The Inevitable Conclusion
This kind of thing is inevitable once the substance of reverence is removed from a place of worship and replaced by the style of the world.
This performance is from the sanctuary of a Calvary Chapel congregation from a few years ago that continues to make the rounds on social media. Notice the drum kit. Notice the look and feel of a stage. Many of our own churches have made similar alterations to their holy places, showing no evidence of a font, pulpit, or altar, and in many cases, hiding their affiliation with the Lutheran confession at all, even going so far as to conjure up names devoid of anything churchly, or the name “Lutheran.” Some churches even scuttled their old names in favor of something less Christocentric.
At least this place has a remnant of an altar and a plain cross on their stage. Many of our own non-liturgical congregations don’t even have that much, opting instead for barstools and coffee tables.
Calvary Chapel was one of the pioneers of so-called “contemporary worship.” Of course, their non-sacramental theology makes it less inconsistent with their theology than it would for a church that confesses the Real Presence. And this makes it especially egregious for Lutheran churches to ape non-denominational style. Moreover, there are many Baptist and Non-Denominational Christians whose sanctuaries are not stages, and whose worship service is not a show, who do retain some liturgical order and reverential decorum as a confession of the holiness of the Word of God. Many of them continue to call their worship spaces “sanctuaries,” Latin for “holy places.” And of course, “holy” means that this place is set apart.
When Calvary Chapel - sacrificing reverence for “relevance” back in 1960s California - traded in the organ for drums and guitars, when they made the Sunday service more about outreach than feeding the flock with the Word, when the focus became inward instead of upward, when the altar became a stage - the move to full-blown shameless entertainment and spectacle was inevitable.
And like crack cocaine, the dopamine hit was never enough. Calvary Chapel and its imitators - including those in the LCMS - have gone way beyond replacing the organ with an acoustic guitar, to putting on more and more elaborate shows, placing the focus of worship on singing, dancing, synthesized music clips, soundboards, light shows, smoke machines, and every technique used on worldly stages. The cross fades, the faith withers, but the word of the show must go on. The Gospel became trivialized.
Fast forward a few decades and a couple generations from the pioneers, and we now have young girls in tights gyrating in front of the few remnant reminders that this is a church. The very name of our Lord - the name above every name, the name protected against misuse by the commandment of God on Mount Sinai, the name that has the power to put demons to flight - has been degenerated into parody-fodder, responded to by chortles from the live audience.
And yes, I know what the objections are going to be, especially among our own crop of hipster megachurches, their grant-doling allies and enablers in our district offices, and various candidates and collectives vying to pull the levers of our synodical apparatus.
Shall we make a list?
Adiaphora.
Reaching the Youth.
They’re proclaiming the Gospel.
At least they’re in church.
At least they’re singing about Jesus.
At least they’re not twerking.
You’re just being judgmental.
It’s not a worship service (but it could be, and it wouldn’t matter).
You must hate the lost.
You want women in burkas.
See how many they worship! (an appropriate manner of speaking).
Missional (are the “experts” still using that buzzword?).
And, of course, someone is going to make the accusation of racism and sexism and other crimes against wokeism (yawn).
The bottom line is that if you watched this and it didn’t shock, disgust, or sadden you, your gag reflex is simply broken, and you really ought to turn off the TV and reconnect with the liturgy, with holiness, with the sheer joy and treasure of our Christian heritage of reverent, sacramental, incarnational worship focused on the cross, upon Jesus, upon the blood that redeems us: worship that takes place in tandem with the saints in the ageless and eternal church triumphant instead of with the ever-changing lowest-common-denominator pop culture.
Let’s give the youth (and everyone else) something to inspire them other than wiggling around to remakes of old pop tunes that turn the name of our Lord into a joke.