Category Archives: Worship

Is there a Scriptural model for the public meetings of Christians?

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Here’s an essay I wrote back in 2000 as a basis for discussion amongs the preachers and worship leaders at my church, Holy Trinity Norwich.

1. Starting-Point: Scripture or Tradition?

Our starting-point should not be, ‘Where can we find scriptural warrant for our current practice’; but rather, ‘What form of public meeting might be suggested if we went back to Scripture and ignored, for a moment, what we have become used to?’

2. Scriptural Basis: Old Testament or New Testament?…

Cathedrals: playgrounds or ‘sacred spaces’?

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Earlier this year, Chichester Cathedral was the venue for a ‘silent disco’ (where the music was played through wireless headphones, rather than loudspeakers).

Previous uses of cathedral space have included:

  • Stars Wars event (Peterborough)
  • Crazy golf course (Rochester)
  • Helter skelter (Norwich)
  • Indoor skate park (Gloucester)

Not surprisingly, these have provoked a certain amount of outrage:

‘Rochester Cathedral was founded in AD 604. It survived the Norman Conquest, 2 fires in the 12th century, and several rounds of pillaging.…

Liturgical worship in Eastern Orthodoxy

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Everyone agrees that the worship of God’s people in Old Testament times was liturgical in nature.

As the Orthodox Study Bible indicates:

‘Immediately after the giving of the Ten Commandments (Ex 20:1–17), instructions for building the altar were set forth (Ex 20:24–26). Then comes instruction concerning keeping the Sabbath (Ex 23:10–13), the annual feasts (Ex 23:14–19), and the various offerings and furnishings in the sanctuary (Ex 25:1–40). Following this, chapters 26—30 deal with such matters as the design of the tabernacle, the altar, and the outer court, the priests’ vestments and their consecration, and instructions for daily offerings.’

…

Orthodox worship

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According to legend, in 987 Prince Vladimir of Kiev sent emissaries to different countries of the world to learn about the religion and worship of each.  The Muslims were found to be ‘disgraceful’ and the Western Christians without ‘glory’.  Of Constantinople, at the cathedral church of Hagia Sophia, they reported:

‘We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it.

…

5 reasons why I’m not keen on reverential capitalization

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‘Reverential capitalization’ refers to the practice of capitalizing, for reasons of reverence or respect, the initial letters of words that refer to the deity.

Capitalization of nouns, in written English, does not convey respect or reverence.  Rather, it conveys specification.  We capitalize both Churchill and Hitler, both Pol Pot and Gandhi.

But what about capitalizing personal pronouns that refer to God?

Well, I think it is unnecessary and unhelpful, here’s why.

1. There is no biblical mandate for it

Biblical Hebrew does not distinguish between upper-case and lower-case letters, and the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament were written in all capital letters.…

The resurrection of the body

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“We look for the resurrection of the dead”, says the Nicene Creed.

“I believe in the resurrection of the body”, we declare every time we recite the “Apostles’ Creed”.

These ancient affirmations are well-grounded in Scripture, most obviously in 1 Corinthians 15, but also in Romans 8 and other passages.  They are also consistent with the teaching of 2 Peter 3 and Revelation 21 and 22 that confirms that the future hope of God’s people is not for their bodies to remain buried for ever in the ground of this earth and for their “souls” to fly off to “heaven”, but for bodily resurrection and for future life in God’s new heaven and new earth.…

Heavenly worship

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Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens write:

In the last book of the Bible we are given an empowering vision of worship in the new Jerusalem. All earthly worship should be inspired by the worship that is already going on in heaven and that we will experience more fully when Christ comes again. In this sense our present worship is like “playing heaven,” as when little children invite each other to “play house,” looking forward to the day when they are grown up and have their own home.…

Meditating on Christ’s sufferings

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Given the reticence and reserve with which the NT dwells on the physical aspects of Christ’s sufferings, it is certainly possible for Christians themselves to dwell too much on them.

F.F. Bruce comments on this subject in his fascinating book, Answers To Questions (p249f).

He contrasts this, by Charles Wesley…

1. O Love divine, what has thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father’s coeternal Son
bore all my sins upon the tree.…

Dan Kimball on ’emerging worship’

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Perspectives on Christian Worship: Five Views is a 2009 publication from Broadman & Holman Publishers, edited by J. Matthew Pinson.

Its contributors are: Timothy C.J. Quill (Liturgical Worship), Ligon Duncan (Traditional Evangelical Worship), Dan Wilt (Contemporary Worship), Michael Lawrence and Mark Dever (Blended Worship), and Emerging Worship (Dan Kimball).

I found the contribution by Dan Kimball particularly interesting, and that’s the one I’m going to focus on here.

Kimball, like all the other contributors, lives in the US. …

Silence!

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‘Silence is golden’, we say.  And we can agree that silence can have more eloquence than any words, serving (as Francois De La Rochefoucauld said) ‘sometimes to approve, sometimes to condemn; there is a mocking silence; there is a respectful silence.’

But what is the role and value of silence in Christian prayer and worship?

In the Middle Ages, silent prayers were added to the liturgy, and these were taken up by the Tractarians, and in the Roman Ordo. …