Consistency in Worship

Culture is cyclical. It's reactionary. We get bored or unimpressed with what a previous generation does so we set off in a different direction that really isn't so different from what people another generation removed believed, thought or did. Within the context of contemporary worship, I think that we'll see unexpected changes in principles, values and perhaps even style in the coming years.

One such principle is consistency. Throughout the 90s and maybe even into this century, being fresh, unique and unpredictable were important things for worship leaders, teaching pastors and the like. Consequently, consistency meant boring, stale and predictable. But I find inconsistency very unsettling. I find it inauthentic and pretentious.

I don't believe that every week should be a mirror image, but I do believe that each week should carry similarities. Otherwise, how do you create and cast a vision? How do you build a core of people that will carry that vision out? How do you grow a congregation when you start from scratch every week?

Here are some thoughts on the topic from the great author and Christian thinker, C. S. Lewis...

I think our business as laymen is to take what we are given and make the best of it. And I think we should find this a great deal easier if what we were given was always and everywhere the same.

To judge from their practice, very few Anglican clergymen take this view. It looks as if they believed people can be lured to go to church be incessant brightenings, lightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications, and complications of the service. And it is probably true that a new, keen vicar will usually be able to form within his parish a minority who are in favour of his innovations. The majority, I believe, never are. Those who remain - many give up churchgoing altogether - merely endure.

Is this simply because the majority are hide-bound? I think not. They have a good reason for their conservatism. Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they don't go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or, if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best - if you like, it "works" best - when, through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don't notice... The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshiping. The important question about the Grail was "for what does it serve?" "Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the God."

A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question "What on earth is he up to now?" will intrude. It lays one's devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks."

Thys my whole liturgiological position really boils down to an entreaty for permanence and uniformity. I can make do with almost any kind of service whatever, if only it will stay put. But if each form is snatched away just when I am beginning to feel at home in it, then I can never make any progress in the art of worship.

-- from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

So, what do you think?