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WORSHIP THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
 "...take
no delight in your solemn assemblies,” says the Lord through
the voice of the prophet Amos in a blistering critique of a worshipping
community that has neglected the hurting. “But let justice
roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream”
(Amos 5:21, 24).
Authentic worship will always be about adoration and service, says
Dr. Nancy Hall, director and associate professor of contextual education
at the American Baptist Seminary of the West. While “worship
wars” in U.S. churches signify debate over traditional and
contemporary styles, ABSW is more interested in the content of worship
that calls us to mission.
“If all the songs or hymns in a service speak only of our
cozy relationship with Jesus but nothing of Christ’s call to
serve others, have we truly honored God?” asks Hall, who is
also the co-author with Professor Emeritus Dr. John E. Skoglund
of A Manual of Worship.
ABSW’s second-year students will wrestle with that question
and others this fall. The overall theme of the middler year is “What
is the church?” Students will be immersed in the theory and
practice of worship, preaching and other pastoral arts through an
interdisciplinary, team-led colloquium based in a half dozen American
Baptist churches throughout the Bay Area.
Students will explore the origins of Christian worship and analyze
current trends in worship, particularly in various cultural and
multicultural settings, Hall says. Over the summer, the students,
faculty and teaching pastors are all reading Thomas Long’s
Beyond the Worship Wars: Building Vital and Faithful Worship.
Here is a healthy and functional starting question for any church,
Hall says. “How can we create and lead worship for God’s
people that expresses the vitality of our relationship with Jesus
Christ? And, how can we be faithful to the traditions and practices
that are the gifts of 2,000 years of Christianity?”
Relevant Worship?
“Who is it for?” That’s a fundamental question for
worship, says President and Professor of Pastoral Theology Dr. Keith
Russell. “Is worship primarily a marketing method? Or is it
about experiencing the presence of the living God and the formation
of a new community?”
Much of the current debate over worship is about how to be inviting,
how to be relevant, how to make room for different people and different
experiences — to be “seeker-sensitive.” Russell says
it is part of the church’s task to be inviting. However, an
understanding of church tradition should inform the effort to be
relevant, he adds.
In studying the scriptures and the history of the church, ABSW
students will discover the rhyme and reason of worship. They will
find that biblically based, historically informed worship makes
room for a diversity of music and forms because “it is attempting
to meet a diversity of human need — not human tastes,”
Russell says.
For today’s younger generations, relevant worship impacts
an individual’s personal relationship with God and makes a
difference in the world, says Dr. Tim Tseng, associate professor
of American religious history.
Tseng, who plays guitar in his church band and is an avid observer
of pop culture, hears in the music and words of younger generations
a frustration with worship when it simply expresses piety. Some
young people are “questioning how their piety makes church
relevant” to the world, he says, and protesting the “therapeutic
me generation” of their baby boomer elders.
The postmodern angst expressed by Irish rockers U2 in such songs
as “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”
suggest to Tseng that “pietistic expressions are not adequate
enough” for young people today.
Postmodernism leaves people feeling rootless, he says, and faced
with that condition young people “discover that subjectivity
can be shallow.” They want something more. Young people are
“moving toward stronger social consciousness,” Tseng notes,
and looking for worship that challenges them to this end.
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