Paradoxical Worship?

In my reseach for this thesis I have read many things. Some of those things seem to contradict one another, but I'm not entirely sure they do because I can see the validity in both and my experience affirms both sides, so in order to get my thoughts on the matter straight, I thought I'd write about it here.

They tell me that we're living in the turn of an era, that process of doing a giant cutltural u-turn that some have called post-modernism. I think perhaps too much has been made of reflecting on postmodernism by people (and I include myself in this) that don't really understand it. But that's a point for another time, not for now.

One one hand, worship theorists say that postmodern people communicate well by imagery and subtlety, learn as if through osmosis from a variety of sources and have a short attention span. Therefore, we need to make worship that communicates well with that pomo society even if we don't really get it ourselves, we need to stop making worship that appeals to us churchy folk and make a sacrifice to make worship with pictures and soundbites instead of words and meaty sermons.

On the other side is those who say that the seeker service, which was worship designed to make church outsiders comfortable didn't actually attract that many outsiders and mainly appealed to churchy folk instead. Basically, it didn't work. Or if it did, it doesn't anymore. Therefore we shouldn't be making worship that we don't respond to, when we put our all into worship in a meaningful way and don't try to make worship accessible then people from outside will see our commitment to an alternative way of life - and that will attract them to find out more.

It's funny that both methods seem to advocate the same things - turning down the lights and bringing on the candles, dj's and art. I think that with both methods there are real problems, those problems only get ironed out when the two models come together.

Problem with the first method: Have you ever seen older people trying to be young and cool? It just doesn't work. The problem with the first method is when you get people trying really hard to be something they're not, that doesn't help people to worship, it's just laughable.

Problem with the second: The church has been just doing things its own way for a long time and it's never really attracted all that many interested parties in. No matter how authentic your spiritual experience, it's going to be hard to convince people that you're not a little weird!


You've really got to have a bit of both. If you make your church exclusively for outsiders then only the most tenacious insiders will stay and not feel neglected - church doesn't just exist for outsiders, christians need to grow spiritually too. If your church exists exclusively for its members then it will seem cliquey and its subcultures will be strange; traditions will develop and not be called into question and the church will calcify and growth will be stunted.