Countercultural Worship: A Plea to Evangelicals in a Secular Age

While most people in the Western world affirm the existence of God or a higher power, this conviction has little to do with daily life. God is marginalized in the public square and in the day-to-day lives of most people. This secular approach to life is the most serious challenge the church faces. McKim’s contention is that what happens in many evangelical churches on Sunday mornings has also become deeply secularized, with an unrecognized shift in focus away from God to the needs, desires, and preferences of worshippers. Evangelical worship, McKim argues, has drifted far from both its biblical roots and historic origins, leaving evangelicals in danger of becoming mere chaplains to the wider culture, oblivious to the contradictions between what the secular culture says is real and important and what Scripture says is real and important. But McKim also believes the resources exist to step back from the abyss. Countercultural Worship provides a careful theological and biblical study of the purpose, nature, and elements of corporate worship, as well as myriad resources for worship focused exclusively on the God whom we know best in Jesus Christ. Such worship, by its very nature, will be, as it always has been, countercultural.