A few years ago, my childhood home came up for sale. Out of curiosity, I visited the house—built by my parents in the 1980s—on the day it was open to prospective buyers. I marveled at the backyard trees, now robust and mature. I walked through the bedrooms, observing the changes made over the years and noting the fixtures and elements that had stayed the same.
When I got to the kitchen, I saw the refrigerator. An old, white General Electric. The same one from when I was growing up. Nearly 40 years later, that refrigerator was going strong. I opened the door, astounded it was still humming along.
“They just don’t make things like they used to,” everyone says. That’s right. It’s called planned obsolescence. Everything is supposed to work . . . for a time, and then it’s replaced. Most appliances and gadgets these days, while improving in their efficiency, no longer last as long as earlier models did. The upside? Things are cheaper. The downside? Nothing lasts.
Does anyone still use their first iPhone? Would a Blackberry even work anymore? Nothing stays new for long.
Decay Rate
In his work on social acceleration, German philosopher Hartmut Rosa applies the physics of the scientific decay rate—the amount of time it takes something to dissolve in relation to the environmental conditions—to contemporary society. The decay rate tracks the time it takes for something to move from being “present” or “current” to being “part of the past” or “obsolete.”
Bring a fresh loaf of bread home from the store and set it on your counter, uncovered. Within a day, it’ll be hard and crusty. By day three or four, you’ll see mold growing. The bread is “dead.” Your fresh loaf is now fit for the trash.
Socially, our fast-paced cultural conditions create a world where things move ever more quickly from “new” and “fresh” to “old” and “stale.” When I discover a song that came out just a few years ago, my kids tell me it’s old. Really? A chart-topper in 2020 is already “old”? What does that make the music popular when I was their age? Ancient? Anything from the 2020s is still “new” to me!
Why does it seem like everything is moving faster—technologically, socially, morally? One explanation says we feel the meaninglessness of life in a world without transcendence. Because the present moment feels empty and hollow, we’re always looking forward to what’s around the corner, whatever seems new, innovative, or exciting. The way to distract ourselves from our present feeling of insignificance is to shorten our experience of it, to compress it.
The consumer habits of late-modern society reinforce this ever-shortening decay rate, so we’re perpetually distracted by things that come into fashion and then quickly fall out of favor.
Christian Worship and Decay
A couple years ago, a research study showed a rapid decrease in the length of time a worship song remains popular today. The average lifespan of a widely sung worship song has dropped to about a third of what it was 30 years ago. In the 1990s, a popular song would stay “current” for 10 to 12 years. Now, it’s only three or four.
The researchers pointed to multiple causes for the speeding-up of worship songs rising and falling. “Songs have always changed,” one researcher says. “But we want songs to change faster now. It’s the culture. It’s the soup we’re swimming in.” Exactly. Another commentator expresses an instrumentalizing perspective on worship songs: our choice of song should be determined by whatever works right now, whatever connects today in terms of appeal.
It’s clear the faster rise and fall is what we want. (The people have spoken!) But is it what we need? Does the rapid turnover of worship songs create a sense that nothing is solid and nothing lasts? Does it give the impression that Christianity is a constantly changing style or fashion? If Christian worship models the fast-paced, ever-changing decay rate of other aspects of culture, are we missing something special?
Power of Time in Worship
Rightly understood, Christian worship is the opposite of a shortening decay rate. We don’t compress time into the present by riding the wave of novelty or looking for the next best thing. Christian worship extends and lengthens time by helping us reach backward and forward.
When the apostle Paul addressed the Corinthian church about the Lord’s Supper, he said we proclaim (in the present) the Lord’s death (in the past) until he comes (in the future). At the table of our Lord, our proclamation stretches backward to the Last Supper and signals forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Every Lord’s Supper is another train stop on the journey from the upper room to the everlasting feast. When we eat the bread and drink the cup, the past and future rush into the present, extending the moment in both directions, eternalizing an experience that grants spiritual nourishment.
Something similar happens with other aspects of worship. When we sing the songs of our forefathers and mothers in the faith, when we recite psalms and creeds, when we preach the same Scriptures, we’re lengthening and extending time, stretching back into the past and leaning forward into the future. We’re mixing old and new in ways that defy the decay rate.
Worship with the Accordion
I receive spiritual benefit from multiple styles of worship. I appreciate variety in music. The psalmist says to sing new songs to the Lord, so I do. And I enjoy them. I’m grateful for fresh songs that faithfully celebrate the gospel, and I’m cheering on singers and songwriters who repurpose old hymns and ancient psalms.
At the same time, I recommend pastors and worship leaders intentionally ensure every service features songs or elements deliberately designed to lengthen and extend our experience of the present by connecting past and future. Let’s resist the decay rate and communicate to everyone in attendance that something timeless is taking place in time—that something ancient has a place in the present, and the present is a taste of future hope.
Think of Christian worship like an accordion. In the fast-paced consumer culture, the accordion is closed and compressed. In Christian worship, we extend the instrument, pulling the bellows apart, so the accordion’s airy sigh releases a cascade of musical notes. As the accordion expands, new melodies arise. Christian worship mixes old and new in a way that brings past and future into the present.
There’s an inexplicable sense of power in a Christmas Eve service that ends every year with the congregation holding candles and singing “Silent Night,” not only because of the theology expressed in that great carol or the soft yellow glow in the sanctuary but also because the accordion is extended.
This Christmas Eve is connected to all the previous ones, and as you look down the aisle at your family, and see your friends and the worn and weary saints still worshiping alongside you year after year, time stands still. All other Christmas Eves are stacked, one on top of the other, which deepens the significance of the moment. (I once attended a Christmas Eve service at another church, and the last song was a celebratory adaptation of “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” a terrific closing if you want to stress the missional call to take the Christmas story to the world. But in skipping “Silent Night” with the candles, the accordion didn’t expand that year, and I sensed it was a missed opportunity.)
God’s People in God’s Time
The church should be the one place where everything slows, where in the mix of old and new, something of permanence is communicated. There’s no planned obsolescence here. We are planning for eternity. We are God’s people. We live in God’s world. We inhabit space and time. We are grounded in the past, and we anticipate the future.
So whatever we sing on Sundays, whatever creeds and Scriptures we recite, whatever Bible passages we hear preached, whatever practices we incorporate—we must communicate that here, in the presence of the Spirit, we stand apart from our throwaway consumer culture. Here, connected to all the saints who’ve gone before us, we lean forward in pursuit of the prize that awaits. Here, in our intergenerational church full of children scampering around, where high school seniors stand next to senior adults, we take another snapshot in time, one flash in a history of 20 centuries of faithful Jesus-followers dotting the landscape all over the world.
We’re not up to date. Neither are we out of date. Worship takes us to another plane altogether.
Let that accordion expand in worship. Defy the decay rate.
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