Worship as Performance Art

Whether or not your church claims to follow a liturgical tradition or claims to be non-liturgical in its worship, there is a common denominator which both groups claim. Worship for both sides of the liturgical divide is found in re-telling of the Great Story, the story of God’s plan of salvation. Both the liturgical and the non-liturgical traditions see the essence of Christian worship as being a re-creation or a re-capitulation of the drama of God’s redemptive work in human history.

Those who claim to be non-liturgical see this drama take place in the songs of praise and the message during worship on Sunday. For those in the non-liturgical traditions who are more conservative or fundamental in their approach, this often shows up in the expectation that the pastor present the Gospel message clearly and issue an altar call at the end of every message. The story should be re-told in such a way that people respond to it by “walking the aisle”, “placing your faith in Jesus” or “making a personal commitment to Jesus.”

Liturgical traditions see the same drama of God’s salvation history in human events play out in their worship services. The key difference being the response is not merely to the preaching of the Gospel message, but also to the symbolic recreation of God’s gospel in the Eucharist or Holy Communion. The expectation is still to walk the aisle, but in the liturgical traditions, that aisle walking commitment is to partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ at the communion rail.

Obviously there are other differences between the two groups in worship that have to do with other commitments to theology, hermeneutics, and tradition. Yet for both groups, the essence of what it means to worship is to respond to the reality of God’s story in human history. Both see their end purpose in getting people to respond to the Gospel. They merely use different means to accomplish that end.

However that drama of the Gospel is increasingly being replaced by other considerations. Worship is becoming a performance art that is to be judged on its aesthetic appeal. In many ways worship is now judged like a movie or a stage play, box office, acting, costumes and direction. Story line plays a role but increasingly less attention is paid to it than to who is in the movie and is it visually appealing. (As a current example of this in movies, notice the reviews of the wildly successful movie 300.) In worship, this is absolutely detrimental to the whole purpose of gathering as God’s people.

For the non-liturgical traditions, this shift towards performance is best expressed in the drive for “excellence in worship.” That was the line that was being discussed when I was in seminary. The idea was to excel at putting together a worship service and to do so consistently so the people would come back again and again. Thus pastors felt a pressure to “hit a home run” every Sunday, while choirs and worship teams practiced and practiced until the tiniest musical flaws were eliminated. The move toward performance worship created what several recent authors have described as a slick, stage-driven style worship.

Unfortunately, my friends in the liturgical church tradition don’t get off easily on this point either. They may have been at it far longer than the non-liturgical traditions have even been thinking about it. In the liturgical tradition this kind of performance art elevates the trappings of the service over the drama the service is supposed to represent and re-create. Thus there is more concern over the quality of the vestments, the amount and kind of incense in the thurible, when bells are rung and with how many shakes of the acolyte’s hand, and the rubrics in the Prayer Book or Missal, than there is over the story of the Gospel being told in the service.

What is lost or played down in both traditions is the Gospel story itself. The heart of both traditions is the re-telling of the Gospel. When worship becomes performance oriented, the Gospel, even if loudly proclaimed in pulpit and at altar moves to second place. The most important story of all history becomes a mere vehicle for the performers of the story and those who want to watch them. We need to rekindle the inner fire that the Gospel is more important than the performance of its story. Both traditions have much to offer the Church, but without the Gospel being the core, heart-felt reality, those traditions are all a show more driven by how the story is told, than the truth being told in the story.