A Church of the Word and Human Beings—without the Whiz-Bang
By Donald P. Shoemaker

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” – John 1:14
“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” – Matthew 16:18

Steven Spielberg recently said this about his great movie, “Lincoln”:

“Special effects, high-genre concepts, big set pieces, eventizing history have been what I’ve been doing with both my imagination and on films that are based on historical fact. But I’ve never before made a film without all of those nets for me to fall into. I’ve never made a film where this was going to succeed or fail based on the writing and based on the performances.” [italics mine]

That, he added, “is one of the scariest things I’ve ever gone into.”

If that’s scary, imagine having a church’s ministries succeed or fail based on the “script” (the Bible) and on the performance of its “actors” (us) without the benefit of gizmos and gadgets and gimmicks (like Spielberg’s “high-genre concepts, big set pieces” and other “nets to fall into”) we seem to think are essential to having a successful church. Really scary!

One Sunday morning a couple of years ago, my church had to conduct most of two services without electricity when power went out over much of “Old Town” Seal Beach. We had to rely on natural lighting, instruments without any enhancements, the words in our hands, and the voice projected by my own lungs. That’s sort of Spielberg’s “Lincoln” movie.

I hasten to say I wouldn’t want a Sunday like that very often. But the experience reminded us that, ultimately, “church” is people and the script we read and teach and live. That’s called “incarnational ministry”—being a flesh-and-blood church that follows our Lord, who came to us as flesh-and-blood and lived amongst us—a church shepherded by flesh-and-blood leaders like Peter, warts and all.

Let’s ask ourselves, what kind of a church would we be if all of a sudden we had nothing but Jesus, our script and our humanity?

“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24, a text that, among other things, should make us cautious about external show in worship)

1 Corinthians 14:26 is a foundational scripture for worship: “When you come together [‘sunerchomai’ – a technical term for the church gathering), …all [including singing] must be done for the strengthening of the church.”

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing each other with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs…” (Colossians 3:16—my rather literal translation of it)

First, let’s agree and admit: “God’s worship tastes are broader than yours or mine.” So what I like or what I prefer is not the issue. The issues are:
• Is our worship acceptable to God—the kind of worship he seeks?
• Is it spiritually strengthening to the congregation?
• If the occasion is evangelistic, is the music the best for the occasion?
• Does it make the church truly an engaged, worshipping body?
• Does it fulfill biblical teaching and commands? And (in matters not addressed in the Bible) does it fulfill biblical principles?

Here are five problems I have with some of the “contemporary worship” I observe (and I do benefit from much of it):

1. Platform Performance and a Spectator Audience rather than a Participating Congregation led by the Worship Team [* see addendum]

Does the team in front truly lead the people in worshipping God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24)? Or does it perform before them? (Does the show go right on even if watchers are not participating?) Perhaps the volume or style of the song makes participatory singing difficult.

A 20-something couple attended a contemporary worship service and found the audience standing for a long song time but most were noticeably not singing. Worse, this couple had taken a young, non-Christian friend to this service, and she was quite puzzled. “Why do they stand so long? Why aren’t they singing?” (The couple wrote me about their experience.)

This may be “contemporary”, but “worship” it ain’t! Likewise, “leading worship” is more than coaxing the audience to clap their hands, etc., along the lines of some older worship styles. Good worship leading is an art. It creates a “symbiotic” situation, where leaders and congregation are ushered freely and together into the spirituality of the worship experience.

2. Use of Technology and Special Effects that attract attention to themselves rather than to Jesus (or even hinder attraction to Jesus)

I tried to worship last year at a gathering that displayed, in my opinion, many distracting special effects—especially some little spotlight nuisances that sent their beams wandering through the audience during songs. How does this build the spirituality of the song time? What are we trying to prove?

Technology (lighting, amplification, projections, special effects) is “neutral”, neither commanded nor forbidden in the Bible. The use of technology therefore must be judged by its positive or negative effect.

The reformer John Calvin’s advice is helpful when considering things added to the worship of God that are not specified in the Bible. He speaks against “useless elegance and fruitless extravagance” and favors a decorum that fits “the sacred mysteries” and is “appropriate adornment” for the exercise of devotion. “Ceremonies…ought to lead us straight to Christ” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 10, Section 29, emphasis mine). So we ask, “Does this particular use of technology lead us straight to Christ or not? Or does it even distract us from Christ?”

3. Selection of Songs and Style that doesn’t fit the context (the people who are there and the purpose of the gathering) [* see addendum]

As a pastor for 44 years, I’ve learned the art of accepting people “where they are” and leading them from there to “where they ought to be”. In music, this includes broadening their tastes and appreciation, and doing so with a sensitive spirit.

This requires “gradualism”, building upon the ground they stand on, slowly expanding their grasp of music that will then build them up spiritually. You know how a cat acts when you take him suddenly from familiar surroundings to a strange place? You better be wearing gloves! We wouldn’t expect old-time gospel songs to be effective at a gathering of unchurched youth. Likewise, if a praise team is before an older crowd or a generationally mixed crowd and hits them with a style that narrowly fits a particular youthful stratum, then broader musical appreciation and spiritual growth are aborted.

And remember, the elderly folk aren’t into standing for 20+ minutes! Also, please pick songs so most of the people know most of the songs.

4. “Sloppy Agape” and the “Slurpization of God”

Some contemporary songs convey an erotic (romantic, but not in the negative sense of “eroticism”) rather than an agapic view of love (1 Corinthians 13). The agape love of God reaches down to us in our distress and does what is needed (John 3:16). It motivates us to agapic love for others (1 John 4:11). It’s not about getting the feeling that God has feelings of love for us.

I attended a church’s song service last year where the lyrics of one popular song said Heaven will come “like a sloppy wet kiss”! No wonder some talk of men (males) not caring for modern worship. Women either.

All worship leaders should study the transcendence, holiness and majesty of God and ponder their practical application to worship.

5. Weak or Wrong Teaching in the Song Lyrics

Singing is a time to teach and admonish with the truth (Colossians 3:16).

I’m delighted to see more contemporary songs focusing on our social duties as Christians. This has been a blind spot in contemporary music. “God of The City” is a top example of this development (O that it were more singable!).

But some songs go beyond this with themes and lyrics that are “post-millennial” (Jesus will return after the church establishes his kingdom on earth). Few Christians I know really believe this, but the songs they sometimes sing convey it anyhow. (Let it be said that the old “gospel songs” were sometimes doctrinally weak or wrong as well.)

I close with the powerful words of the still-relevant song, “Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above” by Johann J. Schutz (1675):

Thus all my toilsome way along I sing aloud Thy praises,
That men may hear the grateful song my voice unwearied raises.
Be joyful in the Lord, my heart. Both soul and body bear your part.
To God all praise and glory!

Addendum:

* Note: Since first writing the above, I’ve thought a lot about these points and how we can avoid error and at the same time appropriately accommodate some of the practices I’d rather not see in worship gatherings.

When I was a teen, “Youth For Christ” was the place to take your non-Christian friends (perhaps more than taking them to your church for their first “Gospel” experience). YFC rallies were “platform performances” where the audience was more in an observance mode than participation. Everything (including technology good for the times) was geared to the teens and prayerfully intended to lead to some conversions. (Read Billy Graham’s autobiography and see how this was the vision of YFC.)

We didn’t look on YFC as primarily a place for worship or spiritual growth, though those did take place. We looked for evangelism, through song, drama, message and just a really good program. I was trained as an evangelism counselor.

I suggest that some, if not many, “contemporary worship” experiences are like YFC during my teen years. They are striving to reach a generation for Christ, and many are doing a pretty good job of it.

I think we can make a New Testament distinction between a gathering geared for conversion and a gathering for worship and growth. Isn’t this distinction found at the very beginning of the Christian Church? “Those who accepted his message were baptized” [the evangelistic gathering], and “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread [likely the incipient Eucharist] and to prayer” [the worship/growth gatherings]” (Acts 2:41-42 NIV).

That said, and if correct, two results should take place:

1. The Christian and convert attending the evangelistic occasion should not view that occasion as “church” (the gathering of believers for worship, doctrinal instruction and growth) or as a substitute for “church”. We who were so zealous for YFC and its evangelism potential—never would we have thought that the YFC rally was a substitute for our faithful participation in worship at our various local churches. The evangelistic gathering needs to be supplemented by a gathering of believers for doctrinal instruction, prayer, mutual ministry and celebration of the Eucharist.
2. In the observance of the ordinances (sacraments), baptism can be a vital part of the evangelism experience (I would prefer, in this case, that baptisms be connected to a local church). Communion (the Eucharist) on the other hand should NOT be part of this experience as it is an observance intended for the gathered community of worshipping believers. Baptism is tied to evangelism; Communion is tied to spiritual growth. (This may sound like I am making too sharp a distinction between the two kinds of gatherings—not my desire. Growth will take place in an evangelism context, evangelism in a worship context. But the two gatherings have distinct and different intentions.)

(This essay was republished on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s death. It first appeared as an op-ed in the Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram on Sunday, April 6, 2008)

Dr. King’s Religious Legacy
By Donald P. Shoemaker
Senior Pastor
Grace Community Church of Seal Beach
Chairman, Social Concerns Committee
Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches

April 4, 1968. Those old enough will remember right where they were when they heard the news. I was working at a hotel front desk in my college town when the story broke. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. I passed a note to a group of educators attending a lecture in the hotel. As quickly as the meeting ended, they flocked to hear the TV reports.

I heard Dr. King in person once. In 1966 he preached in my hometown of Mansfield, Ohio at the church his uncle pastored. My fiancé and I heard him deliver a hypothetical epistle of St. Paul to American Christians (a chapter in his book Strength to Love). He spoke of how our moral progress lags behind our scientific progress and our mentality outdistances our morality.

From Montgomery to Memphis on into our future, his legacy grew and remains. Arguably his greatest work was “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written in April, 1963, when he was arrested and placed in the city jail for a non-violent protest against segregation. He responded to a “Call to Unity” issued by some local clergy who opposed his civil disobedience and called instead for peaceful obedience while racial issues could be pursued in the courts.

The God-grounded, faith-based, scripture-laced nature of the movement he led is obvious from any fair reading of his letter or his autobiography. Putting specific issues aside and looking at the foundations of the movement, we wonder if his message would be in sync with today’s secularized thinking.

With a religious foundation like his, how could those who didn’t share it join in his cause? Because the struggle he led was rooted in a moral reality that transcended his religion.

“There are two types of laws: just and unjust,” Dr. King said. “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”

We must obey just laws. An unjust law—a law that degrades human personality, that creates a false superiority and inferiority, that turns a person into an “it” (as segregation laws do) is really no law at all and should be disobeyed. Such laws are not only sociologically unsound, they are morally wrong and sinful.

To the mainstream clergy who issued the “Call to Unity” Dr. King confessed, “I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.” These words likewise chastise much of the Protestant evangelicalism of that time, which is my own heritage.

Evangelicals had been “burnt” by the modernist/fundamentalist controversies of the early Twentieth Century and had retreated into quietism and social isolation. While opposing segregation in principle, they would not do so in action. “This world is not my home; I’m just a-passin’ through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue” was our attitude.

True as that gospel song is, it is half-truth. It must be balanced by the drive for justice in the Prophet Jeremiah’s word from God to the Jews exiled in Babylon (Jeremiah 29:7): “Seek the welfare (shalom) of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because in its welfare (shalom) is your welfare.”

A second reason for our failure was our emphasis on evangelizing individuals to the neglect of social transformation. “Save souls one by one. When we’ve saved enough individuals,” we told ourselves, “we’ll see society change and evils like segregation will pass away.”

How naïve and bad theology to boot! Winning souls doesn’t guarantee the end of social evil—not even in the hearts of the “saved.” And it may be 100 years before enough segregationists are “born again” and rightly motivated to make a dent in this injustice. Dr. King’s letter reminds us of the inadequacy of this thinking and how institutionalized evil can be worse than individual evil. “Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as [theologian and social critic] Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.”

Against our passivity back then and sometimes now, Dr. King still speaks, “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God.”

© 2008 Donald Shoemaker

The sudden word from Pope Benedict XVI was that he will relinquish his papal role on February 28.

In pondering this, I’ve decided to re-release (below) the Guest Editorial that I wrote in 2005 following the death of John Paul II. Ironically, in this editorial I mention Joseph Ratzinger (in a point of disagreement), who would become Benedict XVI. I still affirm my thoughts on a successor (although my phone didn’t ring seeking my opinion last time and I doubt it will this time either).

Don

One Evangelical’s Gratitude for John Paul II
Guest Editorial by Donald P. Shoemaker
Senior Pastor [now Pastor Emeritus]
Grace Community Church of Seal Beach

Long Beach, CA, Press-Telegram, April 9, 2005

In the conservative Protestant environment of my upbringing just about anything that came from Rome was suspicious.

The Roman Catholic Church was, so we were taught, the “scarlet harlot” of the Book of Revelation, chapter 17—clearly identified by her vestments of purple and scarlet, her gold, silver and jewels, and the golden chalice in her hand. She was destined to align herself with the Antichrist, the Devil’s ruler of the End Times, until he tired of her domination and tossed her aside and ruled supreme until his defeat by the King of kings.

To us Catholicism was as Winston Churchill characterized the Kremlin, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Church rituals with their beads and vestments and Latin were a world away from our simple message and revivalist enthusiasm.

A more historically informed approach to biblical interpretation has led to a better look at the Book of Revelation. But what really affected our thought was a courageous and humble man who came out of nowhere to become John Paul II.

John Paul was a human face with which we could easily connect, not a lofty anachronism from the Middle Ages. Coming through the crucible of suffering under two totalitarian systems and being willing to return to Poland to suffer with his people if events so summoned him, he personified the call of Jesus to take up the cross and follow Him.

We saw him as a powerful spiritual leader who in God’s providence, though not single-handedly, brought on the collapse of the Communist evil in Eastern Europe. Though Joseph Stalin mocked the pope in 1935 with “How many divisions has he?” we saw in John Paul the spiritual power of the cross and the Gospel at work emancipating human souls from misery.

We appreciated the unabashed orthodoxy that John Paul represented. His resolute support of pro-life issues resonated with us (opposition to abortion on demand is the one moral position that unites Evangelical Protestants whether their politics are right, left or center).

Significant issues remain on both sides. Some conservative denominations still pronounce that the papacy is the Antichrist. Obsolete attitudes and teachings are readily found amongst Evangelicals, as if the Second Vatican Council never happened.

Pragmatists that we are, Evangelicals cannot see any compelling reason to withhold the option of marriage from priests and we can give many reasons for this option. We are solidly in the Reformation commitment to the authority of Scripture alone, not Scripture and Tradition. We don’t like to hear Cardinal Joseph Ratsinger say that our communities of the faithful are not truly “the Church.”

We see true “apostolic succession” as fidelity to apostolic doctrine more than as a continuity of bishops. We are not comfortable with the veneration rendered to the Virgin Mary, though we are chastened that we have not honored the spirit of her words in the Magnificat, “All generations shall call me blessed,” for she should indeed be our model of devotion and discipleship.

What would many Evangelical Protestants hope to see emerge from the upcoming Conclave? I speak for myself, but I think I have the pulse of much of our movement.

We want to see a pope emerge who would forge a strong confessional relationship with theologically conservative Protestants. We are one in heart with Catholics who can confess the Ecumenical Creeds without crossing their fingers behind their backs.

We would delight in a pope who comes from the Southern Hemisphere, where Christianity is vibrant and growing and orthodox. We want this to be the wave of the future.

Finally, we want to see a pope who continues John Paul’s ministries of being a shepherd to his people and a prophetic voice to the world. News analysis presently abounds with bobbing heads complaining that John Paul did not bring strong administrative skills to the Vatican and they hope the new pope will.

God forbid! In the earliest days of Christian history the infant church carefully and wisely separated the apostolic role of teaching and prayer from the administrative role that others should do (chapter six of the Book of Acts).

I dread to ponder the outcome had John Paul devoted himself to management instead of pastoral and prophetic ministry. We might have the Vatican well oiled and Eastern Europe still in chains.