Slaying The Dragons of Corporate Worship

How To Wield The Regulative Principle of Worship

No one likes dragons. 

Dragons are always villains and the disrupters of life.  This is why in fairytales dragons are to be slayed…  but the question of every fairytale is how?

For the dragons lurking in the shadows of corporate worship I suggest we slay them with the regulative principle.

Maybe you are asking, “what in the world is the regulative principle?”  According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, it is simply an acknowledgement that:  “the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself and... limited by His revealed will (in the Bible).”  This means that our worship services should only contain those elements that we can show to be appropriate from the Bible.  In other words, the regulative principle asks, “Why don’t we just worship God in the way He wants to be worshiped and avoid introducing elements to our services that have no Biblical warrant?”

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Some Of The Dragons The Regulative Principle Slays

Trendiness, circa 1977

1.    The Dragon of Trendiness
As we all know what's trendy today becomes what's laughably outdated tomorrow (see photo).

Today’s pastors are under tremendous pressure to conform to the latest trends of Christian pop-culture.  In many churches this pressure is painfully obvious.  In my own experience it is possible to visit a church and to come away from it with something not unlike motion-sickness.  The whole atmosphere of the place seems to be one of frantic movement to keep up with the latest trend.  As a result the ministry lacks steadiness and the church is constantly being retooled to attract this or that demographic.  The Bible is put on the back-burner and imaginative novelty becomes the determining factor of what is “relevant” in worship.

The regulative principle slays this dragon.

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Tragic Hollywood Death Scene

2.    The Dragon of Preference

Opinions are like… well… they are very, very prevalent.

Of course, the regulative principle cannot totally eliminates the role of opinion and preference within a given congregation but it can go a long way to free a church from going to war over such things.

Also, the regulative principle acts as a nice filter to run our preferences through.  I recall being in a worship service once where a pastor preferred to forgo preaching and instead play tragic death scenes for the congregation.  After which he gave an emotional appeal to turn to Jesus before it was too late.  For all I know the pastor in question might have been very well-intentioned in what he did that Sunday but…  well... it all came across as fairly goofy in my opinion.  The point is, the regulative principle would have weeded out his approach to Sunday morning worship.  (After all, nowhere in the Bible is the watching of Hollywood death scenes sanctioned as an acceptable method of worshipping God.)

The regulative principle slays this dragon.

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One Lady's Take on Christianity

3.    The Dragon of Monoculturalism

Here’s a shocker: Americanized Christianity is not necessarily Biblical Christianity.  For that matter neither is Russianized Christianity, Anglicized Christianity, etc.  Though the Church is an inculturated body we have to avoid becoming slaves to our cultural norms.  The regulative principle helps us to do this.  

Like all other aspects of Biblical Christianity the regulative principle allows the Church to transcend cultural, ethnic, and even geographical boundaries.  What determines the elements of our corporate worship is not “what does our culture want and/or value?” But rather, “what does the Bible say?”  Therefore, simple services with singing, prayer, the reading of Scripture, preaching, and the  administration of the sacraments “work” anywhere in the entire world and help the church truly embrace her identity as a people from every tribe and language and people and nation.

The regulative principle slays this dragon.

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An Actual Pastor Debating Whether To Include Pet-Blessing In An Upcoming Worship Service

4.    The Dragon of Confusion

My friend Alistair Begg often says, ‘the main things are the plain things.’  There is great wisdom in that, you know.  And yet, how confused we often are when it comes to the elements of our worship services.  Someone wants to do a liturgical dance.  A group of young people want to do a drama.  Here comes a man with a gift for whistling.  A cat-lady wants the pastor to add a pet-blessing element to the service once in a while.  A group of old timers suggest a concert of Southern Gospel quartette classics for Lord’s Day worship…. And on and on it goes…

What is a poor pastor to do?

He simply must point his people to the Bible…  to the main things…. to the plain things…

He should patiently ask his people, “What were Christian worship services like in the Bible?”  And together they can discuss the following points:

The Christians sang the Bible.

They read the Bible.

They preached the Bible.

They prayed the Bible.

They administered the sacraments in light of the Bible.

And the God of the Bible was pleased.

“Why don’t we just stick with that too?”  The pastor can ask.  In so doing the pastor is helping his congregants slay the dragons lurking in the shadows of corporate worship.

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