The George Lucas universe may be back in balance with the release of Star Wars, Episode III, but a real conflict that began a decade before Darth Vadar drew his first evil breath, still rages.
By Lowell Snow
Freelance speaker/writer
The George Lucas universe may be back in balance
with the release of Star Wars, Episode III, but a real conflict that
began a decade before Darth Vadar drew his first evil breath, still
rages.
Worship Wars, Episode I began during the 1960’s Jesus Movement as baby
boomers began pushing for radical changes in worship, bringing youth
musicals, lively choruses and variety to the order of service.
Episode II followed in the eighties and nineties with praise teams, seeker friendly services, and PowerPoint.
These changes have helped many churches grow, but
survey after survey reveals that the folks in the pew are worldlier now
than then. At a time when society is desperate for authentic
spirituality, Christians have learned to grow bigger churches but not
bigger Christians.
What is needed is an Episode III to bring these Worship Wars to a climactic and victorious conclusion.
It already may have begun.
Evangelical Christianity presently is experiencing a
groundswell of prayer, both private and corporate. Could it be that a
revival of congregational prayer will be Worship Wars, Episode III? If
so, Baptist churches are likely to be the major battle ground.
In most Baptist churches, the renewed emphasis on
prayer is focused on prayer meetings, prayer ministries and prayer
times during Bible studies – but not worship. Some of the prayer
warriors in these groups eventually will realize that the corporate
prayer they are experiencing is desperately needed in their worship
services.
Barna Research Group of Ventura, California has
found that congregants ranked the importance of worship elements in the
following order – prayer, sermon, communion, reflection, and music.
With prayer seen as the most important element of
worship and music a distant fifth, one would expect prayer to play a
dominant role, especially corporate prayer that actually engages the
worshiper.
It is not so in most Baptist churches.
Twenty-two worship profiles conducted this year in
churches from eight denominations ranging from a rural Freewill Baptist
to the non-denominational Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York City,
indicate that Baptists may be in the ‘outer-rim’ when it comes to
corporate prayer.
Consider these findings:
• Baptist services had virtually no corporate prayer.
• The Assembly and Catholic congregations
experienced twice the corporate prayer as Methodist, Presbyterian, and
Christian churches.
• In the Protestant churches, including Baptists,
contemporary services had much less prayer, mostly monologue prayer,
than their traditional ones.
• Excluding the Brooklyn Tabernacle, the largest churches in the survey had the least prayer overall.
There are not enough churches in this study to be
conclusive, but why, at a time when worshipers want to pray more, do so
many Baptist worship leaders ignore it? Have they forgotten the words
of Jesus – “It is written, … My house will be called a house of
prayer.” (Matt 21:13a NIV)? Are they afraid?
Perhaps, it is some of both – but the problem actually may be more practical than spiritual.
The most fearsome war machine of the 20th century
was the nuclear attack submarine. The reactor at the heart of these
predators is the most efficient electrical generator on earth, but it
cannot be used for municipal systems because it will not “scale up.” In
other words, it works great in a relatively small application but not
in a big one.
Prayer is a little like that, very powerful on a
small scale – (“When two or three are gathered in my name …
Matt.18:20) – but complicated and unwieldy on a large scale. If there
ever is to be a revival of corporate prayer in the sanctuary, battle
weary Baptist worship leaders are going to have to train in the skills
of large group prayer.
In the 12 Baptist worship services profiled, only
one pastor even attempted corporate prayer. He called worshipers to the
altar, but failed actually to guide them into focused, corporate
prayer. Instead, he simply prayed a typical monologue prayer as they
knelt.
On the other hand, the Catholic, Charismatic and
mainline Protestant worship leaders lead their congregations in some
type of corporate prayer in every service. Some are more effective than
others, but at least, they are doing it.
On a recent trip to the world famous Brooklyn
Tabernacle in New York City, there were more than 8,000 people in
attendance Sunday morning and about 2,500 at the Tuesday night prayer
service.
The two-hour-and-15-minute Sunday morning service
contained more than 15 minutes of prayer ( representing 11.4
percent of the service). Nearly seven minutes of that was corporate
prayer. Needless to say, God has used pastor Jim Cymbala (author of
“Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire”) to build a praying church.
The average Baptist pastor/worship leader cannot
model their services after Brooklyn Tabernacle, but here are three
things evident at the church that would make a difference in any
congregation:
• Each segment of congregational music led into
corporate prayer. The music was great but not an end in itself.
• They prayed big. Miracles seem to be expected.
• Their consistent emphasis on corporate prayer
brings people through the door, and they come expecting to encounter
God personally.
Most would agree that from the beginning, the
primary motive for the worship wars has been to bring worshipers into a
genuine encounter with God.
Is it possible that the absence of corporate prayer
was the main problem from the beginning, and we missed it?
Corporate prayer is like the plans hidden in the
memory of the robot R2-D2 in the original Star Wars movie. If not
retrieved and put to good use, the war may be in vain.
So, look for Worship Wars, Episode III – overdue at a church near you.
(Information on the ministry of Lowell Snow may be
found at www.pgtc.com/~lowellsnow/home. Information on the Barna
Research Group may be found at www.barna.org.)