exchanged living.

Worship Design and Culture, Part 1: Where do we begin?

My friend Chad posited an interesting question concerning the relationship that culture should have in influencing worship design in the local setting. Upon reading this question, I wanted to flesh this out a little, and figured I could begin to do so here.

I bring this up because I am concerned as a worship leader and designer that our congregations, and even more specifically the congregation I serve at Hope, would approach what we do as a congregation with the right relationship with the world around us (and indeed, the world we are a part of). How God interacts with culture matters because it’s the way he interacts with us all. We are creatures of culture, and how God interacts with us in our cultural context matters as we interact with our culture in His name.

Ultimately, I hope to come to a better understanding of what the perspectives on how God and culture relate would flesh out in worship design, and to analyze what we do at Hope and what underlying messages about this relationship we are sending through what we do. So here we go:

Chad bases his question around H. Richard Niebuhr’s five historical perspectives on how God and culture relate to one another:

Christ against Culture. For the exclusive Christian, history is the story of a rising church or Christian culture and a dying pagan civilization.

Christ of Culture. For the cultural Christian, history is the story of the Spirit’s encounter with nature.

Christ above Culture. For the synthesist, history is a period of preparation under law, reason, gospel, and church for an ultimate communion of the soul with God.

Christ and Culture in Paradox. For the dualist, history is the time of struggle between faith and unbelief, a period between the giving of the promise of life and its fulfillment.

Christ Transforming Culture. For the conversionist, history is the story of God’s mighty deeds and humanity’s response to them. Conversionists live somewhat less “between the times” and somewhat more in the divine “now” than do the followers listed above. Eternity, to the conversionist, focuses less on the action of God before time or life with God after time, and more on the presence of God in time. Hence the conversionist is more concerned with the divine possibility of a present renewal than with conservation of what has been given in creation or preparing for what will be given in a final redemption.

(taken from Wikipedia’s article on Niebuhr)

So here’s question set #1:

Which of these do you see as the most honest (to Scripture) model of how God and culture relate?

Which of these do you see worship in the church most honestly reflecting in your context?

What issues, questions, and thoughts does this initial launch into conversation bring up with you? Are there ways of relating that Niebuhr misses?