Just as scientists sometimes begin to perform medical procedures before anyone has raised the necessary moral objections, so it seems that many congregations today are switching worship practices without investigation what worship means and how our worship relates to contemporary culture. But their basic assumptions about who God is, what worship means, and how humans at worship are to be regarded are wrong. We must ask careful questions about how much we should allow the ethos of the culture surrounding the Church to affect what we do in worship. Debates about worship style usually arise because, in their desire to reach out to the culture surrounding us, parishes are striving to make worship meaningful. But this approach asks the wrong questions and is built on faulty assumptions: that worship is uninteresting and that worship can be made interesting by human ingenuity and creativity. Authentic worship is always meaningful, therefore, to explore meaningful worship is to examine worship.

How we worship both reveals and forms our identity as persons and communities and the effectiveness of our outreach to the world around us depends on the character that is formed in us. How can we best Reach Out Without Dumbing Down that essential character formation? The Lord Jesus prayed that his followers, whom He was sending into the world, might not be of it. How do we know whether we are being faithful or if we might instead be dumbing down the Church? How can we balance more effectively the equal demands of being in the world but not of it?

Marva Dawn pleads for a careful theological reflection concerning the meaning and practice of worship. She challenges us to think more deeply about the issues at stake for the worship and life of the Church and to ask better questions about if, why, and how we might be dumbing down faith. She insists that we ought not to, and do not need to, conform to our culture’s patterns, but that instead, the Christian community must intentionally sustain its unique character and just as intentionally care about the culture around it in order to be able to introduce people genuinely to Christ and to nurture individuals to live faithfully.

Contact Us for a copy of this Book Brief.