I could name the liturgy at my home church—two opening hymns, announcements, another hymn, a prayer, another hymn, the prayer for the offering (which usually included the unusual phrase “thankful for your watchcare over us”) and offering, an hour + sermon which included copious amounts of Scripture, and a final altar call with hymn (“Just As I Am” being a usual example here). Even though our prayers and our liturgy weren’t written down, they fell into very familiar patterns.
Your worship service has a "look and feel". It may or may not reflect your church's values and culture. If you want it to, you need to employ something I'm calling a worship hermeneutic. In biblical hermeneutics, we learn the tools we can use to study and understand the biblical text. Our worship hermeneutic does the same thing for the experience of our worship service.
While the liturgy of the BCP Holy Communion and the cycle of sacrifices in Leviticus are not identically structured, there are important similarities in the shape and function of both.
Singing praise has many purposes, such as giving glory to God and instilling the doctrines of our faith. But one of the often overlooked reasons for singing is simply (yet profoundly) social. Worship songs are an important glue that practically realize the communion of the saints, even uniting our hearts across different worlds.
Call it an age of outrage; call it a culture of contempt; call it a politics of polarization. Whatever phrase you happen to use, there is little denying the prevalence of the spirit of moral judgment and mutual indignation in our public life today. Indeed, it seems impossible to escape. It pervades our social-media feeds. It permeates the tone of journalists and professional pundits. It seeps into our everyday conversations with friends and colleagues. We are a nation divided by deep disagreements, but it’s more than that. Because the real conviction underlying our hostility and anger is that those with whom we disagree are not simply wrong, they are wicked. They aren’t just mistaken. They are contemptible.
In the coming weeks, we are focusing on the theme of worship, liturgy, and spiritual formation. The past year has highlighted critical questions in the life of the church: What is the nature of the worshipping community? How are followers of Jesus formed to be able to thrive in times of crisis? What role does liturgy play in the formation of disciples? What have we been doing that has collapsed under the pressure of the strain of the past year? How must the church be more intentional about discipleship, and what commitments must we make to experience a renewed work of God’s Spirit within our congregations?
I had many questions that needed answers like any curious young person of my time. However, many times when I asked questions about our church doctrines, I was shut down or told I was too inquisitive. So, I set out to find the answers myself. This was one reason I left my classes in engineering to move to Bible college in 1993. I was asking questions that many of my friends were asking and I became passionate about answering those questions.
This has been a hard year to be glad as a pastor. Covid has cut the tail off the pastoral mullet. You know the mullet – business in the front, party in the back. Covid has cut off the tail. No parties, all business. Covid has taken away the fun parts of pastoral ministry and left behind the toil and the grind.
Covid cancelled retreats and camps and church events. No more potlucks or barbecues. No coffee or lunch meetings. No games in the church lawn. No VBS. No handshakes or hugs. No meals in homes, no hospitality. You can still smile, but it must be covered by a mask.
I didn’t come to a PhD in Theology by a typical path, and I didn’t know where it was going to lead when I was finished. When I began contemplating pursuing a PhD, I found myself asking What’s a good enough reason to get a PhD? The utilitarian deep inside me wondered what’s a good enough reason to spend the time and the money—particularly when I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I finished.
To be sure, there are pros and cons to pursuing a PhD at a seminary rather than a university, to studying in the US rather than the UK, or elsewhere. Perhaps this is a matter you are considering yourself. Here are four reasons my seminary PhD has served me well:
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