63 - Protestant Worship Today

Protestant Worship Today
By Fred R. Anderson

"It is not unusual to find cities where Protestant churches of varying denominations as well as Roman Catholic churches are using the same lessons in worship. As these Christians interact and converse in their day-to-day lives, they are discovering a unity in their worship that transcends historic boundaries and divisions, a unity of commitment to the centrality of Jesus Christ as witnessed to in Scripture…. Those responsible for liturgical renewal are asking two questions: 'Is it Christian?' and 'Is it equipping the saints for their ministry?' These are the questions by which worship reforms should be evaluated. "

WHAT is happening in Protestant worship these days? Asked this way, the question is unmanageable. What is a Protestant when it comes to worship? Liturgically, traditions within Protestantism can be grouped into three broad categories based upon their relationship to the use of a service book. Liturgical historian James F. White has classified this as the liturgical right, those whose liturgy is prescribed by the service book-Episcopal and Lutheran churches; the liturgical center, those for whom a service book is optional, but who rely heavily upon one for sacraments and rites-Reformed, Presbyterian, United Methodists, United Church of Canada, and portions of the free-church tradition such as the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); and the liturgical left, those who reject service books as a violation of their freedom of worship according to the Word of God-Quakers, Pentecostals, and especially the free church tradition of the Anabaptists.¹ The focus on this discussion will be upon the liturgical center.²

Fred R. Anderson is the minister of the Pine Street Presbyterian Church, Harrisburg, Pa. In addition to his college and seminary education, he has also studied at the Manhattan School of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and performed as a singer and actor in Arizona and California. In recent years, he has become actively involved in both denominational and ecumenical liturgical discussions.
¹ James F. White, "A Protestant Worship Manifesto," The Christian Century (Jan. 27, 1982), p. 82.
² I do not mean that liturgical renewal is not high on the agenda for the Episcopal and Lutheran churches in America. it is, and great strides have been taken in those churches as witnessed to by the revised Book of Common Prayer (1982), the forthcoming ecumenical hymnal from the Episcopal Church, and the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978). These

64 - Protestant Worship Today

I

It has been common to trace the resurgence of Protestant interest in worship to the advent of Vatican 11 and its publication of the Constitution of the Liturgy.³ In fact, this movement in Protestant churches began much earlier than 1963, and can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Liturgical theologians, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, have been at work since the early part of this century, preparing the ground for liturgical renewal. For Rome, Vatican II represents a major harvest of that previous work. For Protestants, the Council represented two things. First, its liturgical work has been seen as a fulfillment of the agenda set before the church in the sixteenth century (in many ways far more faithfully than within the Protestant house). Second, it has created a new climate of oneness in Christ from both sides of the Christian household. This has enabled Protestant and Roman Catholic liturgical scholars to enter openly into dialogue and cooperation in the discipline of liturgical theology. This has resulted in a most important development in Protestant worship, a movement toward catholicity, and a recovery of the traditions lying behind the sixteenth century. Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Reformed, Lutheran, Wesleyan, and theologians of other traditions are in conversation and dialogue, as new liturgies and resources are developed for use within particular denominations.⁴

The movement toward catholicity among scholars has been matched by a parallel development in local Protestant congregations. The local Protestant church of today, regardless of its denominational affiliation, is truly ecumenical, and comprised of members from the broad spectrum of Christian traditions. This plurality denies sole allegiance to a worship tradition as the tradition. Rather, worship is judged by its ability to allow people to offer God praise, and to nurture and equip them for ministry. Plurality in the pew forces a church to ask of its worship not "Does this conform to our tradition?" but "Is this Christian?" The single most important factor in Protestant worship today is that it is in dialogue with more than its own tradition, seeking to respond to the heritage of Christian worship in a way which will equip the saints for ministry.

works have inspired and provided guidance for worship leadership in churches of the liturgical center. Those responsible for these important resources still represent the largest group of Protestant scholars and liturgical theologians in the professional society known as the North American Academy of Liturgy.
³ Documents on the Liturgy, 1963-1979: Conciliar, Papal, and Curial Texts. Ed. by International Commission on English in the Liturgy (Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press, 1982).
⁴ This cooperation is most apparent nationally at the North American Academy of Liturgy, and internationally at Societas Liturgica. Though membership in these groups is still predominantly Roman Catholic, the commitment of study is to the liturgy of the church catholic. Many of the people providing leadership in Protestant liturgical renewal are members of these organizations.

65 - Protestant Worship Today

II

The second greatest factor having an impact upon Protestant worship is the move to restore Scripture to a central place in worship. A curious thing has occurred in Protestant worship. In a tradition whose watchword was Sola Scriptura, Scripture was being read only to reinforce what the preacher had to say, thereby becoming more optional than central in worship. The popularity of topical preaching, the pressure of the civil and denominational program calendar, and the desire to be a polished and entertaining speaker caused preachers to be more and more sparse with the portions of Scripture used in worship, Scripture texts often became a springboard for diving into the preacher's subject, rather than one of the instruments through which God addresses a worshiping community. As a result, less and less Scripture was being read.

The average Protestant congregation has been fortunate to have a responsive reading (usually a highly edited selection from the back of a hymnal, generally a Psalm) and one Scripture lesson, the text for the sermon. The appearance of The Common Lectionary has had a significant impact on this situation. The rapid adoption of this three-year cycle of biblical lessons for use in Sunday worship is nothing short of astounding.

Shortly after publication of the Roman lectionary, Ordo Lectionum Missae (1969 and 1980), a modification of the schedule of Sunday Scripture readings was incorporated into the table of readings in The Worshipbook, the service book published by three Presbyterian churches in 1970.⁵ Lutheran, Episcopal, United Methodist, Disciples, and United Church of Christ denominations in the United States and their related bodies in Canada followed with similar actions within the next decade. In 1979, the Consultation on Common Texts ⁶ met to assess the usefulness of the Roman lectionary in these Protestant traditions, and to determine what should be done to harmonize and revise it for broader use in the church. The Consultation agreed to work for as much consensus as possible concerning the lessons in the three-year lectionary. It also agreed to work to develop a commonly accepted calendar, a schedule of psalmody, and a common glossary of worship terminology. A working-body was then appointed to produce a revised lectionary which would correct some imbalances in the way the earlier lectionary had used the Old Testament, as well as work toward these other concerns. The product of that committee appeared in 1984 under the title

⁵ The Joint Committee on Worship for Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church in the United States, The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, The Worshipbook (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972).
⁶ The Consultation on Common Texts originated in the mid-1960s with the goal of providing commonly accepted English texts for the Lord's Prayer, the creeds, canticles, and invariable prayers of the Roman Mass.

66 - Protestant Worship Today

Common Lectionary.- The Lectionary Proposed by the Consultation on Common Texts.⁷

The impact of this lectionary cannot be overstated. In denominations of the liturgical center, pastors have been free to use the lectionary, or have been constrained to be more thoughtful about the way in which they use Scripture in worship and how they approach their selection of texts for reading and preaching. The use of the lectionary as a way to organize the Sunday service has restored Scripture to a central place in Protestant worship.

Today, with a common table of readings in a commonly agreed upon calendar for the Christian year, it is not unusual to find cities where Protestant churches of varying denominations as well as Roman Catholic churches are using the same lessons in worship. As these Christians interact and converse in their day-to-day lives, they are discovering a unity in their worship that transcends historic boundaries and divisions, a unity of commitment to the centrality of Jesus Christ as witnessed to in Scripture.

The lectionary has also affected preaching. Fifteen years ago, students were asking professors of homiletics: "Why bother to preach? Why not just celebrate?" What lay behind this query was an undefined criticism of the preaching that students had been hearing and of the sterility that emerges in worship when everything is word-oriented and instrumental to preaching the sermon. Today, pastors are gathering in communities across denominational lines to study lections for the coming week. Sermon preparation is emerging out of exegetical groups. Theological traditions are encountering one another in the study of the Scripture motivated out of pastoral concern and a need to proclaim the Word in a larger worship setting.

Publishers have not missed the commercial opportunity, and the market has been well supplied with homiletical and liturgical resources. At first, there was a flood of "canned" sermons, but as time has passed, these have proved unacceptable, and, for the most part, have left the scene. Publishing houses are now offering a body of secondary literature in the form of commentaries and liturgical resources.⁸ These are being written by leaders in biblical and liturgical scholarship to help pastors in their task of preaching biblically in the worshiping community. As ministers work with these tools, weaving them into the counterpoint of

⁷ Consultation on Common Texts, Common Lectionary: The Lectionary Proposed by the Consultation on Common Texts (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1984). This should not be confused with the earlier publication by the National Council of Churches of Christ document entitled An Inclusive Language Lectionary, which was an attempt to translate texts from the common lectionary, avoiding masculine predominate language.
⁸ Fortress Press led the way with Proclamation which is now in a third edition. The Liturgical Conference's "Homily Service: An Ecumenical Resource for Sharing the Word" is exceptional in its exegetical and homiletic approach to texts. Abingdon's Preaching the New Common Lectionary is another example of first class material now being published to assist pastors.

67 - Protestant Worship Today

parish life, the result is a new generation of preaching that is exegetical rather than topical, sacramental rather than theatrical. Sermons, of course, will always differ according to the gifts, competence, and discipline of the individual preacher. But in a remarkable way, the whole enterprise of preaching in Protestantism today is far more healthy, vital, and biblically responsible than twenty or thirty years ago.

III

A third major development in Protestant worship is the recovery of the Christian year. Historically, the church has observed time either through a weekly cycle oriented around the idea of Sabbath, or a yearly cycle which gradually developed as the church reworked the Jewish festival cycles, integrating them with the festivals of the incarnation and the resurrection. The Reformers of the sixteenth century trimmed the florid calendar of the Middle Ages to five evangelical feast days: Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, shunning the observance of liturgical seasons. Varying influences of "High Church," Puritanism, anti-Romanism, and Sabbatarianism all worked their influence on how Protestants observed time, so that by the mid-point of this century the Christian year had virtually disappeared, leaving only the civil calendar and denominational program concerns to shape the content of Sunday morning. The baleful effect of this upon preaching has already been cited. Needless to say, this dynamic also had an effect upon other elements of Protestant worship, shaping the rhythm of sacramental celebration and the content of anthems, hymns, prayers, and leadership in worship. The Common Lectionary has helped recover the Christian year as an annual cycle in which the weekly cycle of Lord's day commemoration occurs, creating a celebration of Christ' in time: from incarnation (Advent-Christmas- Epiphany) through passion, death, and resurrection (Lent-Easter), and Christ's continuing presence in the church (Pentecost) until he comes again (Advent). Yet, this annual cycle remains subservient to the primacy of the Lord's Day as the time for the proclamation of the Gospel in word and sacrament. The calendar has helped Protestant churches order their worship-life after the pattern of Jesus Christ's life and ministry, rather than by civil time, ecumenical observance, or church program concerns, though each may still be appropriately recognized within the cycle.

IV

The fourth important event in Protestant liturgical renewal is the recovery of sacraments as integral to worship on the Lord's Day. Though the churches of the liturgical center have professed a theology in which sacraments are "means of grace" and occasions for encounter with God in moments of divine self-giving, in fact, a word-oriented theology has dominated Protestant worship. As this century has experienced the limitation of words, the demise of linguistic philosophy, and moves into

68 - Protestant Worship Today

what philosophers are now calling the "post-modern world,"⁹ people in congregations have expressed a hunger for experience of God's presence beyond what they receive through words. At the same time, the church is coming to the end of a period when baptism has been administered almost as any citizen's right in a so-called Christian society. There is an awareness that the church is living in a post-Christian world where its stewardship of the sacrament of baptism has been poor. It is not accidental that the question of who should receive the Lord's Supper has continued to occupy the attention of denominational committees, pastors, and church members. This simply reflects a real confusion on the part of church members, pastors, and some theologians concerning baptism. The influx of the baptismal theology of the liturgical left has made an impact upon the situation, leaving many with two theologies of baptism.¹⁰ The rationalism of the twentieth century concerning symbol and the notion of egalitarianism in American culture have domesticated the Lord's Supper into a devotional memory exercise that any who may feel so moved may enjoy, regardless of their baptismal status or willingness to assume baptismal responsibility.

In response to this, denominations have been studying both baptism and the Lord's Supper, as well as preparing appropriate liturgical materials which conform to theological understandings of the sacraments. As this has occurred, two major things are emerging. First, both baptism and the Lord's Supper are being taken more seriously as integral to being a member of the body of Christ. Baptism is baptism, regardless of when it is administered, and it is the sacrament of inclusion in the body of Christ. It is more than an act of dedication, requiring discipline in administration and reception. Second, the once-for-all nature of baptism requires the nurture and sustenance of regular and frequent participation in the Lord's Supper. This is being recognized not only by official statements from denominations, but more importantly, by people in the pew. This can be illustrated by what has occurred in the Presbyterian family. Although the Directory for Worship said it was appropriate to observe the Lord's Supper as often as each Lord's Day, in fact, the average Presbyterian congregation in 1961 was doing so only four times a year. Since that time, a major change has occurred, with monthly celebration quickly becoming the norm. At the same time, there is now a serious movement toward weekly celebration.¹¹ Some are suggesting that by the turn of the century, a major portion of Presbyte-

⁹ Diogenes Allen, "The Restoration of Sacramentality in a Post-Modern World," Reformed Liturgy and Music (Louisville: Office of Worship, Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.), Vol. XIX, no. 2 (Spring, 1985), pp. 85-89.
¹⁰ Cf. "Directory for Worship," The Book of Order (The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 1982), Chap. V, especially section 20.02.
¹¹ Harold M. Daniels, "Weekly Eucharist Among Presbyterians," Reformed Liturgy and Music (Louisville: Office of Worship, Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., Vol. XIX, no. I (Winter, 1985), pp. 18-23.

69 - Protestant Worship Today

rian congregations will be observing word and sacrament as outlined in The Worshipbook each Lord's Day. A parallel movement to weekly celebration of the Lord's Supper is taking place within the Methodist Church, the Lutheran family, and the United Church of Canada.

V

A fifth area of renewal is in music. Protestants are rediscovering the Psalter as a book for singing. The lectionary's inclusion of a table of psalms to be used in conjunction with the three lessions for the day has brought a resurgence of interest in psalmody. Here the historic role of psalms as the people's sung praise is being reintroduced to the whole church. Roman Catholics have produced large portions of new material as they have rushed to help their people learn to sing in the liturgy. The quality is often mixed, but much of the new material is good. Lutherans have led the way for Protestants in their Lutheran Book of Worship. New forms of singing psalms are emerging. Whereas the choice once was between Gregorian chant, Anglican chant, and metrical psalmody, musical forms are emerging in which a choir or soloist can sing the psalm text, while the congregation responds with a sung antiphon based upon a phrase within the text itself, or another passage of Scripture. Fr. Joseph Gelineau is well known for his composition of The Grail Gelineau Psalter¹² which contains all one-hundred-fifty Psalms and eighteen scriptural songs (canticles). Protestant liturgical musicians are adapting that style and developing psalms which can be sung in multiple worship settings from family worship to the Service for the Lord's Day. Metrical psalmody remains important, and work is being done to recover this rich Protestant heritage, as task forces work responsibly to alter older texts to make them inclusive and contemporary. New metrical texts are being written to be sung to well known hymn tunes. Sung praise is returning as the ministry of all the people, not just for a choir loft or a chosen few.

This is leading to a larger reconsideration of the place and use of music in Christian worship. The classification sacred music has never really been appropriate to the church. Historically, it is a musical form which developed in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries for the theatre. Its thrust is theatrical rather than doxotogical, and for edification or entertainment rather than prayer or proclamation. As such, it often works against the purposes of Christian worship, and seems out of place on Sunday morning. However, as most musicians in Protestant churches have been trained to be either performers or educators, training others for performance, these musical forms have been drawn into the sanctuary. The positive side of this is that within denominations many professional organizations for church musicians

¹² Joseph Gelineau, The Grail/Gelineau Psalter, J. Robert Carroll, ed. (Chicago: G.I.A. Publications, Inc., 1972).

70 - Protestant Worship Today

are emerging to train and set standards for church music.¹³ Increasingly, Protestants are using music in worship to draw people together in corporate praise in psalms or hymns, as another vehicle for the interpretation and proclamation of Scripture, and as another form of corporate prayer.

VI

The sixth major development affecting the worship of Protestant churches is the impact of the leadership of women in the church serving as ordained ministers, liturgists, and lay-readers. Twenty years ago it. was relatively rare to find a congregation where women provided leadership in worship on a weekly basis, much less where they were visible preaching, celebrating the sacraments, and officiating in other acts of liturgical ministry. Today, especially in multiple staff ministries, it is unusual not to find women taking such a leadership role. Not only has this further strengthened the historic principle of the priesthood of all believers through dramatic and vivid illustration, it has also sensitized the church to the language it uses to talk about God and to address and speak about the human community.

The debate about language has been in progress now for about fifteen years. The conservative side of the house tends to see this as a tempest in a liturgical teapot, insisting that "man" is inclusive of both male and female. On the other hand Paul Shilling speaks for many of us when he writes:

Often when we say that language isn't important we mean that the language in question is not hurting us. In such cases, we need to develop enough sensitivity to the feelings of others to imagine ourselves in their place. If we do this, we discover that many worshipers are offended by [gender) exclusive language. Concern for all members of the body of Christ will prompt action to remove such impediments to true community and reality in worship . . . Christians who may not feel personally threatened by masculine language can hardly be content to have devoted members of the Christian community estranged in the very act of corporate worship that should bind them together. ¹⁴

The longer liturgists struggle with this the more they discover that the critical question is not "is the text void of masculine pronouns or dominant imagery," but rather, "does the language of the text include not only both sexes, but also all races, social classes, and age groupings?"

The more difficult area of discussion over language has to do with the language used to talk about God. Here, fierce debate is in progress

¹³ One outstanding example of such an organization is PAM, The Presbyterian Association of Musicians, which sponsors annual worship and music conferences as well as continuing consultation with musicians and liturgical theologians. Its journal Reformed Liturgy and Music, continues to make a major contribution to the continuing education of musicians and pastors alike.
¹⁴ S. Paul Schilling, The Faith We Sing (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), p. 21.

71 - Protestant Worship Today

between ideologues from both sides of the aisle. Initial attempts to avoid the use of "Father" by addressing the first person of the God-head as "Creator" reveal severe deficiencies in trinitarian theology. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer is not what the church means by One God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Attempts to avoid personal pronouns when referring to God in preaching and other liturgical texts forces one to talk about God in the passive-a notion no one wants to affirm. Marianne Micks is surely correct when she writes, "We need to insist that only personal pronouns are adequate. God is never an it."¹⁵ She issues a call, not to exclude masculine references to God, but to begin to recover and employ the rich heritage of feminine references which have been overlooked in scripture.¹⁶ The debate is far from over, and nothing but tentative answers are available. However, between the extremes, a consensus is emerging which says that the church must strive to discover language about God which is as intentionally diverse and varied as the biblical witness and the church's theological traditions. As evangelism continues to be pressed as an agenda, the church finds itself searching for language which may be used in such a way that each member of the human community will feet included and equally cherished before God. The results of this conviction will be felt in the new materials being developed for worship. The impact on hymns, prayers, creeds, baptismal formulas, benedictions, preaching, and even Bible translations promises to be a major source of controversy well into the last decade of this century.

VII

The seventh major development within Protestant worship is the publication of new service books, hymnals, and other worship materials. The Episcopal Church led the way with its revision of The Book of Common Prayer. Its new ecumenical hymnal is in the final stages of editorial work prior to publication. Lutherans quickly added strength to the movement in 1978, with the publication of a new service book hymnal, known as the Lutheran Book of Worship. Presbyterians and Methodists in the United States, and the churches which formed the United Church of Canada, bad been at work on developing new materials, but the agenda of denominational merger and reorganization occurred in the midst of this work, creating an opportunity for introducing much needed new material. Denominational mergers, unions, and reunions opened the door for liturgical renewal. New churches need new resources which more adequately reflect the inclusive nature of the new body. Such an occasion has been an opportunity for the work of liturgical scholarship to be felt at official denominational levels and

¹⁵ Marianne M. Micks, The Joy of Worship (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982), pp. 21, 39-45; see also John M. Mulder, "A Non-Sexist Style Guide," Theology Today, 34 (1978), pp. 444-47.
¹⁶ Micks, op. cit., pp. 40ff.

72 - Protestant Worship Today

work its way out into congregations. Two such mergers in the United States illustrate how this has occurred.

In 1968, the merger forming the United Methodist Church opened the door for a major liturgical renewal in that church. The 1970 General Conference of the United Methodist Church authorized its Commission on Worship to begin work on supplemental worship resources which "would provide alternatives that more fully reflect developments in the contemporary ecumenical church." ¹⁷ This led the 1972 and 1976 General Conferences to authorize the Board of Discipleship "to develop standards and resources for the conduct of public worship in the churches."¹⁸ The series of publications known as Supplemental Worship Resources began to appear. In 1972, an alternate text for the Lord's supper emerged, followed by liturgical texts for baptism and confirmation, a new basic pattern of Sunday service, a new rite for marriage and the funeral, as well as resources for the Christian year. In 1980, these services were revised and published in one collection entitled We Gather Together.¹⁹ Shortly thereafter, At the Lord's Table ²⁰ appeared in print. A part of the SWR series, it was the natural extension of the United Methodist Church's commitment to the basic pattern of Sunday worship of word and table, and it provides texts for twenty-two eucharistic prayers to be used as seasonal or pastoral circumstances require. In 1981, Songs of Zion ²¹ was released as a songbook which would make available to churches music from black religious traditions.

In 1958, a merger formed the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, giving birth to a New Directory for Worship which was adopted in 1961. Initiated out of a felt need for a new Book of Common Worship ²² the directory led to a new service book, The Worshipbook,²³ published in 1970 (hymnal edition, 1972). A joint venture of three Presbyterian churches, this was a conscious effort to develop a service book which would be faithful to Presbyterian traditions, obey constitutional mandates, and be ecumenical in its scope. The hymnal has experienced limited success, but the service book was widely accepted, making major changes in the way Presbyterians worship. Because of time-bound prose which soon wore thin, pastors found themselves drawn to the order of The Worshipbook while searching other places for a richer vocabulary of prayer. This set the stage for a

¹⁷ At the Lord's Table, Supplemental Worship Resources 9 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 198 1), p. 4.
¹⁸ 1976 Book of Discipline, The United Methodist Church, Par. 1316.2.
¹⁹ We Gather Together, Supplemental Worship Resource 10 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1980).
²⁰ Op. cit.
²¹ Songs of Zion, Supplemental Worship Resources 12 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981).
²² See the Report of the Committee on Common Worship to the 172nd General Assembly, Minutes of the 172nd General Assembly (Philadelphia: Office of the General Assembly, 1960), pp. 141-164.
²³ Op. cit.

73 - Protestant Worship Today

major liturgical renewal effort for Presbyterians, the Supplemental Liturgical Resources series.

The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and the Presbyterian Church in the United States (widely, but unofficially, known as the "Southern" church) were in conversations which would later lead to reunion. In 1980, both churches approved a project to prepare a new service book which would include a psalter, hymns, and other worship aids. Following the strategy of the United Methodist Church's Supplemental Worship Resources series, this project has begun with the publication of service books in paperback, for trial use throughout the church. Task forces are at work to produce a major new service book for the last decade of this century. At present, The Service for the Lord's Day and Holy Baptism have been published for trial use.²⁴ Work continues on a psalter, daily prayer, funeral, marriage, the liturgical year, the Christmas cycle, the paschal cycle, ministry to the sick and dying, the lectionary, and ordination resources. A major committee has been appointed to compile a new hymnal for the church, which will attempt to be sensitive to the needs of the diverse membership of the new Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), while including appropriate service music and hymns which use inclusive language.

The reunion of the two Presbyterian churches led to a new constitution whose directory for worship was, sadly, a last minute effort once reunion became a serious possibility. As a result, one of the first tasks of the new denomination has been the writing of a completely new directory to regulate its worship life. At present, a Task Force on a New Directory for Worship is at work to complete the first draft of that constitutional document by mid-1986. This promises to reflect the work of the liturgical renewal movement, take seriously the centrality of word and sacrament as the locus of worship for the Lord's day, be intentional about the catholicity of the worship of the church, and recognize the broad diversity of peoples and styles of worship within the new denomination. In many ways, its work will represent a culmination of all that has been taking place in the renewal of Protestant worship during this century.

VIII

Space does not allow for a discussion of many other aspects of renewal in Protestant worship, such as the emergence of dance, drama, and other arts forms in worship, the inclusion of children as critical in the worshiping community, the appropriation of the worship forms of ethnic and minority groups as a way of enriching the worship of the broader church, the impact of the women's movement with its dual concerns for inclusive language and language about God, the new emphasis upon

²⁴ Service For the Lord's Day," Supplemental Liturgical Resources (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984); and, "Holy Baptism," Supplemental Liturgical Resources 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985).

74 - Protestant Worship Today

ritual action and movement, the impact of the charismatic movement upon the worship of churches in the liturgical center, and, of course, the counter movements of those who respond by reaching back to a different era of their traditions. As is always the case with any renewal movement, its impact causes counter movements in the most tradition-bound quarters where people grow even stronger in their attachment to variations on an earlier way of doing things.

What is going on in Protestant worship is a search for ways to continue work on the agenda set at the time of the Reformation. In approaching the task, those responsible for liturgical renewal are asking two questions: "Is it Christian?" and "Is it equipping the saints for their ministry?" These are the questions by which worship reforms should be evaluated.