Contemporary Worship - a Great Crowd-puller

"Contemporary worship" - what on earth is that? "Worship in today's church must be modern if we are to attract and hold the young people." Oh yes?

This is true in every church or Christian grouping that has knowingly or unknowingly swallowed theological liberalism. This has been "drip-fed" to the churches, and to ministerial students in training for the most exalted calling there is. And they, in turn have "drip-fed" this liberalism to their congregations. You might protest with, "But my church and my minister preach the Gospel; they are not liberals!"

But this begs two basic questions: what is liberalism, and what is the Gospel?

Put simply, liberalism is that attitude of mind and heart that believes that Scripture is not "the only infallible rule of faith and practice," including worship. It is the attitude that says, "We know better than God does about how He is to be worshipped." It is that frame of mind that plays fast and loose with the Scriptures, and substitutes all sorts of human and worldly innovations into the worship of God that He never required.

Liberalism is essentially 'arrogance dressed in theological garb.' It is the refusal to be governed by God's Word in all aspects of life.

And it stands in direct opposition to conservatism, especially of the evangelical and reformed type which seeks honestly to honour the Scriptures in these matters. Now this is not about getting into the exclusive psalmody debate, because, like the baptism and church government debates, it, too, is deeply divisive.

However, the teaching of Scripture says that innovation in worship is prohibited, and that God Himself has laid down how He is to be worshipped, a position taken historically especially in the reformed churches. But the churches depart from this faithful and tested position when they embraced the spiritually bankrupt system called theological liberalism. So now we have a plethora of 'liberal evangelical' churches, as opposed to 'conservative evangelical' churches. This bodes badly for the future of Gospel witness that goes on in these very churches.

This brings me to the next issue: What is the Gospel? Another massive question, but put simply, it is the message that God Himself has delivered to His apostles and prophets to preach to the human race, telling what He has done in grace to redeem the world, and which centres on the Person and Work of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the only saving message in the world and the one which the world urgently needs.

Now where God's Word is disparaged regarding how He is to be worshipped (and what is today called worship has been adulterated by all kinds of human crowd-pulling innovations), it is but a small step to a change in thinking that says that because we are not 'pulling the crowds' with the old Gospel, we must now subject it to similar fundamental changes that will attract and hold the young people within the churches.

But where is this all going to end? Exactly where a writer of old said it would when he talked about the church preaching "A Christ without a Cross, faith without repentance, conversion without commitment, hope without holiness, love without wrath, heaven without hell..." and so on. Why? Because this will be a nicer Gospel for the twenty-first century sophisticates who do not wish to be challenged, or even have it suggested that they are not on the Way of the King, and going to the Celestial City.

This new gospel and the contemporary worship services might well 'do the deal' in the short term, but the longer term prognosis is bad. Why do I say that? Because the church will have to keep reinventing itself, Madonna-like, in order to draw and keep the crowds.

And what about God? What God? We have dispensed with Him many years ago, and we have now become even more biblical, because "every man does that which is right in his own eyes." When and where will this man-pleasing end? And who's to stop it?