The past 2 days I got 2 books in the mail which are new releases of books I wrote chapters for.
The first one is Apologetics For A New Generation. I am someone who strongly feels apologetics is very needed today but how we use them is changing and important to pay attention to. My chapter is about the need for apologetics to not be used on strangers without building relationship and trust first. And also that apologetics are not to simply for for the already Christians who have interest in apologetics. Sean McDowell is the editor for this book and I have really enjoyed getting to know Sean over the past couple of years. I haven't read the other chapters yet, but look forward to reading the whole book now that I just got a copy.
The second one is Perspectives on Christian Worship. It is a book where you write a chapter and then the other authors interact with what they agree or disagree with. Ligon Duncan, Mark Dever, Dan Wilt are some of the other perspectives. So it was an interesting experience writing it. The weird part about this book is that I wrote the chapter about 4 years ago. It took that long for this book to come out after writing your part. As I was scanning through it today and what I wrote, we were still in our first year of the church plant and I hadn't started the Doctor of Ministry degree yet as I mention that in my chapter.
We all defined worship as more than just the meeting and that it is a lifestyle. But most of the book was about what happens when the church gathers to worship. The "emerging" perspective I wrote about was stating that as long as we do not compromise Scripture and that we do include elements that the Bible prescribes for when the church gathers (Scripture teaching, prayer, Lord's Supper etc.), that we have a lot of freedom of how we worship. My primary theme was that there are many perspectives of worship that are equally valid. The church can be worshiping God in a myriad of ways that are honoring and glorify God - although they may look very different from one another.
We each wrote responses to the other author's chapters as part of the book too. My challenges that I wrote were mainly in response to the chapters which were quite strong on stressing that we should not allow culture to conform what we do in worship gatherings. We didn't argue or disagree theologically in terms of core doctrines or how we even defined what worship is - but the issues were really more about worship practices.I stressed in response to their criticism about culture and style, that in their very own worship gatherings much of what they do was influenced and shaped not by Scripture but by the specific culture of the time period the practices developed. Such as the style of music they use and instruments used. The dress code or garbs of the pastors. Having a "pulpit" to stand behind, all these things developed not from the New Testament church or seen in Scripture - but developed from a specific culture and time period. Even the furniture and aesthetics of the room the meet in has cultural origins and communicates something.
Whether we realize it or not, we do project a "style" of some sort in our worship gathering (which was something some of the other authors argued against). I do get a little passionate when someone says "this is how you are supposed to worship and it is the biblical way" when I think we can equate the "biblical way" with "my own denomination's way" or "my personal preference or what I am used to way" or "the tradition I come from way which is 500 years old but we shouldn't change it way". I am not against tradition as there is such beauty in some tradition. But my redundant challenge is asking if we are honest, how much is actually cultural in origin vs. Scriptural and is there not freedom in worship provided we are not compromising what the Scriptures do actually say about it? Do we guard tradition even at the cost of mission? If we say we are traditional, what "tradition" is the right tradition or why do we not go back to the New Testament home church practise and the Lord's Supper served as part of a meal if we really want to be "traditional"?
Although this was a perspectives book, I did also write how it didn't include hip hop worship, traditional African-American styled worship or the many other perspectives there are out there. I did learn quite a bit from the other authors in this process about their forms and history of worship. I do wish the church (and myself) would move beyond getting so caught up arguing or defending tradition or even new worship approaches and focus more on evangelism and mission (provided the Scriptures are not compromised in anything we do). While we discuss and debate worship approaches styles for the already Christian (often with great passion), the world around us is in desperate need of Jesus.
