Forward to the Past: Ancient Christianity and the Future of the Church
by Chad Hall

The last few decades have brought some important shifts in how American evangelicals worship God. But these changes may not have gone far enough if the goal is to help truly postmodern people encounter God.

Churches like Willow Creek Community and Saddleback Community Church have been the flagship proponents of upbeat and celebratory worship services that try to appeal to the unchurched by toning down the traditional trappings of Christianity while highlighting the relevant teachings of Christian scriptures. This two-fold approach (teaching and celebration) has proven to be effective and infectious. Lots of churches have followed the lead of Saddleback and Willow Creek - and they have found good success in doing so.

But while I find it difficult to argue with the appropriateness and successfulness of this approach to worship, the teaching/celebration style may not be the style that best reaches many postmodern people. That's because in many ways the Saddleback/Willow Creek approach to worship is merely the same tune with a faster beat. That is, it is still a "modern" (although late-modern) approach to worship. Hymns have been replaced with praise and worship choruses, the sermons are more life based, and there is much more energy in these services, but at heart they share the same format and intention with the "traditional" worship service. The shared intention is to explain the truths of the gospel so that people can go out of the service and act on what they learned. This is not a bad approach, but it is a modern approach. With time, its appropriateness will fade as postmodernism continues to displace the modern mindset.

So, how will the postmodern church worship? That's a tough question - one without easy or certain answers. But one thing we do know about postmoderns is that they are extremely experiential. That is, they learn, grow, develop and commit based on their own experience with truth - not according to someone else's encounter or someone else's retelling of an encounter. Based on the postmodern preference for the experiential, postmodern people might worship best in an environment that encourages and enables them to encounter God (and the truths of God) firsthand.

This renewed emphasis on experiential worship has led some churches to turn to ancient Christianity for help in making today's services more experiential. One fruitful source of ideas and examples is the Celtic tradition.

Jim Baucom, senior pastor of Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA, started a Celtic worship service in 1999. The 8:00 AM Celtic service is intended to be an alternative to the main worship service, which is very similar to the Willow Creek or Saddleback style of high-energy worship focused on celebration and teaching. Baucom says, "While our 11:00 service leads people toward the worship of God via celebration and teaching, the early service does so via contemplation and reflection. We still have a fairly typical sermon (in the early service), and that's a bit of a holdover from the Word-based worship of modernism. But our goal in the Celtic service is to let people encounter God through prayer, reflective music, meditation, and the engagement of all five senses."

Celtic worship contrasts that of the Roman tradition. For centuries, the Roman tradition focused on the Eucharist as the purpose of worship. The Roman Catholic liturgy centered on that moment when the bread and wine were transformed into the body and blood of Jesus, because it was believed that God was most present in the service at that moment. The Reformers rejected the Roman Catholic view of transubstantiation, and their emphasis on scripture led them to replace the Eucharist with the reading of scripture as the focus of worship. Eventually, the exposition of scripture (the sermon) became the focus of Protestant worship and worshippers were encouraged to encounter God via the preacher, whose task was to explain scriptures and the truths of God. For centuries, Protestant worshippers heard an explanation of God's truths and were encouraged to live out those truths during the rest of the week. This was a very modern approach and one that befit the times.

Ancient Celtic believers were encouraged to encounter God firsthand - both in formal worship services and in their everyday lives. For the Celts, God did not reside in specially sanctioned bread or wine, but in every aspect of creation. For them, God was immediately accessible - through prayer, thought, encounters with nature, and everyday occurrences. The immediacy of God is a major aspect of the Celtic tradition, and one that today's church leaders are finding valuable.

Rev. Baucom found the Celtic emphasis on God's immediacy appealing. "When we decided to have a contemplative service, we looked for help in the past. The problem was that the ancient Roman and Greek traditions too emphasized God's disconnected-ness with the world and the need for mediation. In these traditions, the priest, the elements of the Eucharist, or icons mediate the presence of God to the worshipper. That just didn't mesh with our theology. But in the Celtic tradition, God is immediately ("without mediation") available, and so we looked deeper into this faith tradition for help in forming our own practices of contemplative worship." Baucom says that two distinct populations have found his church's Celtic service appealing. "The service draws a lot of young people and a good number of senior adults. There is a small number of Boomers who are sandwiched in there as well, but for the most part the service attracts Xers and Builders. The Xers like the counter-cultural and experiential nature of the service, while the Builders like the slower pace of the Celtic service as a contrast to the high-energy and fast-paced celebration service we have at 11:00."

So, should we all sell our powerpoint projectors and electric guitars and start burning incense and candles??

No. The thing about postmodern people is that we can handle contrasts. In fact, we thrive in the midst of contrast (hence our love of irony). We decorate our lives with the eclectic and appreciate the old that is made new (think about the Chrysler PT Cruiser or the new Ford Thunderbird - are they old or new?). The challenge for postmodern church leaders will be bringing together the old and the new in a new and engaging way that helps worshippers experience God. Effective worship leaders will embrace the old/new paradox because the worship leaders are pragmatists. Pragmatists do what works, and they will quickly learn that the old/new paradox will work in the postmodern landscape.

Right now we live in a shadowy, in-between period. It's not yet time to abandon completely the late-modern worship style that is embodied by Saddleback, Willow Creek and a host of others. In most contexts, that style of worship is more appropriate than a totally postmodern one. However, we should thank God for the (few) churches of today who are fumbling about as they experiment with more radical approaches to worship. While it's hip to do things that are new and flashy, these pioneers are incorporating the past in order to be effective in the future.

Characteristics of postmodern worship??? Well, here are some of my guesses:

• Images of ancient icons, statuary, paintings, etc. that are randomly flashed on a screen
• A station where worshippers can light a prayer candle and/or type in a prayer that is. added to a prayer marquee that everyone can see.
• Unpredictable Service.Modern = predictable. This is why Saddleback or Willow Creek are so modern. Although they are infinitely more interesting that your run-of-the-mill traditional service, they are just as predictable. A regular attendee knows exactly what the order will be (pretty much like last week's). The cure for predictability will be planning. That is, worship leaders will have to plan services in an effort to incorporate different elements and different order each week. An option here might be for worship leaders to have 25 or 30 different worship elements (drama, sermon, music set, lighting of a candle, video clip, testimony, etc.) from which they pull 5 to 10 to use in a given week.
• Banners - a somewhat traditional aspect of worship that might just make a big comeback. They help worshippers focus and surround them with meaning.
• Relationship-oriented elements in worship. The number one way to experience the grace of God is through relationships. By encouraging the formation of worship-based relationships, church leaders will encourage worship to continue beyond the service. One radical idea is a for-profit approach to worship where a person opens a small business (coffee house, restaurant, barber shop, etc.) with the intention of getting people talking about and experiencing Jesus.
• Smells and bells. Experiential worship will engage all five senses, and small sounds and smells can have a big effect. It's no coincidence that aromatherapy candles are a huge market. As our world gets more sterile, people long for smells that create a certain mood, lest their world be mood-less.
• Guided meditation. Seekers who show up for a contemplative service will need (and long) to be guided in their prayers. The prayers will still be their own, but guidance will help them head in the right direction.
• Multi-paced service. For the most part, modern services move at one, uniform pace (either dirge-like slow or arena football fast). Postmoderns might find it helpful to vary the service speed in order to encourage contemplation that moves toward celebration in the same service.

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