The Lord has shown me something in Timothy the Musical I hadn’t considered before about the evolution of church services over 70 years and the tendency of them to change in response to culture and revolving door membership. Remembering my boyhood church and traditional liturgical services, they were not called worship services then but church services. There we gathered with an invocation, sang hymns accompanied by an organist, recited the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles Creed, read responsive readings, listened to a choir anthem, sang the Doxology and Gloria Patri, listened to the message, made prayers of intercession, and departed with a hymn and benediction. The tithe wasn’t preached instead charity and stewardship. Services were conducted by a black robed pastor with liturgical stole, robed choir director, deacons and elders dressed in their Sunday best, with the youth sitting in pews with their parents or together in the back. Every hymn was a statement of faith, which when sung along with the readings, creeds, and Lord’s prayer, was a common confession drawing us together in mutual encouragement.

Fast forward to today, youth have displaced the elders and their ways, staking an unyielding claim to the stage with electronic keyboards, amps, monitors, guitars, basses and drums – often so loud and overpowering that they have to be enclosed in a plexiglass booth. There the 30-something band leader Bogarts the microphone for an hour or more, singing not a single hymn of the faith as a gesture of honor and respect for their elders, but droning repetitious songs of self indulgence masquerading as worship.

How often when watching a contemporary “worship” service have I wondered whether any of the young and unseasoned leaders ever read 1 Corinthians 14:

What is our conclusion, brothers? Whenever you come together, let everyone be ready with a psalm or a teaching or a revelation, or ready to use his gift of tongues or give an interpretation; but let everything be for edification. If the gift of tongues is exercised, let it be by two or at most three, and each in turn; and let someone interpret. And if there is no one present who can interpret, let the people who speak in tongues keep silent when the congregation meets—they can speak to themselves and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, while the others weigh what is said. And if something is revealed to a prophet who is sitting down, let the first one be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, with the result that all will learn something and all will be encouraged. Also, the prophets’ spirits are under the prophets’ control; for God is not a God of unruliness but of shalom. (1 Corinthians 14:26-33a CJB)

Though I have advocated for believers to come out of man’s church and have done so myself, I am nevertheless grieved because I greatly miss gathering with my brothers and sisters to confess our common faith, break bread together, and thereby encourage one another. At least the old school liturgical church of my youth was edifying unlike contemporary churches which seem narcissistic and self-indulgent by comparison.

I am aggrieved for yet another humiliating reason, specifically, I am partly responsible for helping to create the contemporary narcissistic and self-indulgent church. It was the late 1960s when I first played guitar and sang during a church service. How well I remember deliberating whether to play a nylon string classical or my flashy new electric guitar. Classical was the less offensive choice I decided on advice from my father who was the head elder. My original song went over well in a church where I was loved and nurtured by the many mature adults there, and in time, my electric guitar was welcomed.

During the summer of 1971, I joined a gospel song and dance troupe. Often members of the band were benched when the churches we booked for a concert blocked the drums, guitar, and bass from the sanctuary. I even recall getting in a scuffle with a man who tried to put my guitar amplifier back in the cargo hold of the bus during the summer tour of 1975. The amp was on wheels and for a moment we literally went round and round with it – me pulling it toward the church, the man pulling it back to the bus. Another church pitched a fit when they learned the pastor had booked us for a “wake up the sleepers” type event for his congregation. We arrived to find the concert cancelled and the doors locked, thereby stranding 40 teens with no place to stay for the night and no supper. Our director hastily drove to town and used a payphone to remind the pastor we had a contract and the church was responsible to feed and shelter all of us whether we sang or not. The wake up event they tried to avoid simply came in the form of 40 Jesus-loving kids sent out 2×2 to the homes of 20 member families where “Boy howdy did they get a witness!”

With each such occurrence, I became more determined to push the new music into what I considered stuffy old churches, sometimes becoming quite testy about it. Fifty years later, I’m forced to admit it was me and my generation who touched off the contemporary vs traditional worship wars still raging in churches today. It’s sobering to consider where modern worship services started and how the movement has turned against those of us who led the way, which leaves me with a very unsettling question:

How is it unseasoned youth have come to displace and lead their elders in Christ?

Is it that Malachi speaks to in the passage below?

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” (Malachi 4:5-6 ESV)

There is a sense in which the sorry condition of the church is a continuation of the original sin. In plain speak, Adam and Eve said to the Father “You’re not the boss of me – I can boss myself” and therein rejected the wisdom and authority of the elder over all, Father God.

Thematically, Timothy the Musical expresses a deep desire for renewal of proper relationship between elders of the faith and the youth. There is such a wealth of knowledge and wisdom being wasted by ignoring elders in the faith.

Elders who lead effectively are worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. (1 Timothy 5:17 BSB)

As an elder in Christ by the Spirit’s anointing and a senior by age, I find it difficult to break bread with those who by excluding elders, sideline and dishonor them. And the older I get the more I’m put off by 20 and 30 somethings who presume to teach and discipline their elders in the faith. Certainly the trend suggests a shift in criteria for leadership based on God’s standard of maturity and the Spirit’s anointing (Acts 6:3 et al) to that of man’s qualification: a religious education. For me, it boils down to the Biblical standard for assembling together found in 1 Corinthians 14:26-33 which convinces me that the modern church and their so called “worship services” are not Biblical.

If we’re genuinely honest, silencing the “epistles of Christ” (2 Cor. 3:3) is baked into the contemporary and traditional church models. A grievous situation that leaves me to wonder what awe-inspiring testimonies we might hear if the epistles were encouraged to speak? Have we forgotten that it’s our testimonies together with the blood of the Lamb that overcomes (Rev. 12:11)? Surely elders are every bit as encouraged by the testimonies of the young as the young are encouraged by the testimonies of their elders – each proving to the other that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). We just have to listen and be patient each with the other; elders remembering that they too were once consumed by youthful zeal and the youth recognizing that they too will slow down, grow quiet, and reminisce.

I believe it is for the cause of silencing and ignoring youth in the body of Christ half a century ago, that gave rise to the religious take over spirit still at work in churches today, pitting one generation against the other. It is my earnest hope that one day soon, the pendulum will swing back to center … to the point where mutual love, honor, and respect restores balance. Where every believer recognizes that the Spirit of Christ abides in each of us and that He wants us to love one another and be in unity with Him. About that, consider what Jesus meant when He said:

For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ (Matthew 23:39 ESV)

Do you see Jesus when you acknowledge that He abides within your brother? Does your brother see Him when he acknowledges that Jesus abides within you? When like Paul advocated we greet one another with a holy kiss, do we understand the Holy Spirit has made us into vessels filled with the presence of Christ and it’s Him we’re welcoming with a holy kiss (1 Cor. 16:20, 2 Cor. 13:12, et al)? Conversely, when we discount our brother and sister, we’re discounting Jesus (Rev. 3:20)? Have we enough love for Jesus, our brother and sister to:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:21 ESV)

For more about what worship is and is not as the Holy Spirit has shown me, please check out these articles:

Surprise! You’ve been Worshiping a Pipe Organ! (link)

Are Worship Services Biblical? (link)

To worship in Spirit and in Truth (link)

Lastly, please check out the writings and podcast of Tom Wadsworth, who by study of scripture and Church history, advocates for an “edification” model for our gatherings and ditching the “worship” model. I haven’t met Tom but have watched several of his video podcasts and read a number of his articles. He’s a soft-spoken and kindhearted brother who makes what I believe is an irrefutable case for getting back to 1 Corinthians 14 type gatherings.

https://www.tomwadsworth.com

https://www.youtube.com/@tomwadsworth/videos