A Baptist Perspective on Retrieval and the Reform of Worship

Kevin L. Hester

Introduction

In 2008 Robert E. Webber, founder of the Institute for Worship Studies, published the book Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative.[1] This early attempt at the reappropriation of liturgical forms in Evangelical worship encouraged the retrieval of a number of historical and traditional worship practices. At the same time, churches were awakening to a generational shift taking place in culture. The church was wrestling to find its voice in a post-modern, post-Christian world. Webber’s call was to deepen worship by recovering the heritage of the past. His work, while lacking a robust theology of retrieval,[2] resonated with many.

Numerous studies have documented Gen Z’s attraction to historical and traditional forms.[3] The current divide between contemporary and traditional forms is seeing the addition of conservative models that press further back to the earliest Protestant[4] and patristic worship. Luke Simon has written, Gen Z itself is divided on this issue with young women often preferring contemporary worship and young men looking for something more rooted in history and tradition.[5] Such differences threaten to further fracture evangelical worship practices. As the church faces this reality, what principles can help us navigate what may become a new worship war?  

History of FWB Worship in My Life

As a member of Generation X, I have had the unique opportunity to witness significant shifts in the worship practices of Free Will Baptist churches. My earliest memories are from singing from certain sections of the old, red-backed, FWB hymnal published by the National Association in 1964. My church’s liturgical practice was fixed. We sang 3-4 songs, would sometimes include a responsive or unison reading of Scripture, offering, prayer, sermon, and invitation. It was decidedly low-church worship but there were hints that the FWB tradition had once contained (or might allow for) more. There were 100 specific biblical readings designed for responsive or unison reading. The back flyleaf contained two versions of the gloria patri, the doxology, and a three-fold amen.

The 1980s brought the growing popularity of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and the attendant birth of the Contemporary Praise and Worship (CPW) movement.[6] A few churches began incorporating some of these products into their worship. Such incorporation was often a component of the “seeker sensitive” movement’s application of the homogenous unit principle of church growth targeting greater cultural sensitivity and accommodation as a means of evangelism.

The 1988 publication of Rejoice: The Free Will Baptist Hymn Book, while not related to this movement, did incorporate some newer choruses, gospel songs, and anthems made popular through the youth rallies of the mid-twentieth century. There was a smattering of what some might call early “CPW” songs included as well.[7] This updated hymnal provided a conservative, modern, middle-of-the-road approach to contemporary evangelical worship music. While it contained some modern music, it retained and supplemented the FWB collection of classical hymns. In addition, it maintained collections of Scripture readings for responsive or unison reading, as well as the doxology, benediction, several musical amens, and two tunes for the gloria patri.

The nineties and early twenty-first century brought a shift in FWB worship. Churches tended to gravitate toward different poles of what came to be called contemporary or traditional worship, often defined by musical styles alone. Some churches sought to incorporate the best of both traditions in a blended format.

Debates about worship and its proper forms among FWBs during my lifetime have often centered on questions about culture or tradition and too often focused solely on musical styles. Our purpose is to seek to reframe the nature and tone of this discussion. Our denominational history reveals that none of our worship practices have remained static over the last ninety years. Ultimately, the question is not whether worship will be reformed but how it will be reformed. Our desire is to provide some basic principles that will ensure that our understanding of worship is biblical and continues to assert historical Protestant emphases of the centrality of God’s Word, deep theology, spiritual formation, and ecclesiology.

A (Very) Brief History of Worship Reform

Christian worship was based on synagogue worship as found in first-century Judaism. Even as the Church became increasingly populated by Gentile converts and spread across the Mediterranean basin, the major components and content of Christian worship were largely unchanged for the first three hundred years. Only after the Constantinian settlement of 313 and the cessation of Christian persecution do we begin to see the adoption of more Greco-Roman social and religious expression including things like choirs, vestments, processions, etc. These innovations were not without their opponents who would begin the early monastic movement. However, the close association of the Church with the government would silence the opposition and such innovation would continue until the Protestant Reformation.

The Protestant Reformation was not simply a theological reformation but a reformation in worship as well. The cry of sola scriptura was applied to how the church worshipped and how the church thought. The Protestant Reformation sought to radically simplify worship according to biblical models and remove centuries of Roman Catholic accretions.

All Protestants agreed that worship must be biblical but this was accomplished differently. Protestants adopted one of two approaches to worship: the Regulative Principle and the Normative Principle. The Regulative Principle is defined in the Westminster Confession in this way, “the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.” (21.1). In other words, only what Scripture commands should be included in worship. This principle was adopted by the Reformed tradition and the Puritans. The Lutherans and non-Puritan, Anglicans typically promoted the Normative Principle instead, which says that the church may do in worship whatever is not forbidden.

Our forefathers, the early English Baptists, adopted a Regulative Principle similar to other Separatist and Puritan groups in the Reformed tradition. This is demonstrated in the parallel language between the General Baptist confession, the Orthodox Creed (1678) and the later, London Confession (1689) with the Westminster Confession of Faith when outlining worship’s biblical precedent. While embracing the Regulative Principle, in some ways the early Baptists were more conservative in their application of it than the broader Reformed tradition. They often limited biblical precedent for practice to the New Testament alone. They also sought biblical precedent for both the content and the form of worship as expressed in their practice of baptism by immersion, the administration of the Lord’s Supper, and congregational singing. 

Protestant worship would shift again with the revivals of the First and Second Great Awakenings. Revivalism, with its focus on the individual’s response in faith, would come to define the individual’s experience of the gathered liturgy as worship. This would be reinforced by modern fundamentalism’s evangelistic methods and focus. This focus on the individual in worship sets the stage for a modern reform that seeks a return not to the tradition of a church but to the Great Tradition of the Church. This reform is driven by retrieval.

Evangelical Retrieval and Reform

At the close of the last century, Baptist historian and theologian D. H. Williams published Retrieving the Tradition & Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants. In it he argued that Baptists had rightly focused on the centrality of preaching and biblical study. However, he argued that their individualistic focus had led them to neglect an extensive heritage of faith from the Church of the past. Williams’ fear was that ignoring the past would lead to shallow worship, superficial discipleship, and weak missional and social engagement.[8] Instead, Williams called evangelicals back to the Great Tradition.

Dr. Timothy George, noted Baptist advocate of theological retrieval, defines the Great Tradition as, “The heritage of Christian thinking, believing, and confessing across time.”[9]  It is an appreciation of the catholicity of the Christian church, which he defines as the universality of God’s people in the church across time.

He explains the process of Baptist retrieval as a distinctive Baptist attempt to renew the faith that had been obscured over time in various traditions. “To go back to the Bible first of all, as it has been refracted through the ministry and history of the church, expressed in the early classical creeds, and resurfaced in a new and fresh way in the confessions of the Reformation and the early Baptist movement.”[10]

A recent work by Gavin Ortlund has sought to apply the principle of retrieval specifically to evangelical worship.[11] Ortlund’s work calls for “recovering historic Christian traditions to enrich modern worship—not rejecting contemporary forms like CCM but deepening them. Retrieval theology calls for the church to look backward in order to move forward, reclaiming lost practices and distinctives that historically shaped Christian worship and discipleship.”[12] Ortlund believes that the retrieval of the past and the reform of worship provide the best opportunity for evangelizing Gen Z and ensuring the future of the Church.

This modern reformation of worship emphasizes a return to biblical principles, focusing on God’s Word, the ordinances, and prayer as central elements of worship. Reform includes a re-evaluation of current practices and past traditions, seeking to align them with Scripture and the Great Tradition. It also highlights the importance of discipleship through worship, where believers are formed and sanctified by the Word and ordinances to live out their faith in the world. 

Conclusion

Some advocates for the reform of modern evangelical worship are seeking to root worship in the history of the church. Drawing from earlier Protestant liturgies[13] and forms as well as certain medieval and patristic practices, there is a growing focus on responsive readings, structured prayers, and the use of creeds in worship, as well as the practice of fasting and other spiritual disciplines. Advocates believe that much modern worship lacks depth and is often more rooted in culture than the Christian tradition. Additionally, many oppose the performative nature of modern worship in contrast to a defined liturgy which they believe to be more participatory.

While much of this is to be applauded, there are real dangers. We risk embracing forms without understanding the theological content of these forms. We risk adopting foreign cultural components that are attractive because of their novelty and not because they are biblical. Difference for difference’s sake is rarely a good choice.  

When we consider changes to our worship we must always focus on Scripture first. Scripture, as Calvin says, is the “rule” for worship and provides its basic content. Michael Haykin cautions us appropriately that our “fathers are not Scripture. They are senior conversation partners about Scripture and its meaning. We listen to them respectfully, but we are not afraid to disagree when they err.”[14] Nevertheless, retrieval gives us opportunity to listen closely to the last two-thousand years of the Great Tradition rather than the worship trends of the past twenty years or the next two years.

[1] Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008).

[2] Webber was an advocate for “renewal” rather than retrieval. See his The Renewal of Sunday Worship. (Grand Rapids: Hendrickson, 1995). His philosophy was formative for the Convergence Movement which was an effort among evangelical, charismatic, and liturgical Christians to blend their distinctive worship forms. See his Signs of Wonder: The Phenomenon of Convergence in Modern Liturgical and Charismatic Churches. (Houston, TX: Star Song Pub., 1992). I am indebted to Daniel Webster for the first of these sources and for his helpful dialog on worship which contributed to this and other important distinctions in this presentation.

[3] See Springtide Research Institute’s 2020 study, “The State of Religious and Young People 2020.” https://springtideresearch.org/research/the-state-of-religion-young-people; and the Pew Research Center’s 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/decline-of-christianity-in-the-us-has-slowed-may-have-leveled-off/.

[4] Jonathan Gibson and Mark Earngey, eds. Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present. (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2019). Sinclair Ferguson notes in the foreword of this work, “Most of us do not live on the continent of Europe, and none of us lives in the sixteenth century. Our greatest need is for worship in Spirit as well as in truth today. But the liturgies here should stimulate us to careful thought, and cause us to ask how we can apply their principles today in a way that echoes their Trinitarian, Christ-centered, biblically informed content, so that our worship, in our place and time, will echo the gospel content and rhythm they exhibit.”

[5] Luke Simon, “The Gen Z Worship War.” Christianity Today. May 29, 2025. https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/05/gen-z-worship-war-men-women-ccm-liturgy-tradition/. Simon highlights the fact that there is a growing divide between Gen Z men and women. He argues that more women emphasize relationships and belonging and tend to prefer modern worship styles. In contrast, many Gen Z men are seeking out liturgical forms and traditional worship in a bid to reconcile the concept of a stable, unchanging gospel truth with a thirst for theological depth and engagement with history. This desire is often rooted in the concept of spiritual formation, seeking ways to promote self-discipline and discipleship.

[6] Lester Ruth and Lim Swee-Hong. A History of Contemporary Praise & Worship: Understanding the Ideas That Reshaped the Protestant Church. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021).

[7] Notable examples include: Michael W. Smith, “Great is the Lord” (71) and “How Majestic Is Your Name” (72).

[8] D. H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition & Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 5.

[9] https://secundumscripturas.com/2022/08/08/timothy-george-on-evangelicals-the-great-tradition-and-christian-higher-education-repost/.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019).

[12] Luke Simon, “The Gen Z Worship War.” Christianity Today. May 29, 2025. https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/05/gen-z-worship-war-men-women-ccm-liturgy-tradition/

[13] Jonathan Gibson and Mark Earngey, eds. Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present. (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2019).

[14] Michael A. G. Haykin, Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 29