Substitutes For Worship

Because church leaders have, for the most part, lost the understanding of biblical and historic worship, they have created and imposed upon their congregations a variety of worship substitutes. For the past decade I have made it my business to sample various services of worship and to ask pastors, students, and lay people to define worship for me. Occasionally I have come across some people with extraordinary insight into the subject. But more frequently the answers are groping, tenuous, and even muddled. Recently a student who knows of my interest in worship renewal caught the frustration many of us experience by saying,"We are working against four hundred years of neglect. " Unfortunately, there is more truth than fiction in that statement. The fact is that we have not continued the interest in worship demonstrated by the Protestant Reformers. Rather, we have allowed worship to follow the curvature of culture. I contend that there are at least four substitutes for worship in our…