Multisensory Worship, Pt 2

Continued Thoughts on Multisensory Worship

By Pr. Rich Futrell

Last month we began to look at how God has always used all of our senses during worship.  This month, we continue in this exploration.

Anything that engages one or more of our five senses during worship has one primary purpose: to proclaim the Gospel in yet another way.  Yet, most of us give little thought thinking about communication of the Gospel through all our senses during worship. 

Think of the means of grace.  God absolves us when as we read and study His Word the Gospel becomes alive again in us (sight).  We hear the pastor speak the absolution (sound).  The waters of baptism are poured on a new believer’s head (touch).  We receive the body and blood of the Lord in His Supper (taste). 

God could have stopped with the printed and spoken Word–but He chose to bring us His grace and forgiveness in several, multisensory ways.  This means that multisensory worship, properly understood, is simply an extension of what God has already set up.  Multisensory worship is simply following the pathway that God has already made.

Think of the ceremonies and symbolism that God prescribed in the Old Testament: the Passover, the sacrifices, the scapegoat, the incense burning in the Temple, the showbread, and the ornate vestments of the High Priest.  God could have limited himself to the Ten Commandments and to His Gospel promises.  But He chose, instead, to communicate His law and his promises in many, multisensory ways.

It is from this backdrop of God-prescribed Old Testament ceremonies that ceremonies in the New Testament Church developed–of course with the understanding the Messiah has already come!  God had already set up multisensory communication as the norm for worship in His Old Covenant.  In His New Covenant, which replaced and superseded the Old, God also set up multisensory ways to come to His people through Word and Sacrament.  That’s why ceremonies and rituals that involve our senses should just be considered normal in our worship.  God has already wired us this way through both of His covenants.  It’s only a pre-formed dislike of things multisensory–which does not come from God but ourselves–that has us look askance at such multisensory worship forms.

Multisensory additions to our worship life that more fully involve all our senses help express God’s truths in ways that words cannot.  When more of our senses are involved in communication, they communicate in a way that reaches even the less literate among us–an increasingly useful quality as we become a more “post-literate” culture in America.  Words are directed at our left brain; symbolism and ceremony stimulate our right brain.  The use of ceremony helps us to engage our whole being, both intellect and emotions.  This is something good. 

As multisensory communication during worship become part of our normal way of thinking, we begin to see all the sights, sounds, and body movements as ways that help faithfully communicate what is taking place in the Divine Service.  These simply become rites and customs that help faithfully proclaim the Gospel during worship.

Although multisensory worship should be normal among us, it isn’t.  Our man-made traditions have disdained many rituals that are multisensory (making the sign of the cross, bowing during parts of the Creed, etc.).  However, if we are to reclaim such a biblical worldview, we must do so with much care, so miscommunication doesn’t take place.

So what do we do?  We are to understand what we do in worship and why.  If we choose to do something (such as make the sign of the cross), we are to understand what that movement means and why we make it during certain times of the Divine Service.  What we don’t want to happen is “empty ritual.”  It also means that we may choose NOT to incorporate some biblically based worship rituals.  For instance, we tried incense during our midweek services but some of us got headaches.  So in Christian love, we will choose not to use incense in the future for that reason.

What multisensory worship means is that language and listening with all of our other senses are ways in which we receive God’s truths, as well as ways in which we respond.  We confess in Luther’s explanation of the First Article of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe that God … has given to me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still sustains them.”  To use all of our senses in worship is to realize that we worship as whole human beings–as God created us.  In part, that is what is meant by loving “the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5).  The psalmist put it this way: “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me bless his holy name!” (Psalm 103:1)

As your pastor, I would like to continue exploring biblically based, multisensory worship forms.  As God continues to make us anew in His image, our preconceived ideas will fall to the wayside.  I believe that we will then use Christian freedom less as a license to do what we want and more as a permit to follow in God’s footsteps.  As we continue to understand God’s truths more fully, I believe we will then want many of these biblically based multisensory worship forms to become part of what we during worship.