“Contemporary worship uses “the language of this generation to lead people into . . . a genuine experience of the presence of God.” Up until now, the generation that has been associated with the adjective “contemporary” has been almost exclusively the baby-boomer generation—roughly, those of us born between 1945 and 1963. But if we take a look at the dictionary definition of “contemporary,” it means, literally, “of the now.” Two subsequent generations have emerged since the boomers: those born from 1964 to 1979 (now mid-twenty-something to about forty) and those born since 1980. When I hear many of these young people talk about the contemporary worship they grew up with in church (make note: they use that word not with its dictionary meaning, but quite accurately as a descriptor of the praise-and-worship styles of the past two decades), it is clear that the worship of their baby-boomer parents is as irrelevant to many of them as classical, European worship was to the baby boomers themselves. Those”
Be the first to react on this!
Robert E. Webber (1933 - 2007)
was an American theologian known for his work on worship and the early church. He played a key role in the Convergence Movement, a move among evangelical and charismatic churches in the United States to blend charismatic worship with liturgies from the Book of Common Prayer and other liturgical sources. Webber began teaching theology at Wheaton College in 1968. Existentialism was the primary focus of Webber's research and lectures during his first years at Wheaton. However, he soon shifted his focus to the early church. In 1978 he wrote Common Roots, a book that examined the impact of 2nd-century Christianity on the modern church.In 1985 Webber wrote Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracted to the Liturgical Church, in which he described the reasons behind his own gradual shift away from his fundamentalist/evangelical background toward the Anglican tradition. Webber faced an enormous amount of criticism from evangelicals in response to this book. Nevertheless, his work was highly influential, and his ideas grew in popularity in evangelical circles. During the latter half of his life, Webber took a special interest in Christian worship practices. He wrote more than 40 books on the topic of worship, focusing on how the worship practices of the ancient church have value for the church in the 21st century postmodern era. Among his books are Ancient-Future Worship, Ancient-Future Faith, Ancient-Future Time, Ancient-Future Evangelism, The Younger Evangelicals, and The Divine Embrace.