Churches called to excellence, regardless of worship styles_110303

Posted: 10/31/03

Churches called to excellence,
regardless of worship styles

By Marv Knox

Editor

ABILENE–Commitment to excellence–not performance of any particular style of music–provides the key to worship, Tom Stoker stressed during a conference on music and worship at Hardin-Simmons University.

“Do you want to change the world? Help people find a way to worship God. Help them find excellence,” urged Stoker, a congregational worship consultant and former Baptist minister of music.

Hardin-Simmons' Logsdon School of Theology and School of Music sponsored the music/worship conference on the Abilene campus.

Stoker acknowledged conflict over which style of music to use in worship has divided countless congregations, but he stressed attitudes that fuel the conflict miss the point of worship.

“Does God want us to fight over worship? Should it be divisive?” he asked. “No, God wants us to be loving, for God is love. It is only in a loving, trusting environment that we will approach the throne of grace and touch God in worship.”

Quoting the Apostle Paul, Stoker said Christians are to seek excellence in their worship.

“We are to concentrate on being our best selves, to think about being better than we are,” he said. “And who determines what is our best? That is where the dialogue must begin. To achieve excellence, we must first begin to talk and trust.

“We must reclaim our Baptist view of our relationship with God. … And if we want to hear from God, the best way to do so is to listen to as many different people's opinions as possible before moving forward.”

True worship of God begins with “dialogue with each other,” he noted.

“We must discover each other's talents and abilities, and then we must agree on the kind of worship that will occur in our (church) house based on our resources, architectural structures of our worship spaces, and the talents and abilities of the congregation.”

The answer to the worship question will be as unique as the congregation, Stoker reported, noting it depends upon the talents and abilities of church members themselves.

“It may be a praise team, it may be a choir, it may be worshipping with the sound of guitar, or organ, or piano, or it may involve an orchestra,” he said. “It may include those who dance, or sculpt, or paint or speak through drama.”

In seeking the worship styles that are right for an individual church, leaders should avoid consumerism that turns a service into an occasion to fulfill the whims and desires of members, he warned.

“We must be careful about turning Sunday worship into just another opportunity to say, 'Give me some of that,'” he said, citing William Willimon, dean of the chapel at Duke University.

Instead, worship should help people know Jesus and meet the needs Jesus places in worshippers' lives, Stoker said. “Plug people into Jesus, and the rest will take care of itself. Helping people meet Jesus will take care of it. And that requires excellence–excellent planning and excellent execution.”

Churches can incorporate several steps to facilitate worship excellence, he suggested. They include creating teams to assist ministers in worship planning, building a worship-resource library, “finding music the congregation can sing,” seeking texts that confront issues in people's lives.

When worship is “done right,” it enables people to experience God's love, Stoker said.

But one particular style is not better than another in accomplishing that feat, he added. “It is not that the worship of the post-modern church is better than the worship of yesterday's church. It is that we must offer to God our best efforts.”

That means varying worship and avoiding the same ritual every week, as well as not merely copying worship from another church, he said.

Churches also must beware making worship into “a commodity that the consumers drive us to create,” he said. “We must not give people what they want. We must be aware of what they need. We must help people meet God.

“My greatest concern about some seeker-driven worship is not that we don't need to make worship accessible to people. Worship should be accessible. But we must not allow a seeker to shape our view of God. The church must do this, and not all of the encounters with God will be easy, user-friendly ones.”

Churches should avoid “the latest, greatest fad” in worship, he cautioned, urging worship planners to incorporate the strengths of their heritage but also respond to needs of today.

“Speak new words, but don't forget the old language,” he said. “Find new symbols, but bring the old symbols along: That we might walk together toward the throne of grace. That we might walk together to encounter this living, loving wonderful God.”