Spilt Grape Juice

The onset of the ‘Worship Wars’ in evangelical Protestantism is usually traced to the 1980s, while the 1990s are generally viewed as the decade of ‘Worship Renewal,’ thanks in large part to the late, venerable Dr. Robert Webber, who coined the term ‘blended worship.’ In the eye of the storm, pastor/author Mike Root released no less than three books about worship, including Spilt Grape Juice. His intention was to root (pun intended) congregational worship in the reality of Ephesians 4:11-16, in which the primary emphases of the assembly include equipping every member for ministry, building up the body of Christ, and attaining to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. Root maintains that the Church as we know it (circa 1993, at least) has by and large failed in making equipping and encouraging the primary task of the Sunday meeting.

The author obviously wrote this book in the context of an ecclesiastical tradition in which he felt his ideas would be met with a certain amount of hostility: “Some, who feel threatened by my conclusions, will probably write this book off as heretical and blasphemous and will probably merely be recommitted to their traditional thinking.” Nonetheless, Root is not put off by the potential reception of the book, adopting a fairly gentle, lighthearted manner on the whole, with the exception of many italicized phrases, which he clearly intends to be heavy-hitting discomfort-inducers.

Root’s lighthearted tone is nowhere more evident than his chapter titles and his copious illustrations. The chapter titles go a long way to preemptively defusing their potentially incendiary content: “We Sure Mythed That One”, “Keep Your Pinkie in the Air, Please”, “Pass the Ammunition”, and “Go Get’Em, Tiger”, just to name a few. More broadly, the book is divided into five sections: “Examine the Assembly”, “Encouragement and the Assembly”, “Equipping and the Assembly”, “Enjoyment and the Assembly”, and “Evangelism and the Assembly.” Within these confines, Root tackles his main beef with Sunday meetings, always under the microscope of Ephesians 4.

While I sincerely engaged with the content of most chapters, the chapter entitled “Delicious Doctrines” was a massive disappointment. Instead of presenting the glorious gospel truths passed down through the ages, Root enumerates happiness, rejoicing, praise and thanksgiving as ‘doctrines.’ Possibly so, but he provides scant scriptural support. I must also go on record as loathing Root’s musical taste. At one point he records the lyrics of a song he taught to his congregation: “I’ve got a thumbs up kind of a faith in a thumbs down kind of world.” Enough said. But I can’t fault Root too much; he is a folksy, down-home Midwesterner who obviously communicates in a way his people understand. I also differ with Root on the subject of Godward, vertical praise being abrogated in the New Testament. Root seems to have missed the point of Christ’s atoning sacrifice as the ground of our praise and thanksgiving in the age before Christ returns. Most conspicuously and intriguingly, Root ends the book with a related but somewhat tangential argument that “We do need preaching about evangelism and evangelistic preaching, but we don’t need it in the assembly.” This review is not the time to explore and/or explode his argument, but the concept is food for thought. Many of us, if not most of us, attend churches that haven’t seen conversions in years, yet never seem to run out of Sunday morning evangelism pep rallies.

At this point in the Worship Wars/Worship Renewal period, the most helpful characteristic of this book will be its insistence that worship is not relegated to Sunday mornings. Worship in all of life is Root’s mantra, and it is a solidly biblical one at that. This book will also aid those who struggle to leave their suits and ties at home on Sundays, those who have trouble cracking a smile when meeting with other believers, and those who imagine the church building when ‘church’ is mentioned. Spilt Grape Juice is not the best book on worship available, as it lacks in Christ-centeredness, but for any believer just starting to ask questions about why the Sunday meeting is so morose, it’s as good a place to start as any. But it's far from the best book on worship available.