My wife and I managed to get married without receiving a blender as a wedding gift. I know I know, you’re shocked. Ultimately, we ended up buying a cheap one which we use very rarely. I mean really, how often do I need a mush of multiple ingredients? We use it for fruit smoothies on occasion, but that’s about it.

The thing about a blender is that what you pour out of it is only as tasty as what you put into it. A fruit smoothie is good because the flavors you’re putting into it are complimentary to each other. All the blender does is combine them.

Blending, in and of itself, doesn’t produce positive results. The results come from combining flavors that work well together.

“Blended worship” is a phrase which is often overused, especially in the Lutheran church. For a church that’s historically slow to change, blended worship sounds like a great idea. You take aspects of a contemporary service and aspects of a traditional service and combine them for a tasty frappuccino of worship goodness. It’s a compromise. Everybody wins, right? And, it means we don’t have to commit! We’re not contemporary, so we don’t scare off the traditionalists. We’re not traditional, so we should see droves of young people flocking to our services any day now.

Seriously! Any day now. Really, any moment. Just wait, they’re coming… No really, they are!

What happens if you take a banana, a handful of strawberries, and a jar of pickles, and blend them all together? All are fine on their own, but combining them might not produce appealing results. Worship is much the same. Worship music, song lyrics, dialog language, prayers, sermons… all can have various and unique flavors. Combining them in a way that encourages worship requires similar skill and instinct as that of the chef knowing what ingredients to combine and, more importantly, what ingredients not to combine.

Many churches seem to move to this blended approach because they’re trying to make everybody happy. The end result, at least from my experiences, is the exact opposite. Nobody is happy. The folks over at stuffchristianslike.net bring up this phenomenon in #424 of their list of stuff Christians like. The author hits the nail on the head when he mentions that both parties lose when you compromise. I sense more frustration in blended worship services than I do in worship services that seem to commit to a single consistent style and language.

To make matters worse, I’ve seen many Lutheran churches claim to have a contemporary service only to walk in and find a blended one. This seems to happen a lot as these churches try to transition from traditional to contemporary. Many of them create an additional service for the contemporary approach but a combination of factors might prevent it from reaching its full potential. It may be that they have worship service planners who still think traditionally. It may be that they have a mixed bag of attendees at the contemporary service and they feel the need to cater to all of them. It may be that they just don’t understand what “this contemporary thing” is all about.

Whatever the reason, I often see these services becoming a confusing mix of language, music, lyrics, and “vibe”. The best advice I can give is this:  commit. If you’re helping to plan a contemporary service, start fresh! Don’t just take your traditional service and add a few Hillsong tunes and call it a day. Don’t just take your traditional responsive readings and try to spice them up. Think creatively. Find other creative people in your church and get them involved. Take risks!

Don’t blend things that shouldn’t be blended. Some flavors are better on their own.

I only say this to establish this fact:  in terms of modern worship, Matt Maher is A Big Deal.

That being said, Matt Maher is also Catholic. I’ve always found this to be amazing. I’ve been leading groups with this song since its release and when I heard he was Catholic, I was somewhat amazed. Here’s a snippet of his lyrics:

Great is Your faithfulness O God of Jacob
You wrestle with the sinner’s restless heart
You lead me by still waters into mercy
Where nothing can keep us apart

So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise O God

For Your grace is enough
Yeah Your grace is enough
Yeah Your grace is enough
Yeah Your grace is enough for me

Now, his Catholic background amazes me for a couple of reasons. One, quite simply, is theology, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

The other is that he’s written a driving, pulsing, lively worship song that is embraced by churches across the denominational spectrum… and he’s done it all while being a part of a church steeped in age-old traditions and rituals… and organs. Such a dichotomy.

Maher is also interesting because he’s brilliant. Seriously, brilliant. A small group of conference attendees (perhaps a dozen of us were in the room) sat and listened to him talk for a couple of hours one day. I’m not sure I saw him breathe at all. The man has an amazing memory. Combine this with unique insight and wit and you’ve got someone that I can listen to for a while.

What was he talking about for 2 hours? Liturgy.

Completely off the cuff.

With no notes.

At all.

I thought the talk was going to be about meshing modern worship with traditional churches, at least that’s what I was hoping for. He never got to that topic (which he apologized for later). Instead, he walked us through the entire church calendar of the Catholic church, a calendar almost identical to that of the Lutheran church. And through this odd, lively Catholic, I found an appreciation for liturgy.

Maher addressed the fact that many “modern” churches are attempting to throw off “old” traditions in order to meet new generations where they are. His opinion seemed to be that while this approach may be successful in the short-term, these churches ultimately end up either bringing back some elements of these traditions later on or simply creating new ones that seem very similar to the old ones. He seemed to be saying that if you’re just going to come back to the same traditions you threw off, why throw them off to begin with?

He began to discuss the liturgical calendar of the church as an example of this, but I don’t think he ever got around to tying it back to his original point. Primarily because he was so clearly passionate about the liturgical calendar, that he distracted himself right out of the original topic of the discussion. And none of us seemed to mind…

Maher understood the liturgical calendar so well that he saw beauty in it. The liturgy follows the life of Christ from birth to ministry to death to resurrection and the descending of the Holy Spirit. It gives the church a way to ensure nothing gets missed, as the entire life of Christ is important to the walk of a Christian. Maher stepped through this calendar section by section, from memory, and with a passion that was contagious. Through him, I began to see the beauty in it as well.

While I can definitely see a beauty now in the liturgy, it still prompts some questions from me. The biggest question I have on this is:  how can the church ensure contextual relevance if it is locked into a set path through the scriptures? In non-liturgical churches, pastors discern the needs of the congregations in their care and select scriptures and teachings appropriate for those needs. But in a liturgical setting, the scriptures have already been selected. Wanna’ know what the sermon is for this week? It’s Mark 6:1-13. Wanna’ know next week’s? And the weeks after that? It’s all mapped out. We’ve got it all covered. Some Lutheran pastors, I’ve noticed, force themselves to “lock in” with the liturgical calendar and won’t stray from it. So while the church may have a need to hear a certain scripture or a certain topic addressed by the pastor, they may not be able to get it since the pre-selected scripture for that week has already been determined. Or worse still, a pastor may discern the need correctly and attempt to force the pre-selected scripture to fit an application that is out of place. These square-peg-round-hole sermons are immediately noticeable.

So while I see that a non-liturgical church can miss some important aspects in the scriptures as they strive to maintain contextual relevance, I also find that the occasional lack of contextual relevance in a liturgical church seems to be missing something. Is it possible to get the best of both worlds?

Old in the shadow of new.

So we’ve established (and I believe we can all agree) that the Lutheran church is old. So, what makes me so new?

For one, my age. I’m a 20-something, soon to be 30-something, meaning I fit into a demographic that is largely missing (forgotten? ignored?) in the Lutheran church. I can’t blame this entirely on the Lutheran church of course. 20-30 something males is a demographic largely missing in ALL churches, not just Lutheran ones. However, from personal experience (your mileage may vary), I’ve found that some other denominations (and yes I count “non-denominational” here) seem to do a better job of reaching out to my particular demographic. I’m sure at some point I’ll get into the “why?” of all this, but that’s beyond the scope of this particular post.

Another thing that makes me “new” is the time I’ve spent in Lutheran churches. I was raised in Southern Baptist churches and have only recently migrated to the Lutheran church for my wife. I say recently, but it’s been about 8 years now. So, I feel it’s long enough to have learned a few things about the church, and short enough to still consider myself “new”. One of the things I’ve found is that most Lutherans I encounter, especially in the south, were either born into it quite literally, or came over from a Catholic upbringing. In either case, most Lutherans seem very comfortable in the traditional Lutheran church environment because they’ve spent most of their lives either in the same environment or in one that feels very similar even if the theology differs.

Since I essentially defected from the Baptist church, I don’t feel “at home” in a traditional liturgical setting. I could barely spell liturgy until I joined the Lutheran church. The robes looked funny. The constant sitting down and standing up was tiring. Even the language seemed different. My Baptist church sang old hymns. My Lutheran church sang OLDER hymns. My Baptist church dunked. My Lutheran church sprinkled. My Baptist church had parent/baby dedications. My Lutheran church had confirmations. My Baptist church had a Bible. My Lutheran church had a BIGGER Bible… and a Lutheran Book of Worship… and a Catechism or two…

It all seemed pretty foreign to me. But hey… I’m new. I figured I’d get used to it, but I don’t know that I ever will.

The bottom line for me is that while I recognize that the message of Christ is timeless, the church should recognize that the delivery of this message may not be.

Let’s take hymns as an example. Hymns have been, and will continue to be, an important tool for churches to ensure that the church body is communally exalting Christ and proclaiming the word of God publicly. I get it. I understand the purpose of them. However, have you read a hymn lately? Especially an old hymn traditionally espoused by an old Lutheran church? The English language has changed so much over the years that quite frankly, the words of these hymns make very little sense to me now. Granted, I may just be too dumb to understand them, but even when I can understand them, they don’t feel like my words. They don’t feel like they come from me. Is this really what I want to say to God in song? The text in the Bible that I read is newer than most of the hymns that are sung in a traditional service in a Lutheran church. I remember hating hymns when I was a kid growing up Baptist and those hymns seem like rock songs compared to the ancient songs being sung in some Lutheran services I’ve attended. Beyond the lyrics not making much sense in the context of today’s society, the music makes very little sense. As a musician, I find the tone and the pacing of the music of most old hymns to be completely inappropriate for a worshipful mindset. Why would I sing a song of praise in a slow, march-like, minor key? This is the same sort of musical approach that the writers of a funeral dirge would take. Most of these songs are not timeless classics, they’re just plain old.

Even the buildings themselves and the trimming of the interiors seem to be begging people to be uncomfortable. You walk through a big red door and all of a sudden you enter another world filled with wood and stone and robes and strange colored stoles… oh yeah, and organs. I find myself distracted by all of this. I’m supposed to be focusing on God, or on my own need for grace, or on the sacrifice Christ made, and instead I can’t stop thinking about how weird it is that the pastor is wearing a funny little rope around his waist. I don’t think I’m alone here. I don’t think I’m just being insensitive. I’m sure that all of this tradition has a purpose. It’s just that instead of being symbolic for me, it’s a distraction from what I believe should be the central focus of worship on a Sunday morning (or any other time for that matter). Some may argue that it’s because I don’t understand the symbolism. Believe me, I do. I’m inquisitive by nature so when I don’t understand something I ask or read up on it. I understand the intended symbolism for much of what I’ve mentioned here. But understanding the intent of it doesn’t mean that it works for me.

Why does so much tradition get handed down through the life of the church? Why is it so slow to adopt new traditions, as long as they don’t compromise the message? It seems like the churches that are reaching my demographic are the ones that are sort of continually reforming themselves, stripping away the trapping and trimmings of tradition while trying to stay true to the message of Christ. What would Luther say to this? Would he have 95 theses for today’s church? Would he be out of line if he nailed them to the door of my own church?