A service without all the vibe of Sunday morning be a downer in the evening? A letdown? A superfluity? Some sessions seem to think so. Recent studies suggest that no more than 15% of PCA churches have evening or second services. Participation, representation, and maybe aural volume have never been higher, while the number of sermons and time for the communion of the saints in the public worship of God has never been lower.

On X I posted:

1. Casualties of contemporary worship:
2. congregational singing
3. prayer
4. elder leadership
5. extended/multiple scripture readings
6. evening/second worship services

Now, to expand and explain. The context, of course, is the conservative, confessional presbyterian and Reformed denominations, some of which have not significantly changed their worship from that which has been common among such denominations for the last five centuries. The above list concerns those that have seen significant changes in worship in the last century.

Congregational Singing

To be fair, congregational singing has been under assault for a century or more. The “contemporary” worship of 100 years ago in some P&R churches already suffered from invasive species propagated by the Oxford Movement’s high-church, Anglo-Catholic tendencies. Low churches got high. Organs grew (and their volume increased) like the kudzu on a Georgia bank. Soloists and ensembles delighted upwardly mobile Protestant pew-sitters. Professionals sang at the people; choirs drowned them out under the pretense of leading them. Such was late 19th- and early 20th-century contemporary music in the respectable, tall-steepled P&R churches and many besides, including baptist, Methodist, and Episcopal. American religion became bland and predictable. The ministers’ and choirs’ robes and the liturgies performed were nearly interchangeable, except that the Episcopalians were always highest of all. Simplicity and psalms suffered together.

Concurrently, revivalism saw music as the great draw, and what was once normal for a protracted meeting became standard for Sundays: the first-half “song service” followed by preaching. The presbyterians, many subject to New School and revivalist influence, went for choir “specials” and soloists, ostensibly to set up the preaching or to draw crowds to hear that preaching. The singing suffered. Church became a theater where specialists on stage (or sometimes in balconies) took care of the music.

Choirs are mostly gone today, replaced by bands or praise teams. These, too, ostensibly lead “worship” (read: the music portion of the service) but often drown out the congregations, which are sometimes reduced to sing-along participants. The lyrics sung are simple, but the tunes and arrangements are made for the radio—pitched and timed for professionals. This sometimes makes the sing-along more like a hum-along. The standard for congregational singing is an accessible commonality, full participation, and the ability to hear one’s fellow congregants “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord.” Much contemporary music (and the way it is led) fails this standard, as did the blaring organs and dominating choirs of earlier decades.

Read More