Worshiping freely along the low road

A free worship church is more flexible in the order and style of worship and doesn’t feel bound to the age-old traditions that liturgical churches do. Services usually follow a general order, but the structure is tweaked as needs arise. Therefore, the focus or structure of a service may change based on what’s happening that day – either within the church or in the secular world.

Although in liturgical churches a member of the clergy often reads prayers from a book, free worship emphasizes a scheduled time of off-the-cuff (or unprepared) prayer, which the pastor or even a member of the congregation says aloud.

Free worship services are more informal, relaxed, and even conversational than liturgical services, as these churches believe that Christians can be reverent in an informal setting because true worship is a matter of the heart. This relaxed atmosphere often, but not always, is reflected in the style of dress worn by church attendees. Most free worship churches welcome khakis or even T-shirts, though some hold to a more traditional dress code.

Many free worship churches also believe that the external surroundings are insignificant to worshiping God. That’s why they don’t have a problem meeting in school gyms if they don’t have their own digs or in a multi-purpose sanctuary that they also use for sports. Free worship churches focus on being practical and relevant, all with the aim of reaching out to the world for Jesus Christ and equipping the congregation to be disciples.

This same principle carries over to musical styles and other parts of worship. In light of the fact that the Bible doesn’t give specifics on music, many (though not all) free worship churches believe they have the freedom and license to use contemporary music in the services, rather than traditional church music. (See the “Incorporating Music: A Call to Musical Arms” section, later in this chapter.) So too, many free worship churches believe in including skits, plays, and occasionally even interpretive dances as a way to enrich the worship experience.

Free worship churches are predominately Protestant and evangelical and include both denominations (groups within the larger Church that express their faith in different ways) that support free worship and many independent nondenominational churches (churches that aren’t tied to any denomination). Increasingly, some individual churches that are part of a larger liturgical denomination have broken from this tradition and have adopted a more free worship style. To find out more about all this denomination jargon and to see how the different segments of the Protestant Church work together, flip back to Chapter 11.

One of the free worship trends over the past twenty years is the idea of a seeker-sensitive church. The goal of a seeker-sensitive church is to reach out to non-believers by focusing on their needs and making worship services more relevant to them. These churches often use savvy marketing techniques to attract people to church, worship in auditorium style sanctuaries, and integrate multimedia and entertainment as part of the worship service experience. Most people consider Willow Creek, the mega church (a fancy way of saying it has thousands of members) located in suburban Chicago, the granddaddy of the seeker-sensitive movement. Proponents see this as a way to effectively present Christianity to the 21^st-century person. Critics, both from liturgical and free worship traditions, say that this emphasis on attracting people waters down the true Christian message by telling people what they want to hear rather than dealing with the full written Word of God.

Understanding when Christians babble in a language you don’t recognize

Charismatic churches, which are part of the free worship tradition, are those that emphasize worshiping by using spiritual gifts, especially the gift of speaking in tongues. Christians who practice this believe that speaking in tongues is an emotional, spiritual experience that prompts a person to start speaking in non-human speech. The people speaking in tongues understand the words they say to be angelic languages that the Holy Spirit gives to them so that they can pray spontaneously as directed by God.

Charismatic churches have rapidly increased in popularity over the past forty years. Today, a growing number of Catholics, non-Pentecostal Protestants, and even some in the Orthodox Church widely practice the charismatic gift of tongues-speaking, which was once considered a fringe activity in Pentecostal churches, as a form of worship.

Charismatics see speaking in tongues as being an important component of true worship. Non-charismatics disagree, believing tongues-speaking to either be a minor gift or something that is not biblical in this day and age.

If you’d like to find out more about charismatics and speaking in tongues, check out another of my books, Christian Prayer For Dummies (Wiley).

Incorporating Music: A Call to Musical Arms

Musical worship has become ground zero in the debate over traditional versus contemporary worship styles. Perhaps the reason that this discussion gets touchy is because music is so deeply personal and often impacts a person’s spirit more than any other act of worship does.

Adding to that reality, every person who walks into a church carries with him or her certain musical preferences and experiences. A person’s age is an influence on his or her likes and dislikes; at least since the 1950s, generations have been identified by their music. Individual preferences of one genre over another – such as country, rock, or classical – are a second major influence. As a result, before someone even plays the first note on an organ, electric guitar, or tambourine, the churchgoer has a natural tendency to like or dislike the music he or she is about to hear. As such, musical worship becomes much more of a subjective activity than other forms of worship.

Perhaps the greatest disagreement among churches involves musical style and the types of instruments allowed. Read on to uncover the three main stances Christians take on this issue.