On Past And Future Reformations

In the month of October, much was written about celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. In reality, the Reformation didn't have one specific starting date. But because Martin Luther is deservedly a central person in the Reformation, the 500th anniversary has revolved around his nailing of the 95 theses that challenged the Roman Church (click here for those 95 theses). 

Luther's theses revolved around man's spiritual state and the Roman Church's abilities and inabilities to minister to that state of both dead and the living Christians. The purpose of his Theses was to spark debate in order to reform the Church. Instead, it served as one of the beginning points of splitting the Church. That split served as the 2nd splitting from the Church since the breaking away of the Roman Church from the Orthodox Church served as the first split.

But times have changed since Luther wrote his 95 Theses. And in this time, just as the Church in which Luther found himself was in need of change, today's Church is in need of change. Enter then Jonathan Aigner (click here for a bio). He just recently wrote an article on 95 additional  theses that the Church must address today (click here for the article). These theses seem to have today's more modern evangelical churches in mind.  And his article is the subject of today's blogpost. And while Luther's 95 theses dealt with two subjects, Aigner's 95 theses are concerned with one subject: the proper worship of God. 

Aigner is concerned that too many worship services today have been prostituted by concerns to remain relevant and to draw people. Worship services that focus on remaining relevant do so in order to attract and keep people coming to church. Aigner's complaints here revolve around compromises churches make in accommodating worship services to what is popular in culture. Thus, the worshipers are what worship services are designed to serve. That means that the object of worship, or God, is receiving less and less attention as while those who are worshiping are receiving more and more attention.

Overall, Aigner's theses contain a lot of good suggestions. Some of them include the following

• Therefore, worship is more important than any ministry of the church, even then the sacred cows of children’s and youth ministry.
  
• Therefore, we should stop bastardizing the church’s worship by reinventing it in each generation’s image and using it as a hook.
  
• A sermon is to be received by the people as part of God’s work on their behalf, not aim to solve their problems and help them live happier lives.
  
• Churches are designing ad hoc worship “experiences” to stave off the boredom brought on by cultural media saturation.
  
• Theology, not taste, should determine how we worship.
  
• Corporate worship that is either contemporary or traditional is toxic to the church.
  
• All worship should be historic because it recalls the creative and redemptive acts of God.
  
• Worship is about doing God’s story.
  
• Bad worship begets bad theology. Bad theology begets a bloated, unhealthy church.
  
• We deceive people and compromise our worship when we preach that everyone is entitled to find worship that “fits them just right” in terms of personal preference.
  
• Worship that seeks personal fulfillment, release, or refreshment is a masturbatory act.
  
• Worship should be exceedingly boring in that it doesn’t offer that over-stimulation that the masses crave.
  
• To outsiders, the Eucharist is foolishness. That is why no megachurch model takes it seriously.
  
• Worship is not for God’s sake. It’s for ours.
  
• In worship, God is the subject, the great Mover and Shaper, and we are the ones being moved and shaped by God’s story.
  
• Worship will be more impressive than expressive. Me-worship is about expressing my story. True worship is about being impacted by God’s story.

Though I have not read every single thesis, of the ones I have read, I see no problem with any of them. Aigner is providing necessary corrections in how churches should approach worship services today.

The problem I do see with Aigner's article is that the Church needs reformation in other areas in addition to worship. Thus, trying to write 95 theses just for worship seems a little gimmicky while it shows a negligence in addressing other problem areas in today's Church. 

In addition, to just focus on the Church's problems with worship furthers the insularity of the conservative Church. For its insularity is its biggest obstacle to effectively preaching the Gospel to a larger, more diverse audience. In wanting to preach to a more diverse audience, I am not talking about the kind of relevance that tricks people into coming to church. Rather, the kind of relevance of which I speak concerns itself with being able to effectively preach the Gospel to those who do not hold to an America-first, politically conservative audience. For American conservative churches are drawing an overwhelming ratio of political conservatives compared to political non-conservatives. This not only violates the spirit in which Aigner wrote his 95 theses, it robs political non-conservatives chances of hearing the Gospel and of finding religiously conservative churches to belong to which do not assault their political consciences. In addition, this overwhelming appeal to political conservatives strongly suggests that only political conservatives can belong to religiously conservative Christian churches.

The Church needs to read Aigner's 95 theses. At the same time, there are other areas in which theses, not necessarily 95 of them, must be written in order to correct major problems in today's Church.