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Worship in an Age of Anxiety: How Churches Can Create Space for Healing
The history of the theology of worship is riddled with examples of clergy and worship leaders who have sought to manipulate their parishioners' anxiety in order to spur repentance and turn people toward God. Even if such ends may be desirable—at what cost?
In Worship in an Age of Anxiety, Jordan challenges this utilitarian approach, offering a critical assessment of contemporary as well as historical evangelical figures such as D. L. Moody and Billy Graham who have deployed anxiety as a tool for conversion.
Proposing a completely different model, Jordan takes up various elements of worship,
liturgyspacemusicpreachingthe sacramentsIn doing so, he develops a practical theology of worship that also turns people toward God but within a healing framework.
While worship alone cannot heal anxiety, it can be a time and place where, rather than being manipulated, anxiety can be acknowledged, accepted, and offered to God.
In Worship in an Age of Anxiety, Jordan challenges this utilitarian approach, offering a critical assessment of contemporary as well as historical evangelical figures such as D. L. Moody and Billy Graham who have deployed anxiety as a tool for conversion.
Proposing a completely different model, Jordan takes up various elements of worship,
liturgyspacemusicpreachingthe sacramentsIn doing so, he develops a practical theology of worship that also turns people toward God but within a healing framework.
While worship alone cannot heal anxiety, it can be a time and place where, rather than being manipulated, anxiety can be acknowledged, accepted, and offered to God.
- GenresTheology
248 pages, Paperback
Published June 4, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 24, 2024
This book explores the church's potential as a place where anxious people can find support and healing, alongside other interventions and therapies. J. Michael Jordan explains that even though attending church services can feel overwhelming for some people with anxiety, pastors can make it easier for these congregants to participate by reconsidering some of the language and practices that their church may be using. Early on in the book, Jordan explores how some prominent preachers from American history have stoked or responded to anxiety in their church services and revival meetings, manipulating anxiety to cause conviction and lead to more conversions. He reflects on these flawed approaches, and then analyzes how things have changed over time.
Jordan argues that even though preachers are now far less likely to deliberately stoke fear in their listeners' hearts, contemporary worship services frequently create unrealistic expectations for how their members should feel. When churches prioritize upbeat, spontaneous, and emotionally intense worship, they often tie the sincerity of someone's faith to their felt experience of God in a particular moment. This is especially dangerous for anxious people, since it encourages them towards greater worry and rumination. Even though feelings of anxiety sometimes flow from conviction, no one needs to doubt their salvation just because they couldn't sense an outpouring of God's presence during a particular worship song. Jordan challenges the faulty theological beliefs and questionable applications that underpin these issues, and he helps readers see the harm that anxious people experience when churches equate someone's momentary, unwanted thoughts and feelings with their beliefs and standing before God.
Throughout this book, Jordan draws on his pastoral experiences and his interactions with students at the Christian college where he works. He reflects on ways that anxiety has continued growing as a problem, especially among young people, and he explains that even though individual experiences of anxiety will vary, there are some core themes that churches can take into account as part of their ministry. For example, anxious people struggle with uncertainty, and they wish that they could align their internal feelings with their true beliefs and goals. In therapy, they will learn that their feelings don't define them, and that they can begin to tolerate uncertainty while still taking action towards meaningful goals. However, churches may contradict this message by encouraging people to measure their relationship with God based on their feelings, and this will lead to further dissonance and distress.
Over multiple chapters, Jordan explores ways that a church's liturgy, space and design, music, preaching, and presentation of the sacraments can help or hinder an anxious person's movement towards healing. For example, he suggests that when churches adopt liturgical rituals and follow the traditional church calendar, people are able to ground themselves in familiar traditions instead of constantly trying to reach spontaneous emotional highs. Jordan also encourages worship pastors to acknowledge the range of emotions that congregants carry with them into the sanctuary, instead of communicating the expectation that everyone should be happy and upbeat. He also occasionally touches on other issues, such as how sermons with an "us vs. them" emphasis and a church's system of unspoken community norms can lead to greater anxiety, as someone becomes afraid to ask questions and worries about stepping out of line.
Although I understand the need to limit this book's scope, I wish that Jordan had explored more experiences of anxiety, such as social anxiety, oversensitive consciences, and struggles with perfectionism. I think that too much of this book focuses on worrying about whether you're feeling God's presence enough in worship, without exploring other issues. For example, because of the historical survey at the beginning of the book, I kept expecting Jordan to address how preachers can bring conviction through the Bible to unrepentant sinners without also heaping fear and shame on scrupulous perfectionists who struggle to believe in grace. It's a challenging balance to walk, but this and other topics end up falling by the wayside.
I also wish that Jordan had addressed unwanted thoughts more, instead of almost exclusively focusing on unwanted feelings. He doesn't address implications for anxious people who feel guilty and ashamed for their thoughts, and this is a major oversight, especially since there are lots of churches that equate bad thoughts to sinful actions, without making a distinction for unwanted thoughts that flow from an anxiety disorder, not from the person's true desires or actions.
This is a thought-provoking, caring book that explores an often-neglected topic. Even though I wish that Jordan had delved into more types and experiences of anxiety, he covers a lot of important concepts about how churches can help anxious people progress on their healing journeys, instead of unintentionally hindering them through poor theology or questionable practices. Although this book primarily focuses on people who are struggling with unwanted feelings, leaving many other topics unexplored, the author handled this main topic in a very thorough, helpful manner, and this book can encourage church leaders to rethink aspects of their church's worship services and culture, while hopefully also inspiring them to learn even more.
I received a free copy from the publisher, and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
Jordan argues that even though preachers are now far less likely to deliberately stoke fear in their listeners' hearts, contemporary worship services frequently create unrealistic expectations for how their members should feel. When churches prioritize upbeat, spontaneous, and emotionally intense worship, they often tie the sincerity of someone's faith to their felt experience of God in a particular moment. This is especially dangerous for anxious people, since it encourages them towards greater worry and rumination. Even though feelings of anxiety sometimes flow from conviction, no one needs to doubt their salvation just because they couldn't sense an outpouring of God's presence during a particular worship song. Jordan challenges the faulty theological beliefs and questionable applications that underpin these issues, and he helps readers see the harm that anxious people experience when churches equate someone's momentary, unwanted thoughts and feelings with their beliefs and standing before God.
Throughout this book, Jordan draws on his pastoral experiences and his interactions with students at the Christian college where he works. He reflects on ways that anxiety has continued growing as a problem, especially among young people, and he explains that even though individual experiences of anxiety will vary, there are some core themes that churches can take into account as part of their ministry. For example, anxious people struggle with uncertainty, and they wish that they could align their internal feelings with their true beliefs and goals. In therapy, they will learn that their feelings don't define them, and that they can begin to tolerate uncertainty while still taking action towards meaningful goals. However, churches may contradict this message by encouraging people to measure their relationship with God based on their feelings, and this will lead to further dissonance and distress.
Over multiple chapters, Jordan explores ways that a church's liturgy, space and design, music, preaching, and presentation of the sacraments can help or hinder an anxious person's movement towards healing. For example, he suggests that when churches adopt liturgical rituals and follow the traditional church calendar, people are able to ground themselves in familiar traditions instead of constantly trying to reach spontaneous emotional highs. Jordan also encourages worship pastors to acknowledge the range of emotions that congregants carry with them into the sanctuary, instead of communicating the expectation that everyone should be happy and upbeat. He also occasionally touches on other issues, such as how sermons with an "us vs. them" emphasis and a church's system of unspoken community norms can lead to greater anxiety, as someone becomes afraid to ask questions and worries about stepping out of line.
Although I understand the need to limit this book's scope, I wish that Jordan had explored more experiences of anxiety, such as social anxiety, oversensitive consciences, and struggles with perfectionism. I think that too much of this book focuses on worrying about whether you're feeling God's presence enough in worship, without exploring other issues. For example, because of the historical survey at the beginning of the book, I kept expecting Jordan to address how preachers can bring conviction through the Bible to unrepentant sinners without also heaping fear and shame on scrupulous perfectionists who struggle to believe in grace. It's a challenging balance to walk, but this and other topics end up falling by the wayside.
I also wish that Jordan had addressed unwanted thoughts more, instead of almost exclusively focusing on unwanted feelings. He doesn't address implications for anxious people who feel guilty and ashamed for their thoughts, and this is a major oversight, especially since there are lots of churches that equate bad thoughts to sinful actions, without making a distinction for unwanted thoughts that flow from an anxiety disorder, not from the person's true desires or actions.
This is a thought-provoking, caring book that explores an often-neglected topic. Even though I wish that Jordan had delved into more types and experiences of anxiety, he covers a lot of important concepts about how churches can help anxious people progress on their healing journeys, instead of unintentionally hindering them through poor theology or questionable practices. Although this book primarily focuses on people who are struggling with unwanted feelings, leaving many other topics unexplored, the author handled this main topic in a very thorough, helpful manner, and this book can encourage church leaders to rethink aspects of their church's worship services and culture, while hopefully also inspiring them to learn even more.
I received a free copy from the publisher, and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
August 6, 2024
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 19th 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.
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 19th 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.
October 24, 2025
J. Michael Jordan’s Worship in an Age of Anxiety is a deeply insightful exploration of how faith communities can respond to the pervasive experience of anxiety in modern life. Jordan challenges the long-standing use of fear as a tool for conversion, advocating instead for worship that acknowledges human vulnerability and fosters healing.
The book’s strength lies in its combination of theological rigor and practical application. Jordan carefully examines historical figures and contemporary practices, then offers a vision for worship that integrates liturgy, music, preaching, and sacraments as instruments of care rather than coercion. His approach is both intellectually satisfying and spiritually nourishing, providing readers with concrete ways to create spaces where anxiety can be recognized and offered to God.
Worship in an Age of Anxiety is an essential resource for clergy, worship leaders, and thoughtful congregants seeking a more compassionate, restorative model of worship one that nurtures both spiritual growth and emotional well being.
The book’s strength lies in its combination of theological rigor and practical application. Jordan carefully examines historical figures and contemporary practices, then offers a vision for worship that integrates liturgy, music, preaching, and sacraments as instruments of care rather than coercion. His approach is both intellectually satisfying and spiritually nourishing, providing readers with concrete ways to create spaces where anxiety can be recognized and offered to God.
Worship in an Age of Anxiety is an essential resource for clergy, worship leaders, and thoughtful congregants seeking a more compassionate, restorative model of worship one that nurtures both spiritual growth and emotional well being.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews