During the Reformation in the 16^th century an emphasis was put on the whole of the church congregation being involved in worship. Psalms were put to music and hymns were written in order to help with this process and so worship became associated with community hymn singing. At the time this was a novelty as the Catholic Church had reduced worship to be almost exclusively the action of the priests alone.

Over the weekend I attended two worship events lead by Kevin Prosch, a leading singer-song writer and worship leader from the US. His songs include Show your power and Love is all you need. It was great to be at events that had a big congregation and where the level of musical ability was so high. Kevin Prosch used a number of different musical styles, expressing his belief that in heaven we will be using far more styles than our national favourite! But rather than lead us as a congregation to sing songs whose words were up on a screen, he and his band worshipped in the front and let the rest of us participate in any way we deemed appropriate. Some danced, some sang their own made-up songs, some sang in tongues – and many either stood or sat and did very little. It wasn’t an easy experience to enter into and in truth, while there were many people worshipping, it wasn’t the congregation doing so as one body. (This was less true on the Sunday morning where we were part of a church service that Prosch was helping to lead.)

This is an extension of where charismatic worship has been going for a while. We sing many songs where the emphasis is on my connection with God. The songs are often about the individual – I, me, my – rather than the congregation – us, we, our. This then makes the congregation merely a collection of individuals and this new style of having no set songs to sing at all takes us even farther to that way of being. I think something is lost in this. We are, after all, the body of Jesus and though our individual interaction with God is so necessary, there is an emphasis in Scripture on the corporate.

There is an important plus to mention, however, in that this style does break the strongly believed equation: songs with set words + charismatic worship leader with guitar/keyboard + congregation all singing together = worship. While this can be worship, it is only a part of what worship is. The freer style used by Prosch forced us to consider how we enter into worship and how much we depend on the ‘worship leader’. Just as we don’t need the pastor to pray for us, or the priest to give us communion, neither do we need a worship leader to take us into God’s presence in worship.

The Reformers liked to emphasise the priesthood of all believers and their participation in the worship service. But for many this emphasis in practice – if not in theory – has been eroded – and we depend a great deal on the various types of leaders we have in our churches. Though I struggle with the lack of corporate emphasis that Prosch in part had, I think that, on balance, his approach is to be welcomed as it takes us back to common priesthood ideals.

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