Spiritual Anorexia: How Contemporary Worship Is Starving the Church

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In Spiritual Anorexia: How Contemporary Worship Is Starving the Church, Dr. Doug Erlandson presents a balanced but devastating critique of the contemporary-style worship model that the modern church has adopted and shows how this type of worship deprives Christians of the feast that true corporate worship should be
 
Drawing from personal experience and extensive research into the history of Christian worship, Dr. Erlandson analyzes the motivations for this type of worship and assesses its strengths and weaknesses. He argues that corporate worship should be a reverential dramatic presentation of the Gospel, with the theme of the redemption of God’s people and the rejuvenation and restoration of creation.
 
Historically, Christian worship has included certain distinctive elements that help make this presentation. These include the call to worship, the recitation of creeds, readings from each of the major divisions of Scripture, prayers, confession of sin and absolution, Christ-centered preaching, the Lord’s Supper, and the exhortation and benediction. By use of concrete examples Erlandson shows how contemporary-style worship either eliminates these entirely or includes them in a truncated fashion; thus, the elements that made traditional worship a true feast have disappeared. In their place the church has substituted slick musical performances and therapy-style preaching that blurs the central message of the Gospel.
 
Erlandson examines contemporary praise choruses that have replaced the theologically-rich hymns, demonstrating that the problem with the lyrics is not so much bad theology but lack of meaningful content. The music is often hard for the congregation to follow, having been written for well-trained musicians and not for congregational use. The greatest problem arises from treating the music as a performance by the worship team rather than as congregational worship.
 
Spiritual Anorexia also contrasts the historical role of preaching as the proclamation of the Gospel with various contemporary models (e.g., the moralistic, therapeutic, and teaching models) and shows how these models deprive the congregation of spiritual nourishment.
 
A chapter of particular interest is the one on physical symbolism, which argues that by doing away with symbols such as the cross and the pulpit the contemporary church has substituted the sterility of the modern auditorium for the rich symbolism of the historical church building.
 
The final chapter of Spiritual Anorexia examines the justifications typically given for contemporary-style worship, shows why they are unpersuasive, and argues that whatever value it might have is far outweighed by the spiritual starvation that results.
 
Throughout, Dr. Erlandson challenges the church to worship with the excellence of which it is capable so that it will truly offer its worship to the glory of God and will experience the feast that corporate worship should be.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #118451 in eBooks
• Published on: 2011-08-25
• Released on: 2011-08-25
• Format: Kindle eBook

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