Interview with Reggie Kidd on Worship 11.17.05

I (Glenn) read pre-publication material from Reggie Kidd's new book, With One Voice, and I realized that I wanted to ask Reggie many questions about worship.  Full disclosure: Reggie was one of my New Testament professors at RTS-Orlando, I also took his class on Worship, and he was the director of the RTS Chapels. 

Reggie's book spawned so many questions for me that we're going to do this as a regular feature.  This is the first installment.
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GL: You're a professor of New Testament, you particularly work in the
Pauline epistles, you're a husband, you're a father of baseball players and
karate kids.  So...why did you write a book about worship?

RK: For some reason, I started leading singing as soon as I became a
Christian. It's weird. I don't play guitar that well. I don't sing that well
either. It's just been one of those "God's strength in my weakness" things,
I guess. At any rate, after years of leading worship on the one hand, and
teaching Scripture and theology on the other, I realized we don't have much
of a theology of song, nor much of an appreciation of how much our singing
is a continuation of Jesus's story. So I thought I'd try to write it down.

GL: What do you mean when you say our singing is a continuation of Jesus’ story?

As Luke Timothy Johnson (one of my favorite NT theologians) says of Jesus, “It makes all the difference in the world whether a person is dead or alive. If Jesus is dead, his story is over. If he’s alive his story continues.” Christians’ premise is that Jesus rose from the dead to be a living presence in history and in our lives. The New Testament applies that premise metaphorically and literally.

Metaphorically, through the way the church takes the good news to the world, Christ “sings among the nations” (that’s the apostle Paul in Romans 15:9).

Literally, Christ sings the Father’s praises when the church gathers for worship … that’s the perspective of the writer to the Hebrews, who has Jesus saying, “I will declare Your (God’s) name to my brothers (and sisters). In the assembly, I will sing hymns to you” (Hebrews 2:12). Our singing on earth is an participation in his song from heaven.

That perspective puts praise at the center of everything for believers.

GL: And the centrality of praise for believers is probably why Christians in the US have been having a vigorous debate about worship for several decades. Because it is so central, a lot rides on worship. People who are concerned with the debate about worship are bringing both substantive thoughts and deep passions to the subject.

Can you spell out what is at stake for various camps or positions in the current debates about worship?

In the first place, everybody I know who cares about worship is anxious that their worship accurately reflect who God is. Where they differ is how they size up which aspects of God’s being ought to be stressed. That has to do partly with their reading of Scripture, partly with their own wiring and giftedness and “issues,” and partly with their take on the culture in which they live, whether it’s redeemable or irredeemable.

At one extreme, some believers read Scripture more with an eye to the holiness and “otherness” of God. They think the Bible’s story line is about “redemption and lift.” They think, therefore, that we should be doing worship that elevates. They think the culture of the modern world is broken beyond repair, and so they turn to older models of worship, models shaped when the church and the world didn’t live in such sharp tension.

At the opposite extreme, other believers read the Bible’s story line as one of God “stooping to conquer,” so to speak. They think the things to stress are the nearness and the mercy of God. In their estimation, we ought to do worship that connects God’s life with ours. In their understanding, today’s culture is neither more nor less godless than that of previous generations. So they feel perfectly free to draw on the common cultural currency of their day — its music, its art forms, its language — for their worship.

GL: You seem to be doing an end-run around ‘the worship wars’ and finding substance on both sides to affirm. But that makes a question come to mind: Is there anything related to worship that you’ve seen or heard of in the Church that you would rule out of order? Is there a perspective or a practice in a service that you would say, “I just can’t affirm that”? I guess I’m asking, do you have a sense of boundaries in terms of what is appropriate? If not, why not? If so, what are those boundaries?

It seems to me that the “what” of worship is really pretty narrow — the “how” is not.

In worship (that is, the Sunday part of it), I think we’re supposed to gather in the power of the Holy Spirit to celebrate who God is and what he’s done through Christ to reclaim his creation. We do so through prayer (unsung and sung), the Word, and the sacraments. That’s the “what” of worship. Anything that doesn’t contribute to those things is “out of order” — from recruiting for political parties (whether red-state or blue-state) to singing “Happy Birthday.”

The “how” of worship is pretty negotiable. Who says, for instance, extemporaneous prayers are superior to scripted prayers? or scripted to extemporaneous? Who says God delights in grown ups’ music more than teenagers’? or teenagers’ more than grown ups’? By His standards of musicality, I’m certain our most ambitious music is pretty juvenile, and our most exciting music is quite boring. In the “how” of worship, we need to be careful not to rule “out of bounds” a range of possibilities that’s as wide as the makeup of the Body of Christ.

GL: You say, “Anything that doesn’t contribute to those things is ‘out of order.’” Would you be able to clarify further about the use of video “man on the street interviews,” clips from films or TV shows.

Related, what is your view about terms and practices like “worship services” vis-à-vis “seeker services.” Is there a difference between a worship service and a seeker service?

If a video clip contributes to the “what” of worship (illustrating a teaching point, say, or providing a visual bridge during prayers), it’s perfectly fine as far as I’m concerned. If the meeting becomes an occasion just to view and discuss Saturday Night Live or Oprah or Meet the Press — that is, if the video becomes the “what,” it’s “out of order.” The point is staying on task as to what worship is about.

I think believers who do “seeker services” instead of “worship services” are offering worship in this sense: they are presenting their bodies as living sacrifices (as Paul put it in Romans 12:1-2) in the interest of fulfilling the mandate Jesus gave his followers for reaching a lost world. They are inconveniencing themselves in the interest of their lost neighbors. In a profound sense, that’s worship. I can only applaud it.

Personally, however, I’m persuaded that the “seeker” side of things is not supposed to be the primary thrust of the church’s normal gatherings (Sunday mornings, for most). God is the primary thrust — again, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we gather to celebrate what he’s done to redeem his creation through his Son. My hero, Ed Clowney, used to talk about “doxological evangelism.” When we adorn God’s name with praise that befits him, when that happens in the context of authentic community and is done by people who are obviously real, there is attractiveness enough for those with whom God is dealing.

[The next installment of this on-going interview with Reggie on worship matters will appear next month.]