Chris Verkaik

Staff Writer

Sunday night is going to be somewhat unusual for the Calvin community. For the first time on a Sunday night, the Fine Arts Center will be buzzing with all the excitement of a Student Activities Board concert. Furthermore, those planning on going to L.O.F.T. will be surprised to find out that this concert has been planned from the beginning to replace it. Even the concert itself presents another first: when Sonic Flood takes the stage it will be the first strictly praise and worship band to play at Calvin. All of this is planned not only to give this campus a contemporary worship experience, but also the opportunity to examine the deeper questions behind this phenomenon.

Sonic Flood is one of the premier bands in the increasingly popular Christian sub-genre of praise and worship music. The band's self-proclaimed mission is to ``create music that will usher people into the presence of God,'' which they accomplish by reworking original and existing worship choruses into an edgy pop-rock style.

Ken Heffner, director of student activities, is honest about his hesitancy concerning the genre. ``It just seems awkward to be having music that is not meant to be music for the public--it's meant to be music for the body of Christ. And, even more specific than that, it's meant to do a specific thing within the body of Christ, which is worship.''

The relationship between worship and performance is something L.O.F.T. coordinator Ron Rienstra is anxious for the campus to discuss. He looks forward to the concert as an opportunity to ``have people talk about some of these issues.'' He hopes that the audience Sunday night will start asking some questions.

``I think that the explosion of these bands is forcing a question that needs to be discussed among churches that are doing contemporary worship [and] liturgies and also among these artists,'' said Heffner. ``Not `let's put a stop to this,' but let's talk about it.''

These are questions that Heffner is already starting to ask: ``When you go to a concert of this kind, are you going to a worship service, are you going to a concert, or are you going to both? And is there a difference between the two? ... Is it problematic... that you're charging admission for it?''

Both Heffner and Rienstra see a need for an honest and comprehensive discussion about these issues within the Christian community. ``[People will] talk about this thing being a big deal, but they won't talk about the issues about performance and about worship,'' Rienstra said. ``If there can be anywhere were we can have a thoughtful discussion about this is ought to be on this campus.''

Christians have continued to avoid the entanglements of the worship/performance relationship because clear lines are difficult to draw. Rienstra claims that the two cannot be easily separated--in any kind of worship there are performance aspects, because every aspect of worship has to be rehearsed beforehand.

Junior Molly Delcamp, who serves as a worship leader for LOFT, agreed. ``People don't like to think of worship as performance, but, essentially, if your going to have music, and if there are going to be bands and a certain amount of drama... there's a certain degree of preparation that has to go in, if that's what you consider performance.''

So why is it that some worship can feel like performance and some performance can feel like worship, and how can we begin the process of distinguishing between the two? Rienstra doesn't have easy categorizations, but he does think some distinctions can be made. First, a worship experience is not only horizontal, connecting the participants each other, but also vertical, connecting the participants to God. Both aspects need to be present. The presentation is also important. Does the worship feel authentic, or is everyone just going through the motions?

Rienstra emphasizes that worship is essentially a dialogue with God, and that all worship time will give Him an opportunity to speak to us. ``In the arc of their concerts, the better worship bands actually have occasion for prayer and for scripture to be spoken, and they have a sense that it is something very much approaching a worship experience. And other bands aren't completely oblivious to that, it's just they know that people really grove on singing these cool songs so they like to play those cool songs. What kind of band is Sonic Flood? We'll see on Sunday.''