Articles . Keith Drury . Volume 04 | Issue 02

Kinds of Worship Services

written by: Keith Drury

Your piece on 50’s-60’s worshippers was superb! However in most of your writing about worship styles you show strong bias toward change, the unchurched and the next generation. I fact all over the web I can find a ton of writing on emerging worship but very little on any other style. The net message from your writing and from most others is: Get with the program and start chasing the next generation’s whims in worship. Your writing on 50’s 60’s worshippers got me thinking about how we might seriously try to reach all generations instead of only the latest whims in worship styles. So my question is this: If we offered a broad range of worship formats to meet all the needs and preferences of today’s worshippers what would the list include–what type of worship formats should we consider? –Pastor

Interesting question. I will try to summarize the formats but first I must admit that you are right in charging me with bias toward change and the emerging generation. I get the first from my boomer blood and the second from my occupation. But you are wrong about a bias toward gearing worship for the unchurched–I think seeker worship is an oxymoron. But to your question: what are the most popular formats for worship services if a church seriously tried to meet the needs and preferences of most worshippers?

  1. Charismatic Worship. By far the fastest growing and most popular format of worship today in North America is a charismatic style. Charismatic worship is designed for the worshipper to experience God–to come to church and meet God, feel His presence, hear from Him and “connect” with the Holy Spirit and each other. Musical praise is the dominant channel for this experience, though it includes silence, listening, meditation and in Pentecostal-charismatic formats speaking in tongues and other physical expressions like holy dancing or laughter. Non-Pentecostal churches with charismatic worship may not be so extreme but have a clear focus on coming to worship to meet God–to actually experience God, to sense His presence and receive. The charismatic format is not limited to Pentecostal denominations, but has been widely adopted and adapted by others and has left its mark (through the so-called “Praise and worship movement”) on almost every church in America. This style is especially popular with new believers, many younger worshippers, blue collar workers, and the disenfranchised, poor and powerless.
  2. Boomer Worship. Boomer worship is “Charismatic-lite.” It skims the cream off the “Praise and worship movement” and copies the popular worship bands like Joy and Delirious but stops short of full charismatic worship. Boomer worship is upbeat, bright, joyous, and the congregation is urged to clap with the music and people go home feeling better about themselves and each other. It runs on a minute-by-minute schedule, is heavily programmed–even the prayers and segueways are carefully scripted. The leaders of boomer worship often have “rehearsals” and try to mimic a worship-concert. Attendees come expecting to be lifted in spirit, to have a joyous and bright atmosphere, and to hear an interesting and practical communicator. The upbeat music of boomer worship (Shone Jesus Shine, We bring the sacrifice; As the Deer…) relies especially on the songs of the 80’s and 90’s with a few recent ones mixed in. Boomer worship appeals most to upscale professional middle aged people who make church attendance a regular habit along with a few score of other habits in their productive and busy lives.
  3. Gospel Revivalist Worship. Gospel worship builds a service around a Billy Graham type evangelistic atmosphere that many boomers grew up on. Gospel worship is likely to hearken back to Fuller’s Old Time Gospel Hour style and includes a quartette or trio atmosphere and matches nicely the Moody Bible Institute radio station. It is grown-up gospel music. All the music is not pre-1980’s music: for it includes lots of Bill Gaither and more recent songs that have been given honorary gospel status along with the older songs. While some of the music is older this style of worship insists on doing gospel music with absolute excellence–sometimes including full orchestration and recent arrangements. Unlike Charismatic and Boomer worship, gospel worship makes full use of a choir–and usually offers several massive cantatas or pageants each year. The atmosphere is upbeat yet traditional, the preaching fervent, and gospel songs like Heavenly Sunshine, or How Great Thou Art get a great response. The focus is often on the fervent sermon that is convicting and guilt-producing and the service is supposedly designed for the unsaved-to get them “under conviction” and to persuade them to come forward at the end of the service. There is often an altar call or other expected response that might lead to pure living. This format of worship appeals to both blue collar and professional people, is especially popular in the South, and is dominant among churches with Baptist leanings.
  4. Seeker worship. This style of worship offers a service designed with the unchurched person in mind. Eliminating foreign elements the unchurched person might not understand and offering an interesting and practical sermon, seeker worship uses the worship service for outreach–to bring the unchurched into church and give them time to consider Christianity in a non-threatening atmosphere where an unchurched person will feel “at home.” Seeker worship is credited to Bill Hybels, but the movement has gone far beyond his own vision and now includes so-called “secular worship” and “Worldly worship” designed as the first step a person might take toward considering Christianity as a life option. The music holds much in common with its secular counterparts and the service is likely to use film clips-even from R-Rated movies and lots of coffee and doughnuts–even during worship. is Some question if seeker worship should even be categorized as worship and argue it should be considered evangelism or outreach, not worship. Seeker worship is especially attractive to second generation Christians who are bored with their traditional home church and want “worship that is cool enough to invite my friends to.” It is also effective at actually reaching the unchurched and offering the first step toward associating with God and the church.
  5. Pedagogical worship. Teaching is the focus of pedagogical worship. Worshippers in this format do not come so much to sing as to listen. They come to hear the gospel and respond with belief and obedience. Preaching is the focus and scripture is central. The musical portion of the service is not more of a warm-up or introduction to the real reason to gather–to hear the word of god preached. The sermons are carefully prepared and give the worshippers “something new to chew on” every week. Worshippers do not so much expect to feel something as to learn something. They expect to respond not so much in an altar service as in deeper belief and obedience. In place of several minutes of singing this format might repeat the apostle’s creed or the Lord’s Prayer together. Words spoken often take precedence over words sung in pedagogical churches and the lyrics of all music are examined more than their popularity or catchy tunes. Pedagogical worship is especially popular with educators and people who consider themselves thinking people and “come to church to hear God’s word, not to shake hands and emote.” This style is popular with many main line churches and almost all reformed churches.
  6. Word & Table Worship Evangelicals have supposedly been on the Canterbury trail for several decades since Robert Webber first published his book by that title. But the style has been a steadily and quietly growing format for worship among evangelicals for several decades even among Nazarenes. Some, boomers, fed up with personality-driven worship have fled to this “high church” style of worship. The music focuses on hymns with heavy theological content and not gospel songs or recent choruses-deep songs like The church’s one foundation, or O God our help in ages past. This worship format looks a lot like Anglican worship and includes a lot of participation, litanies, responses in a “Word and Table” format–the first part of the service focused on Scripture followed by an every-week second half of the service at the Lord’s Table. It is packed with rites and rituals full of deeper meanings which not only the unchurched would not understand, but many evangelicals must learn to practice the style. It is popular with fugitives from dying mainline churches, people who love historic worship, and ironically many young people who have high interest in both participation and “tactile worship.”
  7. Cowboy Worship. Perhaps this does not even deserve a category but it gets a listing because it represents at least a score of other worship formats churches have found meets the needs and satisfied the preferences of various groups of worshippers. Cowboy worship, or “Country-Western worship” is half band-jam and half square dance. It has been around for a long time and has included songs popularized by Elvis or Tennessee Ernie Ford as much as classical Christian singers and is its own brand of “seeker-sensitive” worship style. In the past they sang Life is like a Mountain Railroad or Just a closer walk to thee but in today’s world where the lines between rock and country music are increasingly blurred it may sound as much like Rock music as country. It is informal–jeans are almost-required dress, and the format is often offered on Saturday night and sometimes gathers more men and women in the service–if you can call it that. While it is only a blip on the statistical screen, it is worth listing to remind us that wherever there is a sub-culture in society at large, there usually develops a worship format that is designed with that sub-culture’s preferences and needs in mind.
  8. Emerging Worship. Sometimes called postmodern worship, Generation Y worship, or millennial worship, this style is not yet fully developed so we can’t yet fully describe it. Whatever you say about the style you can be sure it is not boomer worship. The atmosphere is sometimes melancholy, the songs sometimes pensive, most of the lights are turned off and candles appear all over the sanctuary. Indeed, this worship style is not noisy so much as reflective. It is more a “sanctuary” or refuge than the boomer model of a “Locker room preparation for the week.” Emerging worship has lots of participation, objects to look at, tactile activities, and often regular communion. Mystery is in and the atmosphere is almost as if the worshippers are having their own personal devotions simultaneously. But all this is tentative–the pattern is still developing.
  9. Blended Worship. Popularized by worship guru Robert Webber, blended worship attempts to weave together a little bit of this and that to produce a worship format with something for everybody. Sometimes it works and at other times it merely provides a little bit of satisfaction and a lot of irritation for everybody. Blending worship is sometimes like trying to reach people of eight different language groups by dividing up the service into eight parts, each with a different language–everybody gets some of the service in their native tongue, but everyone also gets most of the service in a strange tongue. But it is a useful label and it is hard to oppose. However, frankly most churches use the label to stick on a service they are trying to change–from one format to another and thus “blended worship” is the means by which they transition from more traditional pattern into something more contemporary, or sprinkle in some oldies-but-goodies to quiet down the oldsters resisting more modern styles. In a few cases blended worship actually becomes a style of its own, a sort of pidgin language that everyone learns to speak while worshipping. It appeals to migratory professionals and churches in transition. Like radio stations that play a little bit of country, a little bit of rock and roll, a little bit of rap and a little bit of classical music, people tend to change channels when their own musical language isn’t playing.

If these are the basic formats most evangelicals work from in planning worship there are some immediate observations: First, few churches can seriously attempt to offer them all. Which means a church must choose which format (and thus which audiences) it will focus on. The good side of this it may raise our sights from our own local church to “the Christians in X city.” That is, perhaps each town and city needs all the worship formats for helping all kinds of people worship in their ‘native tongue.” If a church down the street is doing a slam-dunk job at cowboy worship launching a new worship service with that ethos may not be as wise and launching one for the classical music crowd (e.g. pedagogical worship). Few churches can become true shopping malls-dozens of churches under one roof. Most senior pastors can’t bear the thought of too many worship services that do not feature themselves as the preacher-thus for most churches there will be one or two of these formats that prevails. Others in town will specialize in other formats. Second, we need to be careful about assigning “generations” to each of these styles. It is true that there are general clusters by generations, but (as Leonard Sweet is now saying) generational thinking is passé. They change too fast and there is too much overlap now. Sure you can guess which generation will especially like rap or pop or classical music, but there is so much overlap we can no longer make certain generalizations. Some of the emerging worship patterns are finding great connection between generations. And many young people might be considered to be followers of “Alternative worship” patterns-whatever the masses are doing they seek something different.

But with those two thoughts in mind, the above is a general listing of the most popular formats of worship today in the church

So what formats would you add to this list? So what do you think? To suggest additional insights write to Keith@TuesdayColumn.com

©2003. Keith Drury