If you were to explain the most significant changes brought about by the Protestant Reformation, you might focus on doctrinal reforms. Most people in our tradition do. The five Solas, for instance, are an excellent summary of the return to orthodoxy - right words - that the reformers worked so hard to achieve: Sola Gracia, Sola Fide, Solus Christus, Sola Scriptura, and Soli Deo Gloria. But have you also considered how important was their work to restore orthopraxy - right practice - in the church? The reformers were sounding the alarm not only on what the church was saying that was wrong but on what the church was doing that was wrong. And there was no area of the church’s practice at which they aimed their attention more than Lord’s Day worship.
I want to focus on one of the reformers’ most far-reaching changes to Christian worship: the active participation of the congregation. Before the Reformation, worship was a notoriously passive affair for most people. When you went to church, you stood there stupidly - watching rituals you did not comprehend and listening to words in a language you did not understand, while the clergy carried on ceremonies that were as far over your head as the vaulted ceiling. At least you had icons and windows to look at! Those images formed your theology and biblical knowledge more than anything else. Everything you knew about Christ you learned from images of him and his mother that surrounded you in every sacred setting.
The reformers changed all that. In the reformed churches you no longer stood there stupidly, observing and not comprehending. You heard the Scriptures in your own language. You participated fully in the sacraments. The voice of worship was your own voice, along with those of your brothers and sisters in Christ. The sound of the singing was the sound of the congregation, not some “expert” class.
So consider, when you worship at Covenant Presbyterian Church, that all your participation - standing together, singing together, reciting together, confessing together, coming forward together in communion - is a consequence of the reform of worship. At Covenant Presbyterian Church, the voice of worship is the voice of the congregation, not the voice of an expert class, booming through the loudspeakers. The voice you hear in worship should be the voice of the congregation.
Contrast that with some unfortunate trends in Evangelical worship services in America. I have been to services in which an “expert” class of worshippers, in ceremonial torn jeans, do the worshipping on stage, out of reach, while the congregation stands stupidly gazing on. If there is a new rejection of the reformation, it may not come by way of doctrine; it might come first in the church’s worship.
