Article: The Freedom of the Regulative Principle by Kevin DeYoung (original source here)

Even though I grew up in a Reformed church, until seminary I was one of the multitude of Christians who had never heard of the regulative principle. It’s not been at the core of my identity. But over the years I’ve come to appreciate the regulative principle more and more.

Simply put, the regulative principle states that “the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself and so limited by his own revealed will” (WCF 21.1). In other words, corporate worship should be comprised of those elements we can show to be appropriate from the Bible. The regulative principles says, “Let’s worship God as he wants to be worshiped.” At its worst, this principle leads to constant friction and suspicion between believers. Christians beat each other up trying to discern exactly where the offering should go in the service or precisely which kinds of instruments have scriptural warrant. When we expect the New Testament to give a levitical lay out of the one liturgy that pleases God, we are asking the Bible a question it didn’t mean to answer. It is possible for the regulative principle to become a religion unto itself.

But the heart of the regulative principle is not about restriction. It is about freedom.

1. Freedom from cultural captivity. When corporate worship is largely left to our own designs we quickly find ourselves scrambling to keep up with the latest trends. The most important qualities become creativity, relevance, and newness. But of course, over time (not much time these days), what was fresh grows stale. We have to retool in order to capture the next demographic. Or learn to be content with settling in as a Boomer church or Gen X church.

2. Freedom from constant battles over preferences. The regulative principles does not completely eliminate the role of opinion and preference. Even within a conservative Reformed framework, worship leaders may disagree about musical style, transitions, volume, tempo, and many other factors. Conflict over preferences will remain even with the regulative principle. But it should be mitigated. I remember years ago at a different church sitting in a worship planning session where people were really good at coming up with new ideas for the worship service. Too good in fact. We opened one service with the theme song from Cheers. Another service on Labor Day had people come up in their work outfits and talk about what they do. Everyone had an idea that seemed meaningful to them. The regulative principle wouldn’t have solved all our problems, but it would have been a nice strainer to catch some well-intentioned, but goofy ideas.

3. Freedom of conscience. Coming out of the Catholic church with its host of extra biblical rituals, newly established Protestant churches had to figure out how to worship in their own way. Some were comfortable keeping many of the elements of the Catholic Mass. Others associated those elements with a false religious system. They didn’t want to go back to the mess of rites they left behind, even if by themselves some rites didn’t seem all that harmful.

This was the dynamic that made the regulative principle so important. Reformed Christians said in effect, “We don’t want to ask our church members to do anything that would violate their consciences.” Maybe bowing here or a kiss there could be justified by some in their hearts, but what about those who found it idolatrous? Should they be asked to do something as an act of worship that Scripture never commands and their consciences won’t allow? This doesn’t mean Christians will like every song or appreciate every musical choice. But at least with the regulative principle we can come to worship knowing that nothing will be asked of us except that which can be shown to be true according to the Word of God.

4. Freedom to be cross cultural. It’s unfortunate most people probably think worship according to the regulative principle is the hardest to transport to other cultures. And this may be true if the regulative principle is mistakenly seen to dictate style as well as substance. But at its best, the regulative principle means we have simple services with singing, praying, reading, preaching, and sacraments–the kinds of services whose basic outline can “work” anywhere in the world.

5. Freedom to focus on the center. Usually when talking about corporate worship I don’t even bring up the regulative principle. It is unknown to many and scary to others. So I try to get at the same big idea from a different angle. I’ll say something like this: “What do we know they did in their Christian worship services in the Bible? We know they sang the Bible. We know that preached the Bible. We know they prayed the Bible. We know they read the Bible. We know they saw the Bible in the sacraments. We don’t see dramas or pet blessings or liturgical dance numbers. So why wouldn’t we want to focus on everything we know they did in their services? Why try to improve on the elements we know were pleasing to God and practiced in the early church?” In other words, the regulative principle gives us the freedom to unapologetically to go back to basics. And stay there.

Article: Worship: A Dialogue Not A Checklist by R. Scott Clark (original source here)

Most of the debate over the so-called “worship wars” for the last 30 years has focused on the disagreement between those who favor a progressive/contemporary style of worship and those who favor a more “traditional” style of worship. One of the reasons why this debate can be so frustrating is that it is really an argument about an essentially subjective matter: style. Think about the arguments in the 1960s between crew-cut wearing Dads and long-haired teen boys or arguments about how to dress for church. Ultimately, these sorts of debates come down to preference. Neither side can make a conclusive argument from an objective authority.

Christians who confess the Reformed theology, piety, and practice, however, have way out of this frustrating cul-de-sac. We confess a principle according to which our public worship services are governed. Calvin spoke of the “rule of worship” (see also the Institutes). Zacharias Ursinus used this language in his lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism. Behind that usage lay Tertullian’s expression “rule of faith,” which he extended to the conduct of the Christian life and worship.1 The biblical, patristic, and Reformed “rule of faith” as applied to worship or the “rule of worship” is that we do in worship only what God commands. When it comes to the rule and when it comes to the elements of worship, preference and taste are irrelevant.

The only place preference enters is relative to the circumstances of worship, e.g., time, place, language, and tunes. Contrary to at least one understanding of circumstance widely held within conservative Presbyterian and Reformed circles, a circumstance is not “whatever helps us worship.” This is a category mistake. By definition a circumstance is that which is necessary by nature and logic. We must gather together in some agreed place. Where we gather is a convention or a matter of preference. We must gather at an agreed time. Again, that is a mater of preference. We must use an agreed language (or provide a translator), and we must use some tune by which to sing. All these are matters of taste or preference.

When it comes, however, to the elements, to the administration of the Word and to the prayers we offer in response to the Word, it is God’s Word not preference that governs or worship. Were we firmly to grasp our principle, our rule of worship, again we should avoid much of the contemporary debate about worship styles and the like. When it comes to the elements, to the administration of the Word and to the congregation response to the Word, the only question is: what has God commanded?

Within the divinely commanded administration of the Word and the authorized response by God’s people there is a biblical and historic pattern to be observed, a pattern which is sometimes lost. That pattern is sometimes described as the “dialogical principle.” This is not something that was discussed at length in the older writers. It is an expression I learned from my Professor of Practical Theology, Derke Bergsma, in 1984. According to J. D. Benoit (1958), at the dedication of the Chapel at Torgau, Luther explained, “…worship is at once a dialogue and an act of praise…. The event which we call worship…consists simply in this, that our well-beloved Lord himself speaks to us by his Holy Word, and we, for our part, speak to him by our prayers and our hymns of praise.”

Luther was following the biblical pattern of call and response. Some years ago I wrote: God established a dialogic pattern of worship in the history of salvation. God speaks, and his people respond with praise and thanksgiving. Psalm 18 is a classic example of this pattern, in which the Psalmist recounts God’s mighty saving acts for his king and people and then responds with joyful, submissive reverence in v. 50, “Therefore I will praise you among the nations, O LORD; I will sing praises to your name.” This dialogic pattern is fundamental to biblical worship.

According to this pattern, God has the first word in worship. After all, God spoke creation into being. God the Son is the Word. Creation and redemption begin with God’s Word and so our services begin with a call to worship from God’s Word, an invocation (e.g., the minister quotes Ps 124:8) and Greeting from God (e.g., Rom 1:7), followed by a response by God’s people from his Word (e.g., the singing of Psalm 100). We read God’s Law (e.g., Ex 20:3–17; Matt 22:37–40) confess our sins and rejoice in the declaration of God’s grace toward his people (Pss 51, 32). The Word is also administered in confessions of faith, which are appropriate responses to God’s declaration of pardon from his Word. In response to the Gospel, out of gratitude, we give alms (1 Cor 16:1–3),2 and, since prayer is the chief part of thankfulness (Heidelberg 116), we offer our hearts in thankful prayer. God speaks to us in the sermon (e.g., Second Helvetic Confession ch. 1) and we respond, with his Word, in worship and praise. God has the last word in the service as the minister pronounces God’s blessing upon his covenant people (e.g., Nu 6:24–26; 2 Cor 13:14). Just as the service begins formally with the invocation and call to worship so it ends formally at this point. A doxology may be sung in response—there are five books of the Psalter and each one ends with a doxology, so we have an embarrassment of riches from which to chose—but this has the same standing liturgically as a song service before the call to worship. Chris Gordon, however, offers a helpful alternative pattern, where the doxology occurs before the benediction.

As you can see, there is an internal logic and movement in a Reformed liturgy, i.e., the order of worship (1 Cor 14:40) ). God is speaking and we are responding. Worship is the expression of a vital relationship between the living Triune God and his people. The temptation, particularly in conservative Reformed and Presbyterian circles, is, however, to reduce the liturgy to a checklist of things to be accomplished before and after the sermon, which is, to be sure, the central act of the liturgy but those liturgical acts before and after the sermon are not mere preparations or busy work to be checked off. Continue reading →

Article: Why how we worship matters by Ligon Duncan (original source here)

Protestants have always believed that how we worship, the manner of our public worship, matters. The main reason for this is because Protestants believe that the Bible itself, in both the Old and New Testaments, commands a number of important things about how we are to conduct ourselves in gathered worship.

There are, of course, historical reasons for this interest in the manner, or how, of public worship as well. For instance, the Protestant reformers believed that the way you worship actually influences and reinforces what you believe. That is one reason they were so interested in reforming the worship practices of the church in their day. They did not believe that you could make a Protestant with Roman Catholic worship. More deeply, they believed that much of Roman Catholic worship was unbiblical (and that it undermined the Gospel), and hence they wanted to reform congregational worship according to the Bible. Indeed, John Calvin said that there were two main issues at stake in the reformation: biblical worship and justification by faith (in that order!). So, for Calvin, how we worship is no small matter.

But isn’t focusing on “how” we worship a little legalistic? Worship is a matter of the heart, right?, and so doesn’t focusing on the outward manner of worship get us off on the wrong track. Well, I hear that objection and I am not unsympathetic to its concerns. Externalism and formalism are both serious problems when in comes to public worship. Certainly the Bible vigorously and extensively condemns hypocritical external piety and shows a prime concern for the state of our hearts in approaching God. But the Bible also shows a serious concern about the manner of our worship. Heart and form need not be set in opposition. The Bible shows an interest in both.

Furthermore, Protestants are not concerned with the manner, or how, of worship, with the forms and circumstances of public praise, simply for their own sake, but for the sake of the object and aim of worship. In other words, Protestants understand that there is an inseperable connection between way we worship and whom we worship. It has often been said that the Bible’s teaching on idolatry shows that we become like what we worship, but it also indicates that we become like how we worship, because the how and the who of worship are linked.

The Protestant reformers (from whom we have learned much about Scripture) understood two things often lost on moderns. First, they understood that the liturgy (the set forms of corporate worship), media, instruments and vehicles of worship are never neutral, and so exceeding care must be given to the “law of unintended consequences.” Often the medium overwhelms and changes the message. Second, they knew that the purpose of the elements and forms and circumstances of corporate worship is to assure that you are actually doing worship as it is defined by the God of Scripture, that you are worshiping the God of Scripture and that your aim in worshiping Him is the aim set forth in Scripture.

So the Protestant approach to liturgy (not a word Calvin liked, but by it we simply mean: the order of service) is based on this foundation. Protestants care about how we worship not because we think that liturgy/order of service is prescribed, mystical or sacramental, but precisely so that the order of service can assist and get out of the way of (rather than distract and impede) the gathered church’s communion with the living God. The function of the order of service is not to draw attention to itself but to aid the soul’s communion with God in the gathered company of the saints by serving to convey the word of God to and from God, from and to His people.

C.S. Lewis puts it this way: “As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t have to notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God” (from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer). This is why the great Baptist preacher Geoffrey Thomas can say: “In true worship men have little thought of the means of worship; their thoughts are upon God. True worship is characterized by self-effacement and is lacking in any self-consciousness.”

That is, in biblical worship we so focus upon God Himself and are so intent to acknowledge His inherent and unique worthiness that we are transfixed by Him, and thus worship is not about what we want or like (nor do His appointed means divert our eyes from Him), but rather it is about meeting with God and delighting in Him. Praise decentralizes self.

So, interestingly, ordering our worship in the way that the Bible tells us to do so allows the forms of worship (the how of worship) to fade into the background in our public services and the object of worship (the Whom of worship: the Triune God) to come to the fore. The power of worship is not in the forms, but in God. The forms are appointed by God, not so that we will focus on them, but so that we will come to the God who really is (rather than one of our own imagination).