What Is An Evangelical? What Kind Of Worship? Colossians 3:12-17 page 1

Whilst at Trinity College, Bristol we had to go out on student preaching teams. On one occasion a friend of mine called John had to preach at a very high Anglican church in Swindon. It was a memorable occasion: it was difficult to see John up at the front through all the clouds of incense, and as someone who has had bad physical reactions to incense - so much so that a friend told me I was "low church by allergy" - that wasn't easy for me. At the end of the service the clergy and choir processed out, but just as we thought it was all over, they processed back in and stood around a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, and sang songs to her. I had led the intercessions in the service and apparently afterwards a churchwarden complained about me, because I hadn't prayed for the Pope.

Given a subject to speak on this morning about the distinctives of worship for evangelical Christians, that incident of Anglo-Catholic worship came flooding back into my mind. I think we must be careful in handling this subject: after all the 'worship wars' are alive and kicking in the church today, as much as they ever were.

In particular, when considering the theme of worship, we need to make an important distinction between style and content. The use of incense in that service was not a problem of fundamental principle to me: incense is mentioned in the Bible as a symbol of prayer rising to heaven. It was purely a style problem for me - something I was personally not comfortable with - incense can be used with a thoroughly biblical meaning.

On the other hand, the singing of songs to Mary was a problem of content. Whatever we think about the ancient doctrine of the communion of saints, the fact remains that in prayer we have a mediator with our heavenly Father and it is not Mary, it is her Son, Jesus. It seems theologically wrong to me to have any mediator in prayer other than Jesus.

Sadly, too many of the worship wars are fought more often on matters of style than of content. We might find ourselves more at home in one style of worship than another, and that will be as much to do with our personalities as our theological convictions. If we part company with a church over worship style, we should not do so in a manner that suggests we are somehow superior to them, merely that we are different people with different needs.

So in coming to this question of worship this morning, I am not going to referee debates between styles of worship. When it comes to issues of style, we are dealing merely with viewpoints - and, as is said, a viewpoint is just a view from a point. What looks low church to an Anglican may well look high church to a Christian from a 'free church'. It would be far better if we concentrated on core values of worship, and in particular those that are central to our life together as a worshipping and witnessing community. I want to share four such convictions with you this morning, mainly from verses 15 to 17 of the reading, although we'll refer back a little bit to verses 12 to 14.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.