On "Calvinist Worship"

Calvinism has always sought to remove distractions from the due worship belonging to the Triune God. In our day, churches strive on making worship culturally relevant. In the minds of many, the church must create a worship setting that resembles the world inorder to captivate the culture. They fail to realize that by structuring worship in direct likeness to the culture, worship is subject to change and left at the imagination of finite men. No longer is "..singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord "(Col 3:16) enough, no. The preacher must now rely on something other than what God has commanded as worship, inorder to keep his congregation satisfied. Here is renowned church historian Owen Chadwick on Calvinist Worship and the removal of distractions during the Reformation:


"The Swiss principle demanded Scriptural authority for all things in ecclesiastical polity and the worship of the Church. Simplicity was godly, all else was distraction. The medieval church seemed to the Reformed like an overfurnished clutter, a shop of antique junk, where the worshipper could not apprehend true holiness because his vision was screened by trinkets, side altars, statues, coloured windows, pomp, vestments, saints, and ceremonies, as though the listening ears of prayer were deafend by the clangour of ritual noise. Some simple folk, especially women, regretted the loss of colour, the departure of the statues and banners. Not so the true Calvinist. He felt as though he had been present at a cleansing of the Temple, elevated and purged in spirit, conscious of a wind of Hebraic purity rushing through the church, sweeping away squalor and superstition and the ornaments which anchored his soul to earth."


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*Chadiwck, Owen. The Reformation. London: Penguin, 1990. (Pg.184-185)