Guest Commentary
Presbyterian worship:
Behold, old things made new
By Zac Hicks, Guest commentary, July 22, 2010
There is a movement afoot in worship, especially in Presbyterian circles but spreading across all denominations. We are witnessing a resurgence of interest in “old things” when it comes to the faith.
Some have said that the recent fascination with returning to ancient worship tools and practices is a reaction to the historical rootlessness of our postmodern age. Others have said that current interest in liturgy and old hymns by churches’ younger generations is a result of their reaction to the previous generation’s (the boomers) abandonment of almost anything traditional. The cause of this resurgence certainly is multi-faceted, and perhaps we can unpack what is going on as I share my story.
I grew up in a run-of-the-mill, broadly evangelical worship environment. As a youth, I watched our church awkwardly transition from traditional to contemporary. When I arrived at college in southern California in the late ‘90s, I was ripe for something different. I pursued a classical music degree and began attending my roommate’s church, Irvine Presbyterian, a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation. I fell in love with vibrant traditional worship, meaningful liturgy and glorious hymnody. The richness of each Sunday slowly delivered me from a small, self-focused view of God and worship. I fell in love with “old things.”
Fast-forward a decade to the present, where I am finding myself, along with a host of other pastors and worship leaders, in the middle of a retro-renaissance where churches big and small, young and old, are using phrases like “ancient-future” to describe where they want their worship-expression to be.
As associate pastor of worship and liturgy at Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Englewood, Colo., I too am seeing the fruit of the convergence of old and new in our worship services.
For instance, our rock band regularly leads an opening song just after our call to worship, full of energy and electrified vitality, while two white-robed young people process the Bible down the center aisle and light the candles. We also regularly engage in a twist on what many churches call “Prayers of the People,” where a pastor prays in paragraph-length sections with accompanied music underneath, occasionally swelling at key pausing points in the prayer where the congregation sings, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.” Our modern worship service may feel more contemporary in the sense that we often sing sets of songs, accompanied by drums, keys and electric guitars, but its flow is liturgically-oriented.
We often begin with a song of gathering, then move into a song of confession, followed by a song of assurance of pardon or occasionally a modern version of the “Gloria Patri.” Furthermore, we have printed orders of worship that list those songs each under their own heading (see a sample: www.zachicks.com/oow).
The centerpiece of this return to the ancient, though, is in hymnody. In the early 2000s out of a Reformed college fellowship in Nashville came Indelible Grace, a group of emerging artists like Sandra McCracken, Matthew Smith, Andrew Osenga and Jeremy Casella who are setting old hymns to new music, singing afresh the Gospel-saturated words of English and American Puritans from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Others like Red Mountain Church (Birmingham, Ala.), the Sovereign Grace movement (an affiliation of charismatic churches of a Calvinistic bent), and myself have jumped on this bandwagon as it continues to grow in influence. We are finding it a healthy way for contemporary churches to grab onto old hymns within the context of their musical vernacular. We are also giving a new face to contemporary worship, which is a bit more palatable to defenders of traditional worship who feel that modern worship lacks Christ-centeredness, Biblical depth, and theological integrity.
You can read more about this hymns movement at: www.zachicks.com/the-hymns-movement.
Ultimately, we are observing the emergence of a different kind of “blended” worship. It is not the sometimes jarring juxtaposition of organ-led hymns and praise team-led choruses. It is perhaps the more natural outflow of what it means to express historic tradition through the worship-language of the present day. Such an expression is finding more and more open doors across the country.
Zac Hicks is associate pastor of worship and liturgy at Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Englewood, Colo.