Julian of Norwich once wrote "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well". Paul of Tarsus once said "In God we live and move and have our being." Maya Angelou once noted "I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
These lines have been with me for weeks now and there is a "mash-up" insight in there somewhere, but I have yet to glean it.
It might be assumed that if you create new worship experiences then they will dismiss tradition. This happened with the "seeker-sensitive/contemporary" worship movement. There was a strong effort to remove a lot of Christian language and make it easy on the ears for those who might be seeking Christianity as a faith to live into. So contemporary worship, generally, does not have things like creeds or liturgies or litanies or the like. As such when people think of new worship many people think that this new worship will be anti-tradition.
And when you value being efficient over being unique then that may happen.
This is not the case when you value unique over efficient.
The worship services that are truly unique are those who are able to root themselves in the past while introducing something new. Unique worship services are difficult to replicate and in many ways are often "one and done" worship experiences.
If you have ever seen "Glee" then you know what I am talking about. This show takes the words from common songs but puts them to new music and then you can instantly sing along. You can instantly join in a tradition while at the same time that tradition is brought to life in a different way.
Take this clip for instance. Notice that they build on the tradition of the song and yet bring it a new breath.
If you like it or not this is not the point. Not everyone likes Glee (I do not), Glee is a community (Gleeks) and the music that is created speaks to the Gleek community. Yet, this community, while creating unique music, it is rooted in a tradition that is much bigger than the community. They do not betray the tradition, rather they take the tradition (in this case a Christmas song) and "Gleek it up" to be an unique expression of that tradition in the Gleek community.
Notice that a worship community does not have to be original to be unique. In fact, it is a bit arrogant to think that you can be original in a world of 7 billion people. Rather, worship that values unique over efficient identifies where their community fits into the larger whole while at the same time striving for uniqueness.
In all the efforts to make worship attractive to people, faith communities across the nation have created tract worship experiences that appeal to a broad audience but are ubiquitous and generic. So back to the original question, "What would worship look like if it were driven by millennials and the creative class?"
It would look unique but not original.
It would be ancient and future.
It would be remix and mash up.
It would be culturally located and not difficult to replicate in other locations.
It would connect with a tribe or community but not everyone who encounters it.
It would be something that I could not wait to participate each week.
Last post ended by asking, "Should we not instead look to create a local, homemade, authentic, unique worship expression for this context? What would a worship revival look like if the Millennials fueled it?"
I hinted at in the last post that many "contemporary worship" services look similar to one another. I used the metaphor of tract homes to describe the amount of variety among "contemporary worship" services. There is some, but they all have very similar structure.
Millennials and the creative class are people who value the unique over the efficient. Tract homes and contemporary worship are efficient but rarely unique.
Take music for instance. Contemporary worship will take a tune that is common and write new words to the song. Much like what Charles Wesley did in his attempt to take pub songs and change they words to be more "godly". This is an efficient way to make that which is old new again because it is easier to rewrite the words than to rewrite the musical score.
In contrast, the music in a worship that values unique over efficient will sound differently. It will sound different but you can sing along almost instantly. How? By changing the tune and using common lyrics. This gives rise to the mash-up and the remix.
Notice in this mash up that many people can begin singing right away even if you have never heard this song before. Yes, it is not the best song that will appeal to the masses - but that is not the point. The point is the uniqueness is values more than the repeatably. You may think the scarf your friend knitted is less quality than the nice store bought one, but you might just treasure it more because it is unique. Likewise, mash ups are generally deemed as less quality but unique.
Take the remix as another example of unique over efficient. Remixes are usually take a good amount of time to put together but are not really able to be used for long periods of time. Remixes are current, culturally relevant and quickly fade. Remember this little gem?
Sure you do, but it is no longer what at the level of relevance it once was. It was great for a period of time but now is kinda annoying.
In worship, when we value unique over efficient then worship looks different but not that different. It changes yet there is always something that stays behind to connect or root us in the past (tradition).
The next post will have concluding remarks on this topic.
