A call for a new Reformation in the church: Worship, regulative or normative?

Now we come to the “how” of worship. We have identified at a very surface level the “who” we worship and the “why” we worship Him. So what does that look like, what are the practical ramifications of this identification? There are two primary schools of thought here, the regulative and the normative principle. The basic definitions are as follows (I know these are rough definitions)

The Regulative Principle of Worship: Only what is expressly commanded in worship is to be permitted and practiced.

The Normative Principle of Worship: Only what is specifically prohibited should be rejected from worship.

Many people in the Reformed school tend toward the regulative principle. So that is naturally where I would come down. Fie on those electric guitars and power point! But in the sage words of ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso: Not so fast my friend!

First is the regulative principle of worship Biblical? I mean it certainly sounds Biblical and lots of Reformed types get really agitated about it. What Christian wouldn’t agree in principle that we should worship as dictated by the Bible? But there are a lot of steps to take before you can say: this is the way we are to worship in the New Covenant church based exclusively on the Scriptural dictates.

Second, is it really regulated by Scripture or by tradition? The reason I ask that is not to be difficult or smarmy (well, maybe a little smarmy) But when you dig deeper into it, a lot of what people think of as being regulative in the Scriptures really isn’t. Case in point:

Terry Johnson wrote a piece about idolatry in worship for Tabletalk titled Pluralistic Worship and I think he inadvertently demonstrates the exact sort of behavior that he is decrying.

Has the time come when the sanctuaries of evangelical Protestantism must be cleansed of everything that reflects the world of entertainment? Our Reformed forefathers took axes to the altars, and they whitewashed the walls of medieval churches. If our analysis of worship that entertains is correct, similar iconoclastic fury must be shown, and soon, in our houses of worship lest they become houses of mirth: theater seats pulled out; stages broken up; dancers and actors banished; musicians' and choirs' roles redefined as that of simply supporting and enhancing congregational singing; pulpit, table, and font restored to their proper places; pastors moved back behind pulpits; and simple services of the Word read, preached, sung, prayed, and seen (in the sacraments) reestablished. What was once indifferent can be considered indifferent no more, not if Reformed Protestantism is to continue to practice purity in its worship and avoid idolatry. "Little children," says the apostle John, "keep yourselves from idols" (1 John 5:21).


Irony alert! Perhaps the idols are not just contemporary music and stools in place of pulpits. In decrying these ruffians with their modern music, he is affirming a return to a system and structure that is all tradition and no Scripture. Where is the pulpit in the Bible? You would think that Paul wore robes, led a liturgical service and preached a 45 minute sermon from behind a wooden pulpit. In other words, he is casting aside one sort of manmade worship service in favor of another manmade worship service and don’t you dare stray out from behind that pulpit!

There is a great deal to be said about this question of how we worship God. In fairness I get what Mr. Johnson is saying, worship should not be about entertaining the people sitting in the pews. Our object of worship, our focus of worship is Christ alone. But we need to approach this very, very carefully before pronouncing anathemas on those who worship in a way that doesn’t jive with our church traditions.

First we should be very cautious in how we apply the Scriptures here. Nadab and Abihu were not engaged in New Testament worship, but were engaged in Old Covenant, pre-cross worship that was very specifically laid out. We are reading through Exodus as a family, and the care and attention to detail given for the construction of the tabernacle is similar to the very specific, very clear directions in the rest of the Pentateuch regarding the temple worship system. The Old Testament is very specific in the how, where, when of worshipping God.

But we no longer worship in a temple, we no longer have a sacrificial system. Therein lies the problem. We no longer worship in the same manner as the Israelites did, so we can only apply limited guidelines of Old Covenant worship to the New Covenant church. There are not clear lines of equivalency between forms and styles in the Old and New. The biggest problem is that the New Testament itself is very vague on worship, talking quite a bit about the meaning of worship and some of the basics (fellowship, singing, praying, breaking bread) but very little in terms of specifics (what music to use, how the service should be ordered, where the worship should be held).

There is always a danger that the motivation behind church practices is not to be more faithful but instead is to separate ourselves from “those people”. This happens in all denominations and church traditions. You see it in Baptist churches where they gripe about churches that don’t do “altar calls” as being opposed to evangelism. Charismatics who question the authenticity of your salvation if you don’t exhibit “sign gifts”. Presbyterian churches where rigid adherence to the proper confessions, liturgies and worship traditions sets you apart. All designed to show that by the way we worship, we are the ones truly following Christ and therefore you aren’t. Denomination after denomination after denomination has made their claim to be the one that is truly exhibiting Biblical worship. The problem is that Biblical worship is not so easily defined.

The New Testament is awfully vague about the specific of worship, of how it should look. We read descriptions that tells us a few things about what occurred in the church: prayer, teaching, singing of psalms, spiritual songs and hymns, fellowship, the breaking of bread, service and discipline. But that gives us a lot of latitude in how and where we worship.

There is a potential danger, a very serious one, in the regulative principle of worship because it makes laws and commands where none exist. The New Testament does not proscribe an order of worship, or even that we worship in a particular kind of place. We tread on thin ice when we try to apply Old Testament temple worship commands to a New Testament church fellowship. There is a place for and a need for the holding of truths, but we should not let that be an excuse to enact barriers to worship for the sake of enacting barriers. I am not advocating a free for all in worshiping the One whom the angels surround and cry “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty” Some expressions of worship are inappropriate not because they fail to follow the proper liturgy but because they fail to express worship of the Sovereign Lord of the universe, and instead become man-pleasing, self-exalting idolatrous mockeries.

I don’t much care for contemporary Christian music. I don’t much like the use of PowerPoint during sermons. I really don’t like “special music” and I really, really don’t like it when people applaud during worship. But are any of these things specifically proscribed for worship? Not that I see. Should we just sing Psalms? I ask the question that I always ask, is there command or example in the New Testament. Lets look at two examples where Paul uses basically the same language to describe the same event.

addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, (Eph 5:19)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Col 3: 16)

Some would say that this is just referring to the different types of psalms, but I think that is a stretch. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just say singing psalms, I would think that would be comprehensive enough. I fear that exclusive psalmody, while not something I have studied as closely as I should, is an example of applying a manmade rule to the Word. It is my understanding that Calvin, in his commentary on Col 3:16 also rejects the exclusive psalmody argument that these are three ways of saying "Psalms".

A gathering of believers in a home is not less a valid or a more valid expression of Christian fellowship than a gathering in a church with a liturgical, Psalter hymnal only, no piano service. We can follow every rule, real and imagined and still not be in spiritual worship of Christ. The pendulum can easily swing too far in either direction, either overly exuberant, truth devoid emergent style worship of an amorphous Jesus or a rigid, spirit-less liturgy. There is nothing wrong with liturgy or with exuberance as long as our worship is tempered and balanced. A key clue appears in John 4 and the woman at the well.

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4: 23-24)

That is a very important passage. The woman at the well has questioned Jesus about where worship should take place. The importance of worship, not to stretch this verse too far from it’s context, is in worshipping the Father through the Son in the Spirit not merely based on religious forms (worship here and not there).

John Frame examines this entire concept in a helpful essay,
A fresh look at the Regulative Principle, and asserts that there are two types of regulative principle, one being the more broadly based one found in Scripture and another that far more restrictive, which Dr. Frame finds both unhelpful and unsupportable in Scripture.

The discussion above, in my view, is a fairly complete statement of the regulative principle, both as it is found in the Bible and in the explicit statements of the Reformed confessional standards. But to those who have studied the traditional discussions of the regulative principle, it will seem rather sketchy. In those discussions, Reformed thinkers have labored over concepts like elements, parts, substance, essence, accident, forms, expressions, and circumstances (further subdivided into circumstances with and without religious significance, and those necessary and unnecessary to the orderly conduct of worship). In my opinion, these concepts are not helpful, and using them to add further restrictions to the broad regulative principle is not scriptural. In this part of my essay, I will describe those additional restrictions and explain why I object to them.

Dr. Frame' essay is very sober stuff, well worth the reading.

Ultimately the Scriptures give us pretty broad guidelines for fellowship and worship. Is it too much to say that what counts is the object of our worship, the purpose of our worship, the truths of the Gospel far more than the mode of worship, the order of service, the location we worship in? Shouldn’t the measure of our worship be how pleasing it is to God, and is that measured by adherence to forms and strictures that are often manmade at the expense of Biblical worship balanced in Spirit and Truth.

If you meet in a home, worship to the glory of God. If you meet in a school, worship to the glory of God. If you worship in a little country church, worship to the glory of God. If you meet in a shiny new church that seats 2000, worship to the glory of God. If you are worshipping for any reason other than bringing glory to God, it doesn’t matter where or how you worship because it becomes idolatry.