Daily Meditation

Seeking a Reformation of Worship

Ligonier Ministries

When Israel’s prophets denounced the corruption of Israelite worship, they sought reform, not revolution. Though they vehemently criticized liturgicalism, they never attacked the liturgy. Though they railed against externalism and formalism, they never sought to remove the externals and forms God had instituted.

For the forms of worship to communicate the content they are designed to convey, there must be constant instruction so that people understand their meaning. The sacraments are not naked symbols. They must be clothed with the Word. Word and sacrament must go together. Sacrament without Word inevitably yields formalism. Word without sacrament inevitably yields a sterility of worship.

We need a reformation of worship, a new discovery of the meaning of classical forms. I cannot be casual about worshiping God. God stripped of transcendence is no God at all. There is such a thing as the Holy. The Holy is sacred. It is uncommon. It is other. It is transcendent. It is not always user-friendly. But it is relevant. It provokes adoration, which is the essence of godly worship.

Coram Deo

Think about the sacraments and liturgy of the church you attend. Are they truly meaningful to you or have they become mere forms of ritual?

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 119:171
Psalm 108:1
Revelation 4:11

Daily Meditation

Seeking a Reformation of Worship

Ligonier Ministries

When Israel’s prophets denounced the corruption of Israelite worship, they sought reform, not revolution. Though they vehemently criticized liturgicalism, they never attacked the liturgy. Though they railed against externalism and formalism, they never sought to remove the externals and forms God had instituted.

For the forms of worship to communicate the content they are designed to convey, there must be constant instruction so that people understand their meaning. The sacraments are not naked symbols. They must be clothed with the Word. Word and sacrament must go together. Sacrament without Word inevitably yields formalism. Word without sacrament inevitably yields a sterility of worship.

We need a reformation of worship, a new discovery of the meaning of classical forms. I cannot be casual about worshiping God. God stripped of transcendence is no God at all. There is such a thing as the Holy. The Holy is sacred. It is uncommon. It is other. It is transcendent. It is not always user-friendly. But it is relevant. It provokes adoration, which is the essence of godly worship.

Coram Deo

Think about the sacraments and liturgy of the church you attend. Are they truly meaningful to you or have they become mere forms of ritual?

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 119:171
Psalm 108:1
Revelation 4:11

Family Liturgy

Liturgies for Young and Old

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, James K.A. Smith, Brazos Press, 224 pages.  A book review.

Gracy Olmstead
The American Conservative

. . . . A Christian home should be mindful of formative liturgies—“story, poetry, music, symbols, and images”—that foster children’s spiritual growth “under the hood” of consciousness. “Children are ritual animals,” he [James K. Smith] writes, “who absorb the gospel in practices that speak to their imaginations.” Participation in the liturgical calendar—using candles, colors, feasts, festivals, and stories—can help integrate our children into the family of faith.

But quotidian home practices matter, too: a family that regularly gathers around the dinner table is practicing a liturgy. So, too, the family in which gardening or other household chores are done together, bringing order and beauty to the home and its surroundings. Such practices help shape and cultivate the life within.

In education, there are also proper liturgies we can foster. Smith notes that from Sunday school to the university, there are stories of the good life, of what we ought to love, that are constantly propagated to our kids. He suggests fostering their moral imaginations at every opportunity, whether learning economics, U.S. history, or social studies. If we believe there’s a telos to human existence, and we want our children to recognize it, we should craft their education in such a way that they learn to trace its patterns throughout life. A “holistic, formative approach to education … is bound up with a teleological purview—embedding the tasks of teaching and learning in a bigger vision and ultimate Story that guide and govern learning.”

Smith warns that, if we do not tell such stories, we run the risk of our children tuning their hearts to culture’s alternative messages—to what he calls “rival liturgies.”

Worship and Liturgy

Liturgy and Culture

Aug 20, 2014 

Justin Taylor

Frank Senn:

The liturgy is transcultural in that it includes orders and symbols that witness to the church as a worldwide communio.
It is contextual in that it always admits the use of natural or cultural elements in worship in each locality.
It is countercultural in that the gospel it proclaims and celebrates always holds out the vision of an alternative worldview and lifestyle.
It is cross-cultural in that it uses expressions from different cultures.

—Frank C. Senn, Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997),  678.

Doug Wilson's Letter from Moscow

Hauling In a Ten-Pound Fish on a Five-Pound Line

Posted on Monday, February 10, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog 

I am currently working my way through a fascinating book about Reformation-era music called Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism, written by Joseph Herl. It is a tightly-packed scholarly tome, but would be a great read for any pastor interested in musical reformation — as every pastor ought to be.

Church music can be divided into two broad categories. The first would be the music of trained musicians and choirs, at which the Lutherans excelled. They produced some of the greatest music that the human race has produced as of this point, and so we have to begin every discussion of this subject with that “where credit is due” acknowledgement.

But the other category is that of bringing congregations along. In this, the music of most churches in the Lutheran areas was atrocious. There were exceptions of grace — like Strassburg under Bucer, borderline not Lutheran, where the singing was good across the board. There were other exceptions in Lutheran areas, but in many places, the congregations sang very little, or anemically, or not at all. One of the reasons the Reformed areas did better in bringing congregations along is that their music was (deliberately) not as complicated.

Just a couple of examples should make the point. Services could be upwards of three hours long, with the middle hour occupied with the sermon.

What the Hijabi Witnessed (and What She Didn't)

Article by Carl Trueman  

August 2013

Reformation 21

 

 

I have had the pleasure on a couple of occasions of sitting next to a girl wearing a hijab.  Typically, this has occurred in departure lounges of airports or on the platforms of railway stations. Never has it happened in a place of worship at the time of a service. Never, that is, until recently.

On the last Friday in June, I happened to be in Cambridge with my youngest son and decided to expose him to one of my alma mater's true delights: choral evensong at King's Chapel. We dutifully queued in the pouring rain (for me, those blue remembered hills are definitely English and cloud covered), and, when the chapel finally opened, we took our places at the far end of the aisle. It was then that I realized that the young girl sitting to my left was wearing a hijab. 

Seeker Sensible Worship

Intelligibility is Not Cozy 

Liturgy and Worship - Liturgical Notes
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 23 August 2012

Yesterday at Knox Presbytery (CREC), we had a good discussion surrounding the issues of "seeker sensitive" worship and "seeker sensible" worship, a discussion that flowed into the evening.

Here are just a couple of quick comments about it. First, my operating assumption is that the worship service on Sunday morning should be structured for believers, and not for unbelievers. The impact of such a service can certainly be evangelistic, but not because that is its primary purpose. There can be evangelistic effects, but this does not shift the purpose of the worship service. But what about . . .?

"But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all,  the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you" (1 Cor. 14:24-25, ESV).

This is a standard text that is appealed to in these discussions

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Cistern for the Water

Theology - Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 08 March 2012

My friend Toby Sumpter, no enemy of robust liturgy, recently posted the following on Facebook. "When people come to our church 'for the liturgy' I think I will begin asking how frequently they use porn, yell at their wife, or tell lies." On a related note, Mark Galli, author of Beyond Smells and Bells, noted that "it should not surprise us that the litugry is also one of the best places to hide from God" (p. 11). (I will interact more with Galli's book in another venue.)

When liturgists debate, there is a lot to talk about, and many fields of study to cover -- theology, history, aesthetics, and so on. I have certain decided convictions in all such debates, and am happy to participate in them. But there is one thing needful as a prerequisite to everything else, and this one thing is necessary to keep all the subsequent debate from being entirely beside the point.

Culturally Impotent Christians, Part II

Stigmatizing Unbelief

In a previous post we discussed some of the factors which historically have made Christians culturally impotent.  This is a critical subject for the church generally and all individual Christians to have considered and upon which to have come to some solid biblical conviction. If we fail here, whether out of ignorance or uninterest, we risk undermining the church and dishonouring the Name of Christ.

The essential factor as to whether Christians are culturally powerful or anaemic is the ability of the Church to endure from generation to generation, which, in turn means that it is critical that we are successful in raising our children to walk in the Way, and we have done.  Any faith which cannot bind its children into obedience and loyalty is not merely culturally impotent, it shames the Name of God Himself.

Culturally Impotent Christians, Part I

When Worship Becomes Seeker Friendly and Entertaining

In his book One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), sociologist Rodney Stark  argues that there are at least two sociological conditions under which monotheistic faiths have been particularly strong.  These conditions are times of persecution and of adherence to the rituals of public worship.

"Strength" here refers strongly to maintaining traditions, beliefs, and practices and locking those attributes into the next generation.

His first example is the the sociological power of the rituals of public worship.