We are continuing our look at the book by Bill Easum - Unfreezing Moves - Following Jesus into the mission field

The other posts in the series can be found here

Unfreezing move #3- Indigenous Worship

Easum notes that we are in a hinge moment of history and that:

Throughout the past one hundred years of Protestant history, worship has consisted of two styles, those with order and those with less order; and three basic theologies, liberal, conservative and fundamentalist (p95).

He believes that Church culture has also changed and that

“The issue today is not contemporary or traditional, liberal or conservative. The issue today is whether or not our worship celebrates the incarnational act of God in Jesus Christ in such a way that people are transformed” (p96)

The intent of this unfreezing move is to connect with Christians and also people who are unconnected to Jesus (interesting phrasing!). Easum suggests that to do this you should either change your existing worship service or plant an additional worship service. He makes the point that this is the most productive unfreezing move as it can often have the impact of growing the Church quickly. I would temper this by suggesting that this may be the most visible result but not necessarily the most productive.

Easum sees six characteristics of indigenous worship:

1) an emphasis from choral music to visualisation,
2) Surround sound has replaced the pipe organ,
3) an increased emphasis on “screen worship” through technology,
4) participation and interaction become critical,
5) worship has music that transforms,
6) moves people from contentment to ecstasy. (pp 97-98).

I find Easum trapped at this point, in a paradigm of worship that seeks to define worship narrowly around the use of music. It is also interesting to see that Easum has not included the place of worship in his six characteristics. Surely, the increasing move to reclaim spaces outside the traditional chapel should be listed. Spaces such as cafes, homes, and other community spaces are increasingly used.

He uses an illustration that shows me that Easum is trapped within a narrow paradigm of worship:

When I talk about indigenous worship, people in stuck congregations usually respond with the excuse that the cost of such media is too high for them to consider. I respond by asking them question “do you have a pipe organ in you church?”. The vast majority of dying congregations will answer afirmatively. Then I respond, “What I am talking about will cost much less than a pipe organ. It’s just a matter of priorities”. Most stuck congregations wish to remain stuck” (pp98-99).

While I agree that the issue is a matter of priorities, I also believe that the focus on entertainment style modern music is largely missing the point of vital indigenous worship. Vital indigenous worship incarnates itself into the language, culture and spaces of the local community. For some cultures music will be one factor but indignous worship needs to be so much more than that. Churches that can not see the priority in purchasing a new media system may not be stuck but rather need to look to releasing time and energy in other directions. The more we set the expectation that Churches require worship that is along the lines of Willow Creek and Hillsongs, we increasingly set Churches up for failure or even worse freeze them before they begin in a state of despair as they know they don’t have the resources (musicians and money) to move in this direction.

The change in worship emphasis is described by Easum by this diagram.

 (diagram on p100)

This entry was posted on Friday, March 31st, 2006 at 11:26 am by phil and is filed under Unfreezing Moves. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.