J. I. Packer on Worship Styles
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
Between Two Worlds is running a great quote by J. I. Packer that I think bears consideration. James Innell Packer serves as the Board of Governors’ Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He’s an executive editor of Christianity Today and served as general editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible. In a resent issue of Modern Reformation magazine Packer comments on the “niche” marketing approach that is creating a generational divide in many churches today:
“We have separated the ages, very much to the loss of each age. In the New Testament, the Christian church is an all-age community, and in real life the experience of the family to look no further should convince us that the interaction of the ages is enriching. The principle is that generations should be mixed up in the church for the glory of God. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t disciple groups of people of the same age or the same sex separately from time to time. That’s a good thing to do. But for the most part, the right thing is the mixed community in which everybody is making the effort to understand and empathize with all the other people in the other age groups. Make the effort is the key phrase here. Older people tend not to make the effort to understand younger people, and younger people are actually encouraged not to make the effort to understand older people. That’s a loss of a crucial Christian value in my judgment.”
This is an interesting concept when you think about it. We’ve gotten so accustomed to viewing church ministry from an age appropriate model or from the perspective of targeted demographics that the idea of “mixed community” is virtually foreign. Now Packer doesn’t completely reject specialized discipleship ministry, but the important issue here seems to be unity – bringing the body of Christ together as one. Packer goes on to describe one area that contributes greatly to this atmosphere of separation:
“If worship styles are so fixed that what’s being offered fits the expectations, the hopes, even the prejudices, of any one of these groups as opposed to the others, I don’t believe the worship style glorifies God, and some change, some reformation, some adjustment, and some enlargement of spiritual vision is really called for.”
Put simply, blended worship promotes community in the church. It brings the body of Christ together in “one accord” and “one mind” by looking out not only for our own interests, “but also for the interests of others.” In that way blended worship becomes so much more than just a transition to contemporary worship; it becomes more than just the means by which we bring our older church members out of traditionalism into a more contemporary style. It becomes a very Philippians chapter 2 approach to the way we do church ministry…by serving one another selflessly.
