Review: A History of Contemporary Praise and Worship: Understanding the Ideas that Reshaped the Protestant Church By Lester Ruth and Lim Swee Hong

by on June 26, 2025 | Comment

Whenever someone introduces himself to me as a worship pastor, my standard response is, “Me too.” Inevitably, my reply prompts inquiry about how I lead worship. So, I explain that I call the church to worship, I pray a lot, I read Scripture, I preach sermons, and I institute and administer the sacraments. At some point, the penny drops that I am making the point that the whole worship service is worship, that I am a normal pastor who leads that worship, and that—implicitly—I am rejecting the claim that the musical portions of our worship service are exclusively the praise and worship components.

This anecdote makes the point that music has become a defining consideration in how people think about church. Lester Ruth and Lim Swee Hong have written a history of how music came to occupy such a central place in modern evangelical churches. This book is an insightful and detailed exploration of what led us to the new normal, so to speak, in prevailing expectations and assumptions about how the church should structure worship and approach its music.

Foundationally, Ruth and Hong see two parallel histories at work through most of the twentieth century. In this respect, they distinguish “praise and worship” from “contemporary worship.” On the one hand, the history of “praise and worship” is the story of shifts and developments specifically within the Pentecostal world. On the other hand, “contemporary worship” is the phenomenon that spread throughout wider non-denominational evangelicalism and some mainline churches especially in the last decades of the 1900s. These two streams are not at odds with one another, as the book’s last section shows how they merged together in the late 1990s into a bigger, more organized and commercial outlook on church music. This merged approach is what the authors call “contemporary praise and worship.”

On the Pentecostal side, a few features of the historical development of praise and worship are worth noting. First, these changes in musical style originated in a particular desire to see God work and for his people to experience his work. Accordingly, praise and worship have an origin story in the ministry of Reg Layzell, who turned to a specific outlook and practice of praise to breathe life into a series of weekend talks that started on a failing note. Second, the history of praise and worship music was built upon a specific understanding of a biblical theology of music.

This attempt to be biblical shows—whatever we may make of the exegetical conclusions—that earlier Pentecostal theologizing about worship music aimed to be grounded in scriptural concerns. The foundational verse was Psalm 22:3, “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.” This verse suggested to Pentecostal thinkers that praise was the way that God’s people would experience the Lord’s presence. Earlier reflection did not strictly tie praise exclusively to musical issues, but that development occurred as practices solidified.

Building upon that premise, praise and worship music began explicitly presenting church musicians as a new priestly class. They saw this as a fulfillment of certain Davidic promises coming true among their fold. Although the hermeneutics here are far different from Reformed exegesis, it is interesting to see the attempt to ground their musical approach in an exegetical and theological outlook.

The effect of this new priestly outlook was to see music as arguably the central concern of worship. Music was what now enabled God’s people to experience his presence. Early practices in this theology still saw little change to traditional songs and music. As the theology settled, however, the quest then became to find the kinds of music that best facilitated the people’s experience of God’s presence. At this point, the criteria began to shift—perhaps unconsciously so—to the people’s felt experience of God’s presence. The measure of this experience was not what biblical truth said about God’s presence with his people in worship, but what the people felt was the strongest experience of divine presence.

As much as Reformed readers will differ from the biblical interpretations that grounded Pentecostal praise and worship, the premise that biblical theology should ground our worship is strikingly more welcome than what Ruth and Hong describe as the driving force in “contemporary worship.” As they describe it, the main motivation for the changes and developments in wider evangelical and mainline approaches to worship music were primarily pragmatic. Their one key verse was 1 Corinthians 9:22, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” They took this verse as their license to make worship into whatever would attract people to come in hopes that they might convert to Christ.

Besides 1 Corinthians 9:22, the other recurring theme through Ruth and Hong’s section on contemporary worship is the baby boomer generation. To take one step back, they ground the pragmatism of contemporary worship in Charles Finney’s approach of “new measures” as a way to gather as many as possible with an algorithm of sorts to provoke a certain religious experience. After this connection, however, they highlight the connection to the growing climate of consumerism throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

This consumerist climate has roots in the marketing realization that America’s youth should be a key target audience for advertising. Youth (at least when this research originated) often have disposable income, since they have fewer financial obligations. Still, youth have distinct preferences from older adults. Their preferences must be a key factor in marketing because they are a significant portion of the market spenders.

This marketing approach took hold in the church. To reach the youth, the church must market itself to their preferences. Since these practices really set deepest roots in the post-war context, the baby boomer generation grew up with the whole market vying to appease their preferences. The church jumped on the bandwagon. Seemingly, boomers have continued to think that their preferences are the measuring rod for what the church ought to do.

In contrast to the Pentecostal impulse to find what best enabled God’s people to experience his presence, the evangelical impulse was to give the masses what they wanted. At times, the form, style, and content of music in these two approaches were identical. Still, the underlying motivations remained distinct. The shift, however, was in the growing commercialization on both sides.

The merger into contemporary praise and worship seems to reside in companies facilitating copyright issues for churches to use new song material in worship. This unseen factor stands behind projection issues as well as licensing. A whole industry now revolves around providing the needed licenses for churches to use new music that is not in their hymnals. As it happens, new music from these same sets of corporations keeps releasing too.

Ruth and Hong’s history of contemporary praise and worship music is a fascinating look under the hood at what has brought modern church music to the place we find it today. Most of that history is a mix of some biblical concerns with capitulation, compromise, and innovation. When we cherish our own creativity and pleasure over clear principles of faithfulness, we are largely left unanchored to a safe biblical harbor. We become the new measure of worship, and we take our seat on God’s throne to decide what we should do in church. This history is insightful, but Reformed readers will also find much to remind them of how differently we think about what worship is as well as its purpose, principles, and form.

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

Lester Ruth and Lim Swee Hong, A History of Contemporary Praise and Worship: Understanding the Ideas that Reshaped the Protestant Church (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2021).

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