Was Early Church Worship Reserved and Stoic?

Lunette with Orante. From early Christian fresco, second half of the third century. Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, Italy. Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.Traditionalist critics of modern worship often point to the hyper-emotionalism associated with the movement as evidence of its imbalance toward expressiveness over and against theological depth, biblical accuracy, and historical connectivity.  Sometimes, these critics will point to "how the church has historically worshipped" to advocate for more reserved, "reverential" forms of worship expression.  They will admonish the church that, unless people reserved and somber in worship, they will be downplaying the fact that in worship we do indeed encounter a holy God who should inspire fear, silence, and meekness.  

Many, many folks have pointed out that the Psalms give us a bigger picture.  They don't necessarily subtract from the above, but add to it.  The Psalms give us a picture of reverence and jubilation, being reserved and being expressive, both physically and emotionally.  

So what about those arguments about "historic Christian worship?"  Perhaps when we look to post-Reformational Anglican, Lutheran, or Presbyterian worship we see a more stoic model of corporate worship expression.  But if we go back earlier...much earlier...we see a different picture which may surprise us.  If, in our minds, we picture the early church at worship in homes and church buildings engaging in liturgy in formal, reverential postures with solemn faces and expression-less bodies, our picture is wrong.

The above picture is taken from an early Christian fresco, painted in the late third century.  It depicts a worshiper in prayer.  Contrary to our postures of folded hands, closed eyes, and sitting or kneeling, this early Christian was standing, head covered, with eyes open and hands lifted toward heaven.  (It's interesting that modern worship hand-raising, especially when we realize that singing is a form of prayer, is actually a more ancient, historic worship-posture than the still-bodied, stoic-faced, hymnal holding that characterizes some of traditional worship today!)

If this reality of early church worship is as surprising to you as it was to me, perhaps you, too, should check out Walking Where Jesus Walked: Worship in Fourth-Century Jerusalem, by Lester Ruth, Carrie Steenwyk, and John Witvliet.¹ Along with brief commentary on the above picture, here's what they had to say as they observed the documents and art produced in and around fourth-century Jerusalem:

[Commenting on the picture:] Although this portrayal dates from the late third century and from a different place than Jerusalem, such portrayals can help one imagine what it would have been like forJerusalem's buildings to have been filled with worshipers. Envision, for example, hundreds with hands upraised, gathered around the tomb of Christ.²

Early Christian nun Egeria, from her diary, wrote this in describing a portion of a worship service in fourth-century Jerusalem, as the people traveled from site to site surrounding the story of Jesus' death:

When everyone arrives at Gethsemane, they have an appropriate prayer,  hymn, and then a reading from the Gospel about the Lord's arrest.  By the time it has been read, everyone is groaning and lamenting and weeping so loud that people even across in the city can probably hear it all.³

Here's the sidebar comment by the authors:

The loudness of the people's reaction to the acount of Jesus' arrest is another reminder of how demonstrative late patristic worship could be. Congregations were not quiet and passive at this time.⁴

The authors summarize Jerusalem worship in the fourth century in this way:

Jerusalem worshipers were moved emotionally by their worship, mirrored by how they moved outwardly in its rhythms of time and space. Egeria depicted how deeply people's affections could be touched in worship, thereby dispelling any notion we might have that the early church's worship was staid and stuffy because it involved a great deal of ceremony. Egeria drew a picture of worship in which people wept, shouted, called back to the preacher, and applauded with delight.⁵

And here we see that more formalized and ceremony-oriented worship doesn't necessarily have to be "staid and stuffy."  Our doxological ancestors gave us a different picture.  It seems, then, if we want to talk about getting back to the worship of the early church, we need to be careful about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  With traditionalists and formalists, we can prize "ceremony," liturgy, and even high levels of structure and content in our worship.  With modern worship, we can appreciate and incorporate the fullness of physical and emotional expressiveness.  It doesn't seem that, from a biblical and historical perspective, either needs to be encouraged to the exclusion of the other.  

So we would do well to celebrate and incorporate the ideals of early Christian worship, even as we find new ways of expressing our ancient Christian doxology.

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¹ Lester Ruth, Carrie Steenwyk, and John Witvliet, Walking Where Jesus Walked: Worship in Fourth-Century Jerusalem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).
² Ibid., 31.
³ Ibid., 54.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid., 28.

The Right and Wrong Kind of Ancient Future Worship

As Holy Week rolls around every year, our worship senses are heightened toward tradition.  Evangelical churches who once adopted a more "low church" model for worship are returning to the value of worship expressions which typically have characterized "high church" environments--Holy Week noon-day services, celebrations of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, Saturday vigils, etc.  Ancient future worship--blending old forms with creatively new expressions--is something many churches are now seeking, perhaps in reaction to the hyper-now-ness and contemporaneity of the of worship models being held up in the 1980s and 1990s.

But there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it.  Fifty years ago, theologian Jean-Jacques von Allmen parsed ancient future worship quite well:

When we perform Christian worship, we are part of the Church of all places and all times, and this community binds us.  To respect liturgical tradition implies...a feeling of gratitude for what God has taught the Church in the past, for the way in which He has inspired and guided it. That is why there exist in Christian worship and its unfolding certain classical forms which have...such a theological and anthropological plenitude, are of such monumental liturgical importance, that the Church never exhausts their vitality, never wears them out, in spite of constant use. They are transmitted and occur from cult [another word for "worship"] to cult, not so much out of filial piety or lack of imagination, but because to abandon them would not be a liberation but a loss.  For [most] Protestants this is something far more difficult to understand than it is for Anglicans, Roman Catholics or, especially, Greek Orthodox.1

So, on the one hand, a proper appropriation of "ancient" in ancient future worship is to seek out those lasting traditions and expressions that have "a theological and anthropological plenitude"--a potency that seems so fitting that it's hard to imagine improving upon them.  Such potent traditions include the call to worship, confession, and the benediction, to name a few.  (Bryan Chapell's Christ-Centered Worship is a great resource to sniff out potent traditions.  See my review and summary.) 

Von Allmen goes on:

If a fine doxology of Christian antiquity is golden, it is a gold coin rather than a gold chain.  That is to say, that respect for the traditions of worship does not fetter liturgical expression, but on the contrary, enables us to repeat today in a new way what the Fathers said when they assembled to celebrate the mystery of Christian salvation. It is not a question of saying or doing something different; it is a question of not being bound to what is obsolete. Although it is legitimate to have in one's worship some ancient items (just as one has an antique armchair among one's furniture) the cult is not a museum, and if it facilitates access to another world, it is not to a world that has gone by for ever, but to a world that is to come.2

This is a golden nugget of advice for rightly dividing ancient future worship.  Bad ancient future worship has the feeling of a kind of "worship museum," where we're all gathered around to stare at some beautiful old liturgical artifacts.  Engaging in that kind of ancient future worship has folks coming away saying, "Wow, that was very thought-provoking," or, "Wow, I learned a lot about [x] in that service!"  It's always wonderful to provoke thoughts and to educate people about church history, but that simply isn't the goal of Christian worship.  The goal is to encounter the living God with the people of God.  So, utilizing "ancient artifacts" in worship is only as good as they accomplish those ends.  

Von Allmen gives us another helpful tool to find whether or not our incorporation of the ancient has been effective.  Ironically, good ancient elements will end up propelling us forward, not backward.  A good element of worship will point us to the coming kingdom just as much as it pointed back to a previous era of worship.  The Lord's Supper is the pinnacle example of this reality.  If, in our Communion, as we remember Christ's death, we are not propelled forward to long for that future Feast with our Risen King, then we've lost something.  Every good element of worship has an echo of this quality.  By the way, this is why "ancient future" is a better term than ancient modern, because "modern" only implies the present, which is something on which our culture is way too fixated, anyway.  

The "Gloria Patri" is an example of an ancient element that is loaded with futuristic inertia.  In it, we sing:

Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son,
And to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning,
Is now, and ever shall be:
World without end. 

Look at it.  Trinitarian.  Historic ("as it was in the beginning").  Relevant ("is now").  Future-looking, kingdom-oriented ("...and ever shall be: World without end").  I would love to see more local worship leaders and songwriters incorporate this short song into their worship.  Maybe it's time some of them set this gem to new music that fits their local cultural and church context.  We have done that, ourselves.  We've sung it as a stand-alone song, and we've incorporated it into our new setting of the ancient song, "O Splendor of God's Glory Bright" on our album, Without Our Aid.  

(If you want to see a great compendium of ancient future worship music, check out Cardiphonia's post for a lot of helpful resources.)

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¹ Jean-Jacques von Allmen, Worship: Its Theology and Practice (New York: Oxford, 1965), 97.
² Ibid., 97-98.

Famous Modern Worship Leader Seeks PhD in Theology

Critics who paint modern worship as being thoughtless, a-theological, and mind-numbing are having to come to grips with an increasingly large canvas.  Their broad-brush strokes aren’t so broad, anymore.  Modern worship is diversifying its portfolio.  Could we ever have imagined ten years ago that a major touring modern worship artist would pursue theological education at the doctoral level?  No, Chris Tomlin isn’t headed to Harvard.

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Our Worship is a Measurement of What God is Worth to Us

Both the content of and effort in our worship say something about what God is worth to us. Often we don't realize that even mundane decisions we make about worship speak to how we view God's worth.  We evangelicals are often accused of being pragmatic in our decision-making when it comes to worship--and for good reason.  We have a long history of making decisions based on pragmatics like "what will get the most people in the door," or "what's most convenient for guests."  Certainly these aren't all bad considerations, but we do need to ask important questions about where such considerations fit within the hierarchy of our priorities for worship.  

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What’s STILL Great About the Organ? A Guitarist’s Perspective

I serve in a worship environment that some might consider akin to “the wolf lying down with the lamb.”  I share office space with a world-class opera singer and one of the finest organists in the Denver Metro region.  Many Sundays, I crank up my Gibson ES-339 in a reverberant sanctuary alongside a drum enclosure which shares visual and symbolic space with a huge, expensive Wicks pipe organ.  I am an ever-growing, ever-learning rock musician with a modest but effective bachelor-level classical music education.  And I love pipe organ music, especially when accompanying congregational hymns.

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Why Architecture Matters: Our Quest to Unify Organ and Drums for the Sake of the Gospel

Philosopher and liturgical theologian, Nicholas Wolterstorff, recently reminded listeners at the “Liturgy, Music, and Space” Conference hosted by Bifrost Arts this past spring that the architecture around and in your worship space makes theological statements whether you like it or not.  For instance, a tall, raised platform at the front the sanctuary with the Communion table positioned in the very back can make the theological statement that the Lord’s Table is so holy that its access must be limited and guarded.  Or, think of a worship space in which the seating is arranged in a circle or semicircle around the leaders in worship in the middle.  This can make a statement about the unity of the people of God in worship and the tearing down of sharp divisions between the congregation and the worship leaders.  Or, think about the warehouse with a huge stage and lighting structure.  It says, “we’re here to perform for you…sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.”  Architecture tells the story of your theology of and priorities in worship.  I want to share with you how we’ve chosen to let some recent changes to our sanctuary’s architecture inform our theology of worship. 

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The Similarities Between Baroque and Rock Music

History is one of elitism’s greatest enemies.  The more I study history, and particularly that of music, the more I realize that there is nothing new under the sun. 

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A Documentary Every Modern Worship Leader Should See

In days of old, church music leaders studied in seminaries and colleges, receiving degrees like Master of Church Music (MCM) and Master of Sacred Music (MSM).  Part of their curriculum was a thorough study of music history, with particular attention to the history of the music which shaped their field of traditional church music.

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