fixed prayer-book liturgy or extemporary charismatic spontaneity? These are the issues we discuss. Frankly, while that sort of debate may well signal major changes in worship style, I'm not at all convinced that it has anything to do with renewal of worship in the spiritual sense at all.
Charles M. Schulz, the Peanuts cartoonist, suggested thirty years ago that most people attending church on Sunday do so with the same feelings as they attend the theatre; simply to enjoy what's going on. And he was absolutely right, in my view. The only thing he didn't take note of is that there are different kinds of entertainment, and how you express your enjoyment depends on the nature of the event. Schulz is quite right that some people come to church to sit passively listening as if at the theatre. But there are others who come with the same attitude with which they would attend a football match. And there are others who come with the same attitude with which they would attend a disco. With whatever attitude they come, however, they all come to enjoy what's going on. The worship style in which the church engages is no ground at all on which to judge the spirituality of those who are participating. Indeed, those of us who have travelled know that worship style is largely culturally determined. You go to a black Baptist church in the southern states of the USA and then to a Free Presbyterian in the Scottish Highlands and compare the difference! But the difference has nothing whatever to do with the spiritual authenticity of the worshippers. It's a cultural difference.
What determines whether we have real dealings with God when we go into his house to pray is not the music or the atmosphere, or even the degree of our physical participation in it. To think of worship in such terms is to think like a Judaistic Pharisee and not like a Christian at all. It is the hallmark of new-covenant religion that it is indifferent to cultural forms. 'A time is coming and has now come', said Jesus, 'when the true worshippers will
