Last week a very good friend and I met for dinner at a local grill in Frisco, TX. Not as a matter of this topic but I will say that if you live in the DFW area I highly recommend the Blue Mesa. During happy hour on weekdays they have a deal where if you pay for a drink they provide a wonderful cooked in front of you taco. For the drink and a tip you get all you can eat at a really nice restaurant. Sorry, that’s enough free publicity. This friend is one that had a hand in shaping the Christian I have become and was a large influence in my start in the world of worship music and worship leading. We have each witnessed the other growing in our spiritual walk with Christ and we have also seen the paths in our journeys move in different directions. Where I have become a modern style worship leader, obtained a Bible college degree, and seek to push the boundaries of worship. He has found the solace and beauty in the traditions that come with the Eastern Orthodox Church. Where I have been focused on the future, he focused on the past.
It never seems to fail that our conversation turns to the same topics. We always talk about the Church and the Bible. We have discussed countless times orthodoxy and its worship in contrast to the contemporary or post-modern church. During our conversation my friend made a comment that I found absolutely intriguing. Some in the emergent or post-modern church use the acronym E.P.I.C. to describe the aforementioned movement. This stands for Experiential, Participatory, Image rich, and Connected. The statement made was that the Orthodox Church is more post-modern than most P-M churches today. The EPIC acronym applies to the ancient church that he attends. Their services are very experiential, participatory driven, immensely image driven, and highly connected. The thing is he is correct and I find it wonderful that it can be that way. I have seen the same thing in Messianic services with the awe inspiring beauty that comes with the ancient tradition and the safety that comes with the foundation.
My thought process though led me to wonder something different though. Why can’t the church in general have both the ancient tradition and still be relevant to a post-modern world. Robert Webber, a worship writer, coined the term “Ancient-Future worship”. I love this idea of taking the foundational elements that come the the traditional worship and combine them with the modern influences that we use today. The older elements have a connecting power with all of those who came before us and allow us to participate in something more grand. Where the modern elements connect us to the world we live in and allow us to reach a world that does not always understand. I believe younger generations are searching to be attached to something, not something that is fleeting and fickle like current fads, but something that has centuries of tradition. In the same breath though they still need to be spoken to in a way that is understood. A good way to describe it would be in this way. I have recently fallen in love with the song “How Great Thou Art” although for years I hated singing it every Easter. The band Remedy Drive has a version of it that I came across and I have discovered how truly powerful that song can be. The words have not changed but the music has been updated to a more current style. I missed the power of the song because the music, for me, stopped speaking. Once the music spoke to me the words, which were always powerful, began to speak. I think worship can be used in a similar manner not that we totally fall into and become the world but that like Paul we can use the culture to our benefit and show them God where they may have been looking all along.