True Worship

Rating:
Summary: Professor Hustad Rings a Bell for Worship!
Review: Having an advantage of being under Dr. Hustad's influence for over thirty years, we have witnessed his integrity of sacred choral and organ music used in worthy worship of eternal God. Regardless of one's chosen Church or Denomination there are no such strictly traditional requirements set forth in Hustad's True Worship as noted in the other reviews. Only one of the three reviews gives an accurate appraisal of Don's distinction between traditional and contemporary worship.

He clearly stated in his classes at Southern, accepted by most of his students, the definition of Contemporary Iconoclasm. I am suggesting that could be rather prickly wording to prompt such an emotional response to his definiton of Iconoclasm. During his written discussion of Contemporary Music in Chapter 8 he refers to Robert Webber's book, Worship Is a Verb:"Worship is something we do and not something that service leaders...do for us." This has been one obvious case of division among Southern Baptists with a newness of creative worship as used in some CBF Churches or Cooperative Baptist Fellowship!

I have heard Don do his Hymn Festival on the Vision of Isaiah in Appendix III a number of times. The first time was in the early 1980's for a cosmopolitan group of South Carolina Ministers. This was an awesome time of worship when all the 30-40 various ministers responded with prayers, testimonies or solos. Just as in two Sunday evening church service, he guided those several contemporary hymns from the piano, including How Great Thou Art, Kum Bah Yah, Medema songs, Come Let Us Reason, and Lord, Listen to Your Children Praying. For each time focused on contemporary worship, Don seemed sincerely guided by integrity immersed in the Presence of the Holy Spirit's Leadership.

I am still in an such an inimate relationship of appreciative reverence, no matter where I am influenced by this Christian Gentleman.
Retired Chaplain Fred W. Hood

Rating:
Summary: Donald, Your Bias is Showing
Review: The idea for his book is probably a good one. Hustad wonders how far we should go in trying to attract non-traditional elements of society to church via more contemporary service styles (I hesitate to call all he discussed "worship"). He questions the wisdom of replacing time-honored traditions for new. He bemoans the often wholesale abandonment of traditional liturgy (what he calls "iconoclastic change") in order to attract larger numbers to our churches. However, I think his motivation for questioning the change is frequently misplaced and contrary to the quotes of jacket contributors, Hustad is anything but objective when considering contemporary services. There are several postions espoused by Hustad that dilute his message and expose his personal agenda: 1) Hustad appears to believe that traditional worship styles must be correct merely because they are traditional. In his perspective of "traditional", church worship history started about 200 years ago in the US, and in this form it was it was completely pure. He seems completely oblivious to other countries, other cultures, other traditions, and the previous waves of "iconoclastic change" (i.e., what happened to the monk's chants and other pre-17th century church music?) in Christian history. He fails to justify the his preferred "traditional" form of worship from the Bible, but tries to point out that many contemporary style hallmarks are often based on only a few verses from the Bible. At least that is a few more than he raised in support of his position. 2)Hustad evidently believes that the only reason that churches have gone to contemporary worship forms is to get certain elements of society (quite obviously "undesirables" from Hustad's descriptions of them) into the church for the sake of church growth. He suggests everything "contemporary" is primarily based on the Willow Creek model, which, while well known, is not the stereo-typical contemporary worship-styled church. Hustad does not acknowldge that a reason for change may be to renew worship - to help people worship more honestly and earnestly. To be fair to Willow Creek, even they did not change to grow, but to bring people to Christ. 3)Hustad makes a broad-brush classification that all contemporary services are further just "seeker" events (like Willow Creek's Sunday service). He has personally visited few contemporary churches and instead relies heavily on limited second hand information about them. He claims that there is less participation in contemporary services. He also claims contemporary churches recruit professionals for the "band" whereas traditional services don't. Many in contemporary churches could rightly testify to the contrary. 4) Hustad is largely negative to the Charismatic Renewal movement. His descriptions of Charismatic Renewal churches are often contradictory (they are characterized by "a strong focus on Jesus", then claiming that the songs are imbalanced and "mostly directed to God the Father"). He has little to no first hand knowledge. 5)Hustad's view of contemporary worship music seems to be that of the popularized 1970's choruses. Many of the early choruses were simple and highly repetitive, and some of these remain popular in initial attempts by traditional churches to add contemporary flavor. However, there are many more involved and broad modern "hymns" and contemporary worship songs that go much further. Hustad is apparently unaware that "contemporary" is moving, and that there is a huge variety of music therein. 6)Finally, Hustad has a love for "higher" music forms, as he calls them, like classical, complex choral, and organ music. He cannot seem to understand that his judgment of "better church music" is not necessarily that of others. He cannot seem to conceive that God could actually be pleased with heart-felt simple, modern compositions. Hustad further seems oblivious that early worship forms from the nation of Israel and the early church were almost certainly somewhat simple and "folk-ish" - not "complex." Hustad seems to make a plea for blended services, but only as a consolation to enable churches to at least restore some of his cherished traditional liturgy. Hustad has an important point: some amount of tradition helps him, and many others, to worship. But his motivations and rationale are disconcerting. Is he more worried about form and his cherished "higher music" than in pleasing God and in reaching the lost?

Hustad's biblical perspectives are quite limited and his findings on biblical worship are not very thorough. In applying a single motive to the reason for change to contemporary music styles, he also indicated he had little understanding of where people are in today's society, including believers. As a result, Hustad largely misunderstands the potential benefits of change as they relate to renewal and personal faith. While Hustad did give a fairly good high-level description of what it means to worship "in spirit and in truth" (chapter 1), there is little of this in his subsequent chapters. He seldom mentioned doing things for God's glory. Nor did he seem happy that people were coming to Christ out of attempts to make worship more contemporary and accessible. Rather, he was too focused on losing the organ, the choir or his favorite hymns. Ritual was elevated to a level that appeared to exceed the need for an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Further evidence of Hustad's lack of understanding of "spirit worship" is readily found in the chapter titles (as well as content) - 80% have "truth" in the title, only 1 has "spirit." Hustad fails to use Jesus' guide in judging the contemporary church music phenomenon - the fruit. While he asks a valid question on what role traditional styles should play and how much change should occur, he is too close to his cherished traditions to objectively evaluate the fruit of each in today's culture. The balance is not found in this book, unfortunately.

Rating:
Summary: A Narrow View
Review: Unfortunately, I found this book to be very narrow and judgmental in its approach to worship. The thorough scriputral insights promised in the dust jacket never materialized and the author had little good to say about anything but hymns. The judgments against contemporary worship seemed to have everything to do with preference as opposed to ministry and true worship.

Sadly, this book is very narrow minded and unhelpful to those whoare looking for how to make worship relevant, accessible and God-honoring.