“Over the last decade or so, we’ve seen a few lasting effects from the now-moribund emergent church movement. But even before that, we had seen the evangelical church (broadly reckoned), taking cues from the wildly successful charismatics, who had long since begun to take cues from the world around them. Not every church and not every leader pursues these forms equally aggressively; and not every church or leader is even aware that he is doing so.”

We spend a lot of time thinking about how our culture has affected Christian worship, and we often reflect on what sorts of things we need to address in order to even begin to think about leaving a better church for our kids and grandkids. It’s usually not pretty.

Over the last decade or so, we’ve seen a few lasting effects from the now-moribund emergent church movement. But even before that, we had seen the evangelical church (broadly reckoned), taking cues from the wildly successful charismatics, who had long since begun to take cues from the world around them. Not every church and not every leader pursues these forms equally aggressively; and not every church or leader is even aware that he is doing so. But how pervasive is worldliness in the church, whether intentionally pursued or not? Click around a bit and see for yourself. Patterning worship space after theaters has been a thing since the middle of the 19th century, but patterning worship spaces after civic centers hosting rock shows is now a thing. Cultivating, intentionally, an image that evokes frat boys or hipsters (or Bono), even in the pulpit, is now a thing. And worship that would be more-or-less indistinguishable from a secular concert to someone who didn’t know the language (or was deaf) is now a thing. Even swearing from the pulpit is now a thing. It’s authentic.

All of these embody values, or, to use another word, loves. All of these point, like moral lodestones, to the magnetic north of the affections. Furthermore, all of these imply an underlying set of theological assumptions: if this is your worship, you believe that God a) demands it of you; or b) is as pleased with it as I am; or c) is at least tolerant of it.

But what if you are wrong about God? What if, as Psalm 115:8 concludes, you have not heard the voice of God directing you to do these things, but in fact, have become just like your idols? Would you necessarily be aware of it? Could you be so deceived and not know it? What if it had become completely natural to you, and all of your friends were doing it as well? And what if the idolatry of your day, in contrast with that of Isaiah’s or the Psalmist’s, was not embodied in little statues?

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