Series: Dynamics of Christian Worship #6
Published by IVP Academic on June 4, 2024
Genres: Academic, Non-Fiction, Christian Life, Leadership, Theology
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The history of the theology of worship is riddled with examples of clergy and worship leaders who have sought to manipulate their parishioners' anxiety in order to spur repentance and turn people toward God. Even if such ends may be desirable―at what cost?
In Worship in an Age of Anxiety, Jordan challenges this utilitarian approach, offering a critical assessment of contemporary as well as historical evangelical figures such as D. L. Moody and Billy Graham who have deployed anxiety as a tool for conversion.
Proposing a completely different model, Jordan takes up various elements of worship, including:
liturgy
space
music
preaching
the sacramentsIn doing so, he develops a practical theology of worship that also turns people toward God but within a healing framework.
While worship alone cannot heal anxiety, it can be a time and place where, rather than being manipulated, anxiety can be acknowledged, accepted, and offered to God.
This book explores the church’s potential as a place where anxious people can find support and healing, alongside other interventions and therapies. J. Michael Jordan explains that even though attending church services can feel overwhelming for some people with anxiety, pastors can make it easier for these congregants to participate by reconsidering some of the language and practices that their church may be using. Early on in the book, Jordan explores how some prominent preachers from American history have stoked or responded to anxiety in their church services and revival meetings, manipulating anxiety to cause conviction and lead to more conversions. He reflects on these flawed approaches, and then analyzes how things have changed over time.
Jordan argues that even though preachers are now far less likely to deliberately stoke fear in their listeners’ hearts, contemporary worship services frequently create unrealistic expectations for how their members should feel. When churches prioritize upbeat, spontaneous, and emotionally intense worship, they often tie the sincerity of someone’s faith to their felt experience of God in a particular moment. This is especially dangerous for anxious people, since it encourages them towards greater worry and rumination. Even though feelings of anxiety sometimes flow from conviction, no one needs to doubt their salvation just because they couldn’t sense an outpouring of God’s presence during a particular worship song. Jordan challenges the faulty theological beliefs and questionable applications that underpin these issues, and he helps readers see the harm that anxious people experience when churches equate someone’s momentary, unwanted thoughts and feelings with their beliefs and standing before God.
Throughout Worship in an Age of Anxiety, Jordan draws on his pastoral experiences and his interactions with students at the Christian college where he works. He reflects on ways that anxiety has continued growing as a problem, especially among young people, and he explains that even though individual experiences of anxiety will vary, there are some core themes that churches can take into account as part of their ministry. For example, anxious people struggle with uncertainty, and they wish that they could align their internal feelings with their true beliefs and goals. In therapy, they will learn that their feelings don’t define them, and that they can begin to tolerate uncertainty while still taking action towards meaningful goals. However, churches may contradict this message by encouraging people to measure their relationship with God based on their feelings, and this will lead to further dissonance and distress.
Over multiple chapters, Jordan explores ways that a church’s liturgy, space and design, music, preaching, and presentation of the sacraments can help or hinder an anxious person’s movement towards healing. For example, he suggests that when churches adopt liturgical rituals and follow the traditional church calendar, people are able to ground themselves in familiar traditions instead of constantly trying to reach spontaneous emotional highs. Jordan also encourages worship pastors to acknowledge the range of emotions that congregants carry with them into the sanctuary, instead of communicating the expectation that everyone should be happy and upbeat. He also occasionally touches on other issues, such as how sermons with an “us vs. them” emphasis and a church’s system of unspoken community norms can lead to greater anxiety, as someone becomes afraid to ask questions and worries about stepping out of line.
Although I understand the need to limit this book’s scope, I wish that Jordan had explored more experiences of anxiety, such as social anxiety, oversensitive consciences, and struggles with perfectionism. I think that too much of this book focuses on worrying about whether you’re feeling God’s presence enough in worship, without exploring other issues. For example, because of the historical survey at the beginning of the book, I kept expecting Jordan to address how preachers can bring conviction through the Bible to unrepentant sinners without also heaping fear and shame on scrupulous perfectionists who struggle to believe in grace. It’s a challenging balance to walk, but this and other topics end up falling by the wayside.
I also wish that Jordan had addressed unwanted thoughts more, instead of almost exclusively focusing on unwanted feelings. He doesn’t address implications for anxious people who feel guilty and ashamed for their thoughts, and this is a major oversight, especially since there are lots of churches that equate bad thoughts to sinful actions, without making a distinction for unwanted thoughts that flow from an anxiety disorder, not from the person’s true desires or actions.
Worship in an Age of Anxiety: How Churches Can Create Space for Healing is a thought-provoking, caring book that explores an often-neglected topic. Even though I wish that Jordan had delved into more types and experiences of anxiety, he covers a lot of important concepts about how churches can help anxious people progress on their healing journeys, instead of unintentionally hindering them through poor theology or questionable practices. Although this book primarily focuses on people who are struggling with unwanted feelings, leaving many other topics unexplored, the author handled this main topic in a very thorough, helpful manner, and this book can encourage church leaders to rethink aspects of their church’s worship services and culture, while hopefully also inspiring them to learn even more.