Harold Best makes an argument for traditional, hymn-based worship and he does so on unexpected grounds: the actual, physical hymnbook itself, as opposed to the hymns in the hymnbook.

I want to avoid definitional quandaries concerning what a hymn is, compared to, say, a gospel song, or a spiritual or a chant or a chorus. This would take too much time and offer very little to the core of the issue. Therefore I shall extend the idea of hymn-based worship to everything contained in hymnbooks, for it is the book part that interests me far more than typological definitions of “hymn.”

Best sets himself up for unnecessary arguments by making such a statement. By arguing for hymn-based worship that isn’t necessarily tied to a specific book, he could have argued that there is a rich tradition of sound doctrine and teaching in Christian hymnody. And he would be right. By tying his argument to a book, however, whole new problems arise. Which hymnal? The Broadman Hymnal of the 1950s? The Baptist Hymnal? 1975 or 1991? The Worshiping Church? The Celebration Hymnal?

Not all hymnals are created equal. Some have better or worse theology than others. Some are more or less diverse than others. Some go to drastic lengths in order to create a gender-neutral Godhead. At the very least, each hymnal, whether published by a particular denomination or by a publishing house, has its strengths and weaknesses. If one is bound to a particular hymnal, he will be less likely (my opinion) to try to compensate for those weakness. So I would have been much more comfortable with a hymnody-in-general argument rather than a hymnal-based argument.

Best later points out that “the best hymnbooks are treasure troves of theology, prayer, Scripture, song, hymnic information, stylistic variety, and liturgical opportunity.” Yes, the best ones are. But, I’ve never seen a hymnal that meets all of these characteristics. In fact, I doubt one exists.

Now, having played the devil’s advocate so far, let me suggest that Best’s intent is right on target. Christian hymnody is absolutely a rich source of theology and spiritual support and growth. Little apart from the Bible can be used so widely for devotional purposes as hymnals can. And I have encouraged the choirs and churches I have led in worship to use them for such purposes. A hymnal is a volume of systematic theology, parsing into sections doctrine about God, the life of Christ, missiology, etc. But there is more to consider than that.

My concern over a hymn-based approach to worship is not in the use of hymns. Hymns should play a vital role in our corporate worship gatherings. If we were to limit our worship practices to the use of hymnals, however, we would miss a whole world of God-glorifying, Christ-exalting creativity. Why not use a centuries old hymn that for some reason or another didn’t make it into your church’s hymnal? No doubt our hymnals contain some weak hymns at the exclusion of much stronger ones. Or why not seek out music by composers and authors still living? Investigate new music (and old music!!!) thoroughly to make sure it is biblically solid and fruitful for use and use it to the glory of God. “Some of the new music isn’t worthy of singing,” you might say. You’re very right; but a lot of hymns aren’t worth singing, either. We just sing them because we’ve always sung them. And that reason isn’t good enough.

Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,

The more I learn and grow, the more I am convinced that nuance is incredibly difficult to grasp but incredibly important. I have said often that God created us to live in a love relationship with Him. Whether I said it in the form of, “We were created to worship,” or not, that’s what I meant. That’s what I believed. We were created to worship.

Of course, we were created to live in a love relationship with God. That’s a given (isn’t it?). But does it necessarily follow that we were created to worship? Or is worship the outward manifestation of the relationship for which we were created?

I mentioned in my last post that Harold Best delivered a blow to my thinking. Here is a quote from his chapter in Exploring the Worship Spectrum that I’ve been mulling over since I read it:

We were not created to worship—this suggests that God is a being who needs that kind of attention. Rather, we were created worshiping—already at worship, already outpouring to the eternally continuous Outpourer, God himself, who, even before he breathed his image into our dust, was eternally pouring himself out to his triune self: Father to Son to Spirit, in unending bliss and love-riddled conversation;
     who pours himself out in the endless wealth of his creatorhood;
     who poured himself out in creating a race imago Dei;
     who pours himself out in self-revelation;
     who poured himself out in the atoning and reconciling work of his Son; and
     who continues to pour himself out through the work of the Spirit and the Son in bringing the church closer to the stature and fullness of the Christ.

We fell. But we did not stop our worship and our outpouring. Rather, we exchanged gods and continued our worship.

The implications of the idea that we were not created to worship but we were created worshiping are not altogether different. In both, we will worship something. The wild card is what or who we worship. Pre-fall, our worship was directed toward God, as it should have been. Post-fall and pre-redemption, we replace God with other things and, perhaps, other people. Or ideas. Or feelings. Or . . . Post-redemption, God is we restore God to his proper place of authority and dominion and worth. Yet, the focus of our entire reason for being is dramatically altered by how one views this idea.

Is this a matter of important nuance or is this a matter of insignificant semantics?

Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,

When, in his response to Harold Best’s essay on traditional hymn-based worship in Exploring the Worship Spectrum, Paul Zahl wrote, “Harold Best’s treatment of ‘Hymn-Based Worship’ approaches being a masterpiece,” he wasn’t wrong. The opening pages of this chapter offer brilliant guidance that transcends any discussion on the style of music we include in our corporate gatherings. So, I want to respond in three parts. The first part (this post) will highlight some of the key theological/philosophical concepts Best discusses and the second will deal with a concept I have espoused many times in my teaching, and I believe I may have been wrong (how’s that for a teaser?). The third post will cover specifically his argument for hymn-based worship.

The Real Worship War

I live in Charleston, South Carolina. Had I been serving my church then (yes, the church was around at the time), I literally could have taken a five minute walk east to the wharf and watched the first battle of the Civil War. The war began with a shot across Fort Sumter; it wasn’t intended to hit. It was simply a warning. Harold Best takes a shot early in his chapter at what has been called “the worship wars.” But he doesn’t intend this to be a warning shot and he doesn’t miss.

We are not in a worship war. Well, yes we are, but not the one some commentators like to refer to. There is only one worship war, and it is between God and Satan, each the supreme object of someone’s worship, either redeemed or lost. We are self-absorbed when we use the “war” word as a working term for the petty and overly self-indulgent skirmishes that we enter, almost always over transient, not eternal, things.

I have used the phrase “worship war” many times, almost without thinking about it. But Best cuts through the bog and calls it what it is: an argument over preferences. Our preferences may be valid, well-constructed ones with ample biblical support, but they’re still preferences and we would do well to remember that.

Breaking from Tradition

Best also questions the validity of forming preferences around and for the purpose of departure from tradition.

Any tradition, including the so-called contemporary worship tradition, is obligated to join with the same question that the church has faced for centuries: What do we do next, and with what degree of resistance will nextness be met?

He isn’t attacking contemporary worship here; rather, he’s pointing out that even the inventions that are intended to break from tradition eventually become traditions themselves. “In fact, there is already ample evidence to suggest that ‘contemporary worship’ has settled into recognizable predictability after only twenty or thirty years of existence on the North American scene.”

There is much more worthy of your time in this chapter, but I’ve already broken all the rules when it comes to brevity in blogging. Let me suggest that you pick up a copy of the book. Although Best’s chapter is alone worth the cost, the interplay between six varying types of worship will be time well spent. There’s one more topic I want to discuss in addition to Best’s proposal for hymn-based worship, and that has to do with why we were created. And this is the 2-by-4 I referenced earlier.

Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,