Brad East (once more), on how a proper grasp of the essence of Christian worship ought to serve as an antidote to the evangelical tendency toward tech-obsessed, performance-based productions:

We might instead interrogate the nature of Christian worship itself. I asked my students what they would expect, visiting a church for the first time. What should they expect?

The historic answer of the church down through the centuries is that they should expect the liturgy of Word and sacrament. They should know in advance that, with real but limited variations, they will pray, sing, confess their faith, confess their sins, hear the word of the Lord in Scripture, hear the gospel of the Lord in proclamation, and receive the visible word of the Lord’s body and blood, the bread of heaven broken for their salvation. Whatever country they are in, whatever language is spoken, whether visiting a city or a town, a congregation of 5,000 or a parish of 50—this is what should await them.

Notice what is necessary for the celebration of this liturgy: sisters and brothers gathered in the name of Jesus, a leader, the Bible, a little bread and wine. Believers, Scriptures, elements, and a place to bring them together. That’s it. In fact, on a given Sunday morning around the world, you can find them brought together in cathedrals, in houses, in apartments, in strip malls, in cafeterias, in mud huts, out in the open by rivers and under trees, hidden in basements and attics for fear of being found out.

This is the genius of Christian liturgy. Beyond the tools required to produce texts (which long predate the printing press) and food and drink (which are necessary to live), no technology is necessary for the church to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth. Perhaps, as the case may be, new technologies have the potential to help. But they always have the potential to harm, to distort and misshape.

On one hand, worship is a form of catechesis. It molds our hearts, minds, and imaginations. Young people are right to expect, on a given Sunday, what they have seen and heard on hundreds of previous Sundays. It’s clear to me that the present catechesis has worked, but in all the wrong ways.

Too many evangelicals assume that ordinary worship is what I’ve elsewhere called the tech-church show—a performance in every sense of the word. Not the drama of the Eucharist or the reenactment of the liturgical script but a slick, high-def production. If I am right that this is what many assume is normal, based on its prevalence among larger churches, then my suggestion is that ministers need to go back to the drawing board. Back, I should say, to the time-tested wisdom of Word and sacrament. Call it the ABCs of Christian liturgy.