Worship Symposium

Last weekend I had the privilege of attending the Calvin Symposium on Christian Worship. The conference was intended to present various styles of worship and ideas that can be incorporated to make worship more biblical, theologically accurate and fresh. It was definitely interdenominational - my first session was presented by a panel of emergent church leaders, the second was done by a Lutheran organist and the third was by an actor who performed dramatic Scripture readings at his Presbyterian church.

The first session, as mentioned earlier, was an honest look at the Emergent Church. In short, the movement was founded on the idea that church needs to adjust to a post-modern culture. This means the church needs to rethink everything, from how we worship to the buildings we meet in to the theology and ancient creeds.

The high point of the session came when Jason Clark, a pastor in London, England, discussed the topic of his Ph.D. disseration: consumerist tendencies in today's congregations. To me, the greatest danger in any modern church movement (especially the emergent movement) is that it makes church so fun and entertaining that people see it as a time of entertainment and refreshment rather than worship.

There was a whole lot I disagree with about the Emergent Church but if you want to read up on it more check out the following sources:

• Peter Rollins's Blog - He was a panelist and is a pastor in Belfast, Ireland
• Emergent Village - A useful hub of Emergent Church information
  
• New Kind of Christian - This book was constantly referenced during the panel's discussion of the emergent movement

As I stated earlier, I don't endorse the movement (sorry, I still have some marketing tendencies), but there is a lot of really cool stuff that they're doing that any denomination can use. We need more creativity in worship and the EC folks really get that.