"Worship in an Age of Anxiety" by J. Michael Jordan. A Review

 

Worship in an Age of Anxiety: How Churches Can Create Space for Healing

J. Michael Jordan

IVP Academic

ISBN: 978-1-5140-0610-8; June 2024; $32.00

 

The rise of anxiety, depression, and several other mental health issues are being noted by plenty of authorities across the social spectrum. As a Christian minister who has engaged with several people exhibiting different forms of these, and as an author who has taken a stab at various ways anger and anxiety are being manipulated in our time, I also am concerned. Therefore, I was very interested in “Worship in an Age of Anxiety: How Churches Can Create Space for healing,” which is a 248-page paperback in the IVP Academic series Dynamics of Christian Worship. J. Michael Jordan is Dean of the Chapel and Associate Professor of Religion at Houghton University in Houghton, NY. He is also an ordained Wesleyan pastor. The book is both diagnostic as well as filled with helpful proposals for congregations to think through on how to be healing spaces. For an author to keep both of these qualities together is important to me.

 

Jordan doesn’t come from my Reformed position, and therefore isn’t addressing concerns from the Regulative Principle of Worship, as we Reformed folk like to call it. Instead, it is mostly pragmatic in its approach. In other words, the author is concerned that there is a rising trend toward anxiety, and we need to figure out how to be part of the remedy and not the disease. Or, as he puts it, this is a book “about worship and its potential to provide healing spaces for people who experience anxiety. It is not a psychological textbook” (8).

 

To help readers grasp what the author is aiming for, the opening chapter explains anxiety, and the role of therapy, especially “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy” (ACT). Jordan will use ACT as a gauge throughout the work. He then spends two chapters chronicling how anxiety has played an important role in the evangelical movement from the early 19^th Century to the present: from Charles Finney, D.L. Moody, up to the 2020s in North America. Finally, in the remaining five chapters the author addresses aspects of evangelical worship – all documented and analyzed – from time, space, music, preaching to Sacraments/ordinances. It’s in these chapters you see Jordan keeping criticism and helpful suggestions in a balanced style that gives readers a good sense of discernment without being snootily censorious. The author’s main concern is that “American evangelical worship works against anxious people’s healing, against them naming the reality that lies within them, against them finding hope in Jesus” (57).

 

Throughout most of the work I kept finding myself saying, “Finally! Someone gets it!” For one example out of several, Jordan addresses the importance of worship space, silence, media, and lighting. He carefully, and kindly, shows how these can be, and at times are, misused in a way that keeps anxious people from becoming more whole.

 

Or, as another instance, the author explains and demonstrates the modern, evangelical approach to music in worship, how there is a cult of novelty and individuality going on. He also shows the way modern worship music hardens the lines between different generations. Yet, with each of his criticisms he describes practical, thoughtful ways for an evangelical congregation to move toward being healthier and more health-giving, especially for those living with anxiety.

 

One of the integral principles that brought about the Reformation seems to me to be hovering in the background of the book: Christian worship is to be from the (priestly) people, not limited to the (priestly) professionals. Not only did I appreciate this behind-the-scenes working assumption, but also what he says about many subjects, such as the deep significance of the Lord’s Day. He has even captured the evangelical love affair with the spectacular. This love affair is where there is a tying together of “worship to spectacle” which “makes it hard to imagine how God is present during the vast majority of life, which is not spectacular. It centers the desires of a target audience and makes others expendable; this is the kind of uncertainty many of us would find intolerable” (79). Thoughtful readers will have a number of “aha!” moments as they work through the book.

 

As I noted toward the beginning, Jordan’s approach is more practical, not necessarily concerned with what God requires and forbids in worship, as he describes in Scripture. But the author’s aim is noble, especially in our present milieu, with its increasing “intolerance for uncertainty” of anxiety. This volume should be poured over by ministers, elders, worship leaders, church AV Teams, and more. Parishioners of all stripes would also benefit richly from delving into the book. I highly recommend “Worship in an Age of Anxiety.”

 

My happy thanks to IVP Academic for sending me a copy of the book used for this review. Once I requested the copy, they promptly mailed it, and never made any demands on me, other than for an honest evaluation. Therefore, this appraisal is all mine, freely made and freely given.