Reformed Protestants are not supposed to believe in coincidence. So when on the same day email brings reflections on worship and they sound such different notes, am I allowed to attribute this to providence?

First came a message from the good folks at Christianity Today with a link to an interview with Bryan Chapell, the president of Covenant Seminary, on his new book about worship, Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice. The odd aspect of the interview was that making worship Christ-centered seemed to be an excuse for making it less theocentric. Of course, one of the hallmarks of Reformed worship was the centrality and transcendence of God, an impulse that cut down on any gimmicks in the service. But in response to a question about the antagonisms driving the worship wars, Chapell responded:

Most worship wars are driven by personal preferences regarding style of music or variance from traditional practices (whether the deacons should wear suits, the doxology should be sung after the offering, or drums are allowed anywhere). These preferences are largely formed by what people grew accustomed to in their early Christian experience. Understanding the history of those practices, and the gospel-goal of the worship service, should make everyone more open to varieties of style and more committed to the mission of worship.

If church leaders try to establish a style of worship based upon their preferences or based upon satisfying congregants’ competing preferences, then the church will inevitably be torn apart by the politics of preference. But if the leadership is asking the missional questions of “Who is here?” and “Who should be here?” in determining worship styles and practices, then the mission of the church will enable those leaders to unite around gospel goals that are more defensible and uniting than anyone’s personal preference. These gospel goals will never undermine the gospel contours of the worship service, but rather will ask how each gospel aspect can be expressed in ways that best minister to those present and those being reached for Christ’s glory.

Reformed Protestants did not used to ask who’s here at worship committee meetings because they knew right off the bat that God is present in worship and the service is first and foremost for him.

The second piece of email relevant to this question of theocentric worship came from Jim Goodloe, the executive director of the Foundation for Reformed Theology. It contained a quotation from Karl Barth on church architecture and its importance for embodying the convictions that pastors and church members bring to worship. Barth wrote:

What should be placed at the center? In my opinion, a simple wooden table slightly elevated, but distinctly different from an “altar.” This would seem to me to be the ideal solution. This table, provided with a movable lectern, should serve at the appropriate time as pulpit, communion table, and baptismal font. (Under whatever form it may be, the separation of the pulpit, the communion table, and the baptismal font only serves to distract attention and create confusion; it is not justified theologically.)

With regard to accessories more or less necessary and which one must mention, the organ and the choir do not have to be within sight of the congregation.

Images and symbols do not have any place in a Protestant church building. (They also only distract attention and create confusion. Not only the congregation gathered for worship, in the strict sense of the word—that is to say, for prayer, preaching, baptism, and Holy Communion, but also and above all the congregation busy in everyday life represents the person and work of Jesus Christ. No image and no symbol can play this role.)

The style, size, and color of doors, walls, and windows, like those of the pews, can and should contribute to the concentration of those who participate in worship, and should direct them toward the message and the devotion which unite them, without necessary recourse to strange ornamentations no matter how “dignified” and “beautiful” they may be.

Granted, comparing these quotations may not be fair to either Chapell or Barth. They were responding to different questions. But what is striking is how much Barth sounds like older sources in the Reformed tradition, while contemporary proponents of Protestant sound more like a Hybels or Warren than even Barth.