The views expressed in this article are of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
Reaching Out without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for This Urgent Time
Marva J. Dawn
Eerdmans (1995). 316 pp.
Although a tad dated, there is little in this book that is not relevant for the church in the West today. In line with works like Os Guinness’ Dining With the Devil (1993), Dawn describes many of the profound changes brought into the world by the technological revolution (along with the Boomer generation’s emphasis on authentic “experience” and Postmodernity’s emphases on subjective and relativistic epistemologies) before showing how these changes have seriously—and, in many instances, deleteriously—impacted the church.
If progress is essentially defined by the technological revolution as bigger, faster, stronger, more efficient, more entertaining, and if the church has uncritically adopted this technological zeitgeist, then this well explains why so many of our churches have embraced marketing strategies (where we try, for example, to jazz up our worship services to be more entertaining and/or do things like publicize upcoming sermons series) aimed at making churches bigger quicker by appealing to congregants desires for instant gratification and treating them first and foremost as consumers. Although Dawn grants the pure motives that frequently accompany pastor’s and worship leaders’ embrace of these strategies (we want to be relevant, keep congregants, and win converts!), she pointedly demonstrates how these same strategies can – and, in many instances, have – subtly eclipsed the church’s assignment to praise God and nurture Christian character. Services designed to entertain or elicit emotional responses or provide instantaneous affects ‘militate against the formation of Christian character’ (p. 9) while placing the ‘I’ instead of the Transcendent ‘Other’ at the centre of (what we now, showing our hand, call) our worship ‘experiences’.
Dawn writes to combat this situation. She has four goals: “to reflect upon culture for which we want to proclaim the gospel; to expose the subtle powers that beckon us into idolatries and that upset the necessary dialectical balances in the Church’s life and worship; to stimulate better questions about if, why, and how we might be dumbing faith down in the ways we structure, plan, and participate in worship education and in worship itself; and to offer better means for reaching out to people outside the Church” (p. 11). In order to achieve these goals, Dawn describes and critiques the “Culture Surrounding Our Worship” (Chapters 2–4), the “Culture of [Our] Worship” (Chapters 5–7), the “Culture in Our Worship” (Chapters 8–10), and how our worship is to be “For the Sake of the Culture”. A plethora of topics, including types of music, preaching, the use of historic confessions, the importance of memory, iconography and more are touched on meaningfully and practically. Dawn’s central conviction throughout the work is that “we ought not to, and do not need to conform to our culture’s patterns, but that the Christian community must intentionally sustain its unique character and just as intentionally care about the culture around it in order to be able to introduce people genuinely to Christ and to nurture individuals to live faithfully” (p. 11).
Interacting throughout the work with a multiplicity of insightful and seminal works, such as Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) and Christopher Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism (1979), Dawn’s book is exceptionally well researched and written. Her observations are both penetrating and hard-hitting. In the present reviewer’s opinion, Dawn worries about all the right stuff as it touches on our communal worship practices: the elevation of the individual over the community; the centralization of the consumer over the Lord; the psychologizing of the Gospel into therapy; the loss of a proclamation in word, song, and ritual of a story taken to be objectively true instead of merely a way of subjectively enhancing one’s own life; finding a balance between old and new; and the like.
If a critique must be offered of this work, one might quibble with the subtitle, “A Theology of Worship for This Urgent Time.” Although theologically grounded throughout, the work does not offer a systematic or biblical-theological exposition of the topic of worship in interaction with the biblical text. Instead, incisive cultural commentary is brought to bear on the practice of Christian worship at every turn. This is the book’s shining strength. In light of this, perhaps a more accurate subtitle would have been something like: “A Reflection and Call to Deep and Transformative Worship in a Superficial Age,” or maybe, “A Critical Appraisal of Worship in This Urgent Time.”
Whatever one makes of this critique, Dawn’s book will doubtlessly resonate with pastors and theologians alike who yearn for a prophetic critique of what has happened in many of our worship spaces, and what should happen as we seek to keep God as the Subject and Object of our worship, and as we seek to grow in faithfulness to Jesus not as isolated individuals but as communities of disciples. This book is most highly commended.
Ed Gerber (PhD, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David) currently serves as the University Chaplain & Director of Campus Ministries at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia. Before that, he served churches as an ordained minister in Washington State, Iowa, New York, and Langley. Ed is a member of the St. Peter Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
