously Reformed and/or low-church worship paradigm, will have the band off to the side and a (semi) permanent lectern in the center, more overtly communicating the centrality of the word of God – written and preached – to the worship service. 

Now, it must be explicitly noted that CW is not identical to ‘low-church’ worship, in that the latter was not premised in its conception on making the Christian worship attractive to unbelievers; rather, it is largely principled on the Regulative Principle of Worship, which I will let the reader research on his own. Suffice to say, low-church/Regulative Principle worship does at least claim to premise its forms of worship upon biblical principles, and not upon the cultural moment. As such, it is not the object of critique for this essay, so the coming critique of the centrality of the pulpit is only done in light of its common occurrence in CW, even though the critique may be relevant to the low-church paradigm as well.

The Song: Contemporary & Band-Oriented

This needs little elaboration due to the foregoing, especially Finney’s own rationale. Suffice to say, the kind of music and singing employed in CW is a secondary – nay, a tertiary matter. As such, it may be revised, adapted, shrunken, expanded, even completely overhauled according to the mission of drawing in unbelievers by means of bridging the Church-culture gap, in order to best expose them to the Gospel. As of the present,

The Summit: The Sermon

The summit of the CW service is the preached word; everything is oriented towards this event, and it all lives or dies here. Everything else in the service – the prayers, the Bible readings (if any), the music, the Lord’s Supper – everything is inferior to the preaching of the word, the spiritual food sine qua non for the believer on Sunday.

This attitude, especially as it relates to the Eucharist (and thus being in contrast to Traditional Worship), is exhibited in former Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen, who with his brother Philip oversaw a low-church and contemporising trend in the Sydney Diocese in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In a 2003 address to Evangelical Anglicans in the UK, and as quoted in Brian Douglas’ A Companion to Anglican Eucharistic Theology, Volume II (pp.408–409), Jensen makes an explicit comment on the superiority of the written Word above the Holy Eucharist. Douglas’ links to the original address are unfortunately defunct, even in their Wayback Machine snapshots, so I could not pull the quote directly from the source. That said, Peter Jensen states:

The Supper is not above the word, or even on parity with the word: it is an expression of the word, a visible word, an active exhibition of the gospel. Furthermore, its main focus is on the death of Jesus on the cross, and whatever else happens it must therefore be shaped by the doctrine of justification by faith. I believe that I am right in saying that the Church of England has, in the last fifty years, placed immense stress on the weekly celebration of the Eucharist, and has adopted liturgies which broaden the original message of the Book of Common Prayer on sin and redemption through the death of Christ. This means that an evangelism which stays true to its original insights looks old-fashioned and, to quote a definite swear word, ‘narrow’. Indeed many evangelicals have embraced the new insights; a type of development I intend to address at a later point.

Douglas then provides an analysis of these words and others from Jensen:

In Jensen’s analysis there is less emphasis to be placed on the Eucharist than there is on expository preaching, and the justification for this is faithfulness to what Jensen sees as a Reformation model of church practice. He therefore says, “the Bible, not the chalice is the symbol of the evangelical pastor”. For Jensen there are certain markers which delineate the nature of what evangelicalism should be. These he argues are the Book of Common Prayer and the Articles of Religion and it is these that mark him as “a confessional Protestant”. These markers Jensen sets up in opposition to what he terms “Catholic sacramentalism” which he argues “speaks an entirely different language”.

Stated plainly, the Eucharist is not the summit of the Christian gathering, nor even a summit alongside the written & preached word. It is inferior to the written and preached word, and serves merely as a proclamation and reminder of it. And this is why in virtually all CW services, compared to TW gatherings, the Eucharist receives less time, attention, care, and reverence overall, such that some places think it appropriate to include apple juice as an option instead of wine.

Once again, there can be differences between Pentecostal/Charismatic vs other Evangelical CW services; the former will have a comparatively larger place for singing/music than the latter, for instance. But the preaching of the word will still have the chief place in the service, leading to almost all post-service discussions in both Evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic congregations being about how good or bad the sermon was.

Quasi-Conclusion

This is a “quasi-conclusion,” since the argument continues, or rather properly begins in a second post to follow this one. Establishing precise definitions and categories is absolutely necessary for a smooth and clear debate, lest we waste our breath talking over one another or arguing over terminology. I sought to be fair in my framing of both Traditional and Contemporary Worship, providing a neutral definition of the paradigms in general, a description of their key elements, and a statement of their foundations. Much detail on the defences for these positions was not provided here, as that will be relevant for the followup piece, which will be polemical. Here, only a description of the positions as I understand them was necessary. But even absent the second article, I hope this first one was clear and enlightening for readers who want to engage in this issue but do not yet have a coherent framing of the sides. Ambitious as it may be, I hope this could be a standard reference and starting point for those researching the matter.