Join us this Thursday at 7:30p as we conclude our series “Words & Music”—a look at worship from the Early Church to today. We meet in person at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park. Or you can join online via FB Live.

How Technology Reshapes Worship

In the mid-15^th century, a German blacksmith named Johann Gutenberg had a fascinating idea. What would happen if he forged a set of alphanumeric characters that enabled him  to mechanically reproduce text? (We now call this concept “moveable type.”)

What did happen was nothing short of revolutionary. When Gutenberg’s Bible rolled off his printing press, he not only started a new industry—publishing—but he radically altered every aspect of human life as we know it, including how we worship.

Ready availability of the printed Word opened up a real can of worms! Now laypeople could read the Bible for themselves, which meant they could also interpret and respond according to their own lights. The worship experience was no longer a performance art starring priests and bishops. Now the liturgy could be published for everyone’s participation, and the daily offices—recitations of prayers and psalms consigned to monks and nuns—could be prayed by anyone who owned a prayerbook.

In other words, technology completely disrupted the worship lives of the Western church, removing an enormous barrier that separated religious practitioners (clergy and monastics) from religious observers (the laity).

It also created a lot of tension that erupted very quickly. Within 50 years, Martin Luther published his 95 theses, calling into question many of the Roman church’s medieval practices and beliefs. Soon after, a veritable raft of protesting (“Protestant”) theologians unleashed their own diatribes against the Church’s elitist practices.

These great thinkers and writers posed questions and ideas that, before Gutenberg’s breakthrough, were quietly discussed and, in many cases, kept out of the public’s hearing. Now they became hotly contested within the community at large. Many of these questions persist.

What is the proper procedure for baptism? What really happens when we take Communion? If we believe, as Luther insisted, “the just shall live by faith,” what is the role of the priest, whose primary function is mediating forgiveness of sin and pardon through penance? Why shouldn’t people be allowed to read and interpret scripture for themselves? Must everything in Christian worship be scripturally mandated? What about ceremony and tradition?

Technology enables progress. Yet it also raises a lot of questions, either by bringing existing quandaries to light or by generating new concerns. We see this writ large in our churches today. (Some folks get nervous if there’s a video screen in the worship space!) What do we do with technology? How do we ensure technology actually improves worship, rather than needlessly complicating it? Do we really need a live Twitter feed during Sunday service?

These questions are all wound up in this week’s “Words & Music: study, as we look at the Reformation and how its effect on how we worship in the 21^st century. Don’t miss this fascinating time together!

Our September series, “Words & Music: Where Our Worship Traditions and Hymns Come From,” continues every Thursday evening at 7:30p CDT. Join us live at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park or online via FB Live.

Fashionable Worship

As we continue our September study series, “Words and Music,” we come to a major turn when Constantine and later Emperors embrace Christianity. Two significant things happen. First, Christian doctrine gets codified in creeds—a number of which are still recited today, e.g., the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed. Second, the nature of Christian worship moves away from its original, highly diversified home-church model toward something more ritualized and (dare we say it?) imperial.

Christianity’s establishment as the state religion ends Roman persecution of the church. That’s good news. But it also means weekly gatherings become something more than a loose assembly of Jesus followers envisioning a new world. Pageantry takes root. Worship moves from homes into basilicas, which served as Roman courthouses. The simple Eucharistic meal evolves into a distinctively ritualized feast that requires the services of a priest. This is a seismic change, because priests work in temples, and they practice at altars, neither of which are Early Church fixtures.

So Christianity inherits a style of worship that mirrors Roman pageantry and makes it fashionably acceptable to the power elite. It not only restyles easy rites that made Christianity readily acceptable and cross-cultural. It also shifts the typography and reshapes the messaging.

The cross becomes the chief symbol. The message of ready grace moves toward a more legalistic one of atonement that reflects a culture in which the Emperor and his magistrates deed clemency and exact punishment. The hierarchy becomes more elegant. Bishops now take the highest seats in the worship space. (In Latin, these chairs are called “cathedra,” or thrones, from which our word “cathedral” derives.) With all of this human imposition, things most become more regimented. The liturgy—from another Latin word that means “work of the people”—gets inverted; the people become end-users rather than originators of worship. The pulpit becomes a place where doctrine is preached. But it also becomes the top-down platform from which dogma—the unquestioned teachings of state-sanctioned religion—is traditioned, or passed along from generation to generation. Worship now becomes a control mechanism that bears watching, since many dubious theological principles get packaged as worship practices.

Why is this vital to understanding our faith? It helps us recognize how much of what we perceive as “Christianity” is actually a departure from the Early Church’s values and vision. As we continue our “Words and Music” study this week, we’ll look at the Roman influence and its impact on Western Christianity. (The Eastern Church dodged this bullet, which we’ll briefly discuss.) And we’ll talk about how these influences and events have imbedded themselves in what we experience when we go to church. Don’t miss this second part of the September series!

Join us for part two of our “Words and Music” study series. We meet each Thursday evening at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. Study begins at 7:30p CT and if you’re unable to be with us in person, you can catch us via FB Live.

The Adoration Impulse

As we wrapped our “Disorganized Religion” summer tour of Acts, taking a closer look at worship seemed like a natural next step. While some religions emphasize ethical living and others concentrate on spiritual disciplines, Christianity’s most defining feature is its worship-centricity. When people discuss their Christian faith, they almost always begin with worship, whether they’re talking in the past, present, or even future tense.

I grew up going to church.

We attend church pretty regularly.

One of these days I’m going to get to church.

The worship experience is central to the life of most Christians, regardless what creed they follow or tradition they come out of. The weekly trek to service is still a family ritual in many homes. And for a lot of people, the best part of their week happens during those 90 minutes on Sunday mornings. All the other stuff somehow feeds back into the weekly worship time. No, worship isn’t all we do; but it may be what we do best. (We certainly seem to put a whole lot time and effort into it.)

I wonder how early Christians would respond to that. We forget Jesus founded a social movement, not a religious one. The first believers had a religion (Judaism) and a worship space (the Temple). It took a while for an identifiably “Christian” worship style to emerge, and the first gatherings weren’t recognizable to outsiders as any kind of religious rites at all.

The first Christian worship experiences happened at table. Attendees said a prayer or two, sang a couple of songs, listened to storyteller, and shared their dinner with one another. These gatherings happened in people’s homes, which limited their attendance to a handful of folks.

But things we now associate with worship—recitations and readings, trained musicians and hymn repertoires, carefully constructed sermons and prayers, etc.—took a long time to work their way into the Christian worship vernacular. (There wasn’t even a “Gospel” for the preacher to read from, because Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John weren’t yet written!)

Yet what we retain from those early years is timeless: the adoration impulse is imbedded in the Christian DNA, marked by a longing to be with other believers, to tell our stories, give our Maker worthy praise and offer up thanksgiving divine for goodness, even as we pray for mercy and guidance. We worship because something compels us to join in song and word and gesture in reverent joy before our God.

That’s a great thing—a life-changing thing. And that’s why we’re spending September looking at worship and some of the stories behind favorite hymns and customs. Our worship has changed dramatically over the centuries. But our love of it is as strong as ever! – Pastor Tim

Join us every Thursday in September for our worship study series: “Words and Music.” We meet at 7:30 CT at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. Or you can join us virtually via FB Live.