Reflections on Worship

I am probably something of a grumpy old priest – but I find much ‘informal’ worship deeply unsatisfying and superficial. There was an “All-Age Service” at Freiburg on Sunday. I wasn’t much involved in it, and I am sure that the leaders had put a lot of time and preparation into it, and there were many who appreciated it. So I’m not making any specific comments or criticism about that particular service.

It’s the general principle and practice I want to think about. For a start, the notion that other, liturgical, forms of worship are not ‘all-age’ is very tendentious. Children and adults alike can enjoy and be involved in liturgical action and music, if it is done well and imaginatively. Many adults feel left out if a service is too much orientated towards children – but children often are left untouched by adult assumptions about what will involve them.

It often seems that freely structured acts of worship exhibit a lack of real direction or connectedness between the different parts. For example, at the beginning there may be a small number of children making comments about various items in a bag brought by the worship leader – but then these are put aside and ignored for the rest of the service, having contributed practically nothing to the overall theme.

And on analysis, it often emerges that the number of people – of all ages – actually involved in or engaged by the service is quite small. Most of the spoken material is specially composed and spoken by the leaders; and it often lacks beauty, cohesion – and theological clarity. It really is not easy to write good public prayers, and I have often struggled to join in public declamation of clumsily written phrases. Prayers which have survived the test of years of use can make some claim upon us, to inspire or challenge us.

Behind this whole approach to worship seems to be a notion that anyone can write prayers, and anybody can lead worship. It discounts the value – indeed the need – for training, experience and wisdom.  Which reminds me that someone - Maya Angelou, I think - once commented when told she was a ‘natural writer’, that that was like calling someone a ‘natural heart surgeon’. She was certainly far more gifted than most of us – but she also knew that good writing involves a lot of hard work, long hours of trying and failing, refining and learning. (As someone else said, creative art is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.)

In today’s Fresh Expressions of church, it sometimes seems that anything goes and anyone can do it. And so we are subjected to confessions and credal statements that veer between the banal and the actually heretical. We dishonour God by that – as indeed we do by the frequently low standard shown by those who read scripture or lead the intercessions (another bête noire of mine!)

As a result, people are not fed, and they are not drawn closer to God – which I believe to be the two main ingredients, from our point of view, in Christian worship. Its principal purpose, of course, is to glorify God, and some of our efforts are so half-hearted and half-baked that they also fail to do that. All poorly prepared and executed styles of worship are to be deplored –how we worship matters! But at least the overall balance of a liturgical office or sacramental celebration ensures some chance of contact with the Lord!

Perhaps in the end it is like jazz improvisation. When it is very good it can be inspiring, but when it is poorly executed it is superficial and falls far short of what can be communicated by a faithful performance of a written score.