Note: The genesis of this blog post was as a response to a comment on GBOD’s Facebook Group, UMC Worship. The original question was:
I
am intensely passionate about "Ancient-Future" worship a la the late
Robert Webber. To my way of thinking, that is a different thing
altogether than blended worship. Is that accurate? … I'm wondering if
you could comment on the difference between ancient future and blended
worship.
-- Taylor Burton-Edwards
Ancient-future and "blended" are very different kinds of animals, at least as those two terms are usually used.
Ancient-future
reflects the work of really two separate 19th and early 20th century
ecumenical movements that were mostly parallel, and then came to
interact-- the liturgical renewal movement growing out of the
"re-un-earthings" of a lot of early Christian liturgical materials
beginning in the late 19th century (some of which were a matter of
having discovered how to translate some of these early languages again)
PLUS the significant turn in the larger global mission movements toward
what folks like Lesslie Newbigin would popularize as "indigenous
mission."
The
result of the liturgical scholarship-liturgical renewal movements was
we now had a much firmer handle on the basic patterns and practices of
earlier Christian worship, West and East— pre-Middle Ages, pre
Reformation, and in some cases pre-Constantine/ Theodosius. The
discovery and subsequent publication of reams of scholarship on these
texts made it clear that Christians could
be worshiping now far more in line with what early Christians knew and
experienced. This scholarship also made available to many, for the first
time in English, the rich treasury these texts were and could provide.
Parallel
with all of this was the growing awareness in mission circles that
simply trying to import the ecclesiological and liturgical practices of
the "mother country/church" and particularly, simply translating such
texts into the language(s) of the "receiving country" was actually doing
violence to the incarnational nature of the gospel itself. Not to
mention, it didn't really work-- unless, perhaps, you thought having
identical worship worldwide was essential to keeping your empire
together (as Britain certainly thought for a time!). What was needed
instead-- and so what came to be developed-- was to find ways for the
local culture to DO what Christian liturgy was DOING from within their
own idioms and sensibilities-- i.e., do liturgy that is deeply connected
to the patterns of Christians in all times and places-- but that just
as deeply reflects and expresses the lives of the people and cultures
who actually offer it now in real time.
So
we have beginning by the middle of the 20th century multiple instances
of such "ancient-indigenous" liturgical development going on "in the
mission field" (primarily among Protestants) worldwide. And we have, in
the work of people like Lesslie Newbigin and organizations like the
World Council of Churches, what was at the time sort of a gradual
"leaking back to America" of how this was proceeding in various places
around the world.
While
to be fair, there were all sorts of "ancient future" experiments with
liturgy happening pre-Vatican II in the Roman Catholic world, including
in the United States, it was primarily Vatican II that mainstreamed the
process of moving Roman Catholic worship to earlier patterns and more
vernacular expression. Nearly all of the “mainline Protestants” followed
suit, creating new resources for worship now with language and
technologies that speak of now on the same ancient "Basic Pattern of
Worship"-- Entrance, Word/Response, Table, Sending-- that early
Christianity seemed to have followed nearly everywhere, despite great
diversity in local expression in terms of just how they followed it.
“Ancient-Future”
is the term Robert Webber used (and possibly coined) to describe this
confluence of ancient texts and practices with current indigenous
missiology when he sought to explain these things among primarily
Evangelical audiences, particularly folks whose roots were more in the
Reformed and the 19th century holiness and early 20th century
Pentecostal and "free-church" traditions. These persons and traditions,
out of which Webber himself had come, generally had had little if any
introduction to or involvement with the scholarship on early Christian
liturgies OR the more widely ecumenical (and "mainline") movement toward
indigenous mission (and therefore also indigenous liturgy).
While
appeals to “tradition” or “liturgical scholarship” or “ecumenical
mission movements” might have little currency among his primarily
evangelical audiences, the term “Ancient- Future” could ring true.
Evangelicals could appreciate the value of what was ancient-- very close
or at least closer to the time of the Bible-- even if they may have
difficulty with the idea that liturgy might have some fixed written
texts and ritual that mattered. They could also appreciate a drive
toward future-- and not just present-- given the importance eschatology
continued to play as a centerpiece in much of their theology and
preaching, even as it was downplayed very often in "mainline" Protestant
circles.
This
is why one usually finds examples of what gets called "ancient-future"
worship more openly called that among Evangelicals than among mainline
Protestants in the US. I would also suggest that the more or less “free
church” nature of many of these Evangelical traditions may have helped
those who have found Webber's way of talking about these things
appealing to develop worship practices that were at once far more
ancient and far more innovative than examples we may more typically see
in mainline Protestant contexts.
The
principle here, whether called “ancient-future” or something else, is
basically the same. It's about going deep and wide at once-- about
profound rootedness in the ancient (connectedness) and equally profound
commitments to expression here and now (indigenous). It’s about
submitting to old, old patterns (including at times old, old
technologies, such as candles and incense) and at being ready to
incorporate bleeding edge expression at the same time.
As
such, “Ancient Future” worship is more of a “discipline” than a
“style.” It isn't about trying to please preferences or tastes of
worshipers. It about a commitment to offering worship that is both
deeply faithful and deeply relevant at onces. Put another way,
ancient-future is not and done right cannot be a "consumerist" act done
to "attract" others because it suits their tastes. Rather, it's a very
participatory act in which the assembly and its leaders seek to go deep,
following ancient practices of our ancestors in the faith, and at the
same time offer the best we have of ourselves today.
There
are a few instances of this in the United Methodist Church-- but they
are the exception. I would observe they are also the exception in the
ELCA, the Episcopal Church, and AMiA (Anglican Mission in America) as
well, although the liturgies and liturgical sensibilities of these
denominations are typically formed on the “ancient” side of
“ancient-future” at least.
Blended
worship, by contrast, as that term is most typically used, has
generally been marketed (I mean that term!) as a "strategy" for worship
used to try to "please" folks who "prefer" either "contemporary" or
"traditional" worship, but who find themselves in congregations that may
not be able to pull off either of those separately for whatever
reasons. In nearly all the literature I've seen on this strategy over
the years-- mostly generated from within the "church growth consulting
industry”-- “blended worship” has been promoted explicitly as a consumerist strategy, a way to try to “satisfy every customer" at least a little. It has also been presented as a compromise
strategy in the “worship wars” that marketers of the “brands”
"traditional" and "contemporary" created and still, to some degree,
sustain.
But
it represents neither a cease-fire nor a real solution, long term. Nor
can it, when its premises are still, all too often, about making sure
different "market niches" can get some of what they're looking for OUT
of worship. The Bible has a name for worship focused on something other
than offering ourselves to God, as the intense focus on "preference
driven worship style" has become: idolatry.
Biblical
worship by contrast to idolatry focuses on helping all people (not
consumers!) offer (not get and consume!) the best of all their gifts to
God in worship. We are, as Paul reminds, the body of Christ, gifted very
diversely, not so we can get what we want, but so that in the offering
of all of our gifts, including in worship, the body functions as
Christ's body to bless and transform the world.
That's
why I, like my predecessors in Worship office at GBOD, Dan Benedict and Hoyt
Hickman, am fairly adamant about pastors doing what they can to move
congregations away from any approach to worship design and planning that
is about consumerist assumptions and toward an approach to worship that
helps the whole assembly offer its best gifts to God. Call it
"liturgical renewal," or call it "ancient-future" or call it "connected
and indigenous worship"-- this basic approach embodies far better who we
are and whose we are as the body of Christ, connected in a communion of
saints and offering our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God,
than any labels such as “traditional,” “contemporary” or “blended,” can
ever hope to do.