Adam Ramsey on Gazing at God

Every month, The Good Book Company make available digital versions of one of their books at no charge. This month (September 2025) it’s Truth on Fire: Gazing at God Until Your Heart Sings – ‘a call to know God clearly, worship Him wholeheartedly, and let truth set your heart ablaze’ – which is available in exchange for an email address here.

Tony Merida on Church

Every month, The Good Book Company make available digital versions of one of their books at no charge. This month (August 2024) it’s Gather: Loving Your Church as You Celebrate Christ Together by Tony Merida, which is available in exchange for an email address here.

Mission Frontiers 45, 5 (September–October 2023)

The September–October 2023 issue of Mission Frontiers, published by Frontier Ventures, contains a number of articles devoted to the theme of ‘Arts, Worship, and Mission in Today’s Church’.

Here is the issue blurb, which sets the scene:

‘Western hymns and worship songs are not the only valid forms of worship. Not only does worship not have to be Western, it doesn't have to be in song! Jesus is worthy of worship expressed in every style and every form. The ethnodoxology movement seeks to enable Christ followers in every nation, tribe, and language (and culture!) to worship God through multiple culturally relevant art forms. Ethnodoxology encourages worship that helps connect the worshiper's heart to God, resulting in forms that seem natural rather than foreign and that catalyze Disciple Making Movements.’

The issue is available here, from where individual articles can be downloaded, and the entire issue can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Foundations 83 (January 2023)

Issue 83 of Foundations: An International Journal of Evangelical Theology, published by Affinity, is now available (here in its entirety as a pdf), which includes the below essays.

Donald John MacLean

Editorial

Andrew G. Bannister

Muslims, Christians, and God: Why Good Theology is Crucial for Effective Evangelism

This article seeks to explore the question of the relationship between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Are they all “sister religions”, or is Islam built upon entirely different theological foundations to the biblical faiths? We will also examine why this is no mere academic question but is a crucial starting point for evangelism and apologetics to Muslims – and why getting this starting point wrong risks, at best, confusing our Muslim friends and at worst, even a sloppy syncretism.

Thorsten Prill

Equipping Twenty-First Century Missionaries for Cross-Cultural Ministry: African and Western Realities and Perspectives

This article discusses the issue of cross-cultural training of both Western Christians who are called to serve as missionaries in Africa and African reverse missionaries who come to Europe and other parts of the world to be involved in evangelistic outreach and church planting. While the value of cross-cultural training for missionaries is widely recognised, both groups tend to demonstrate deficiencies in their cultural intelligence (CQ) which negatively impacts their missionary efforts. This, however, need not be the case. There are various ways in which cross-cultural missionaries can acquire and develop cultural intelligence to become more effective ambassadors of Christ. A solid foundation for mission work abroad is usually laid at home through active involvement in the local church and cross-cultural ministries. Building on that foundation, future missionaries can further increase their cross-cultural competence through short-term mission trips, missionary apprenticeships or formal training at a mission college, preferably outside their home country or in a multicultural and interdenominational setting. Having arrived in their country of service in Africa or Europe, a period of on-field orientation and, at a later stage, participation in continuing education programmes should complement their training.

E.M. Hicham

A Missiological Assessment of the Insider Movement

This paper addresses Insider Movements (IMs) within the world of Islam and presents a missiological evaluation of the principal IM paradigms. A definition of the movement will be given and discussed. We will also consider five major controversial areas that summarise the debate: 1) The legitimacy of IM members’ dual Islamic and Christian identity, 2) The openness of ‘Insiders’ towards the prophethood of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, 3) The Qur’an as Scripture, 4) The new translation of the Bible, and 5) The role of the local Church. The results of the preceding analyses will be synthesised, conclusions regarding the sociological and theological merits of IMs will be made and alternatives will be suggested.

Robert Strivens

Do Christians Meet for Worship? A Review Essay: William Taylor, Revolutionary Worship: All of Life for God’s Glory

This review article considers recent evangelical reflections on the nature of worship. Many evangelicals are positing that as all of life is worship it is inappropriate to speak of Christians going to church to worship. Indeed, for many evangelicals, this is now the ruling paradigm: we meet for worship only in the sense that the whole of the believer’s life is worship. If we think that we meet for worship, our language and our thinking about such meetings needs to undergo a radical transformation. This position has been argued in a recent and influential book on the subject, Revolutionary Worship: All of Life for God’s Glory, by William Taylor, rector of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate. In contrast to this view, this article argues for the historic understanding of the meeting of the local church as a meeting for the worship of God, at which the Lord’s people may expect to know Christ’s presence with them by his Spirit in a special manner.

John W. Keddie

John Davidson and the General Assembly of 1596

In this article we consider one of the most remarkable post-Reformation revivals in Scottish Church history. It concerns what happened at the General Assembly of the Scottish Reformed Church in 1596. It is little known by Christians today, even in Scotland. Yet one contemporary historian, David Calderwood (1575-1650), was to write that “This year [1596] is a remarkable year in the history of the Kirk of Scotland.” We do need to bear in mind that the Word of God is the same, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today and forever, that sin is the same, essentially, in every generation, and the overwhelming need for sinners to be saved is the same in the twenty-first century as it was in the sixteenth. It is a modern arrogance that because we are in such a supposedly advanced society, we have somehow left such things as religion behind. We are in a secular world which holds out no hope for eternity, and has no recognition of answerability to God, or serious thought of judgement to come. We should therefore be moved by the experience of the Church even as far back as 1596 and, after all, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is undiminished in His power to quicken those who by nature are dead in trespasses and sins. We are always invited to believe that what He did then, He can do again in His sovereign grace. Besides this, here is a vital tenet for the Church to maintain: Christ, who has all authority in heaven and earth, is building His church so that the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). In this reconnoitre in Scottish Church history, we can therefore learn many things of timeless value.

Màiri MacPherson

Book Review: When Christians Face Persecution Theological Perspectives from the New Testament

Peter Sanlon

Book Review: Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution

Theology in Scotland 29, 2 (2022) on Church, Virtual and Physical

The substance of the latest issue of Theology in Scotland is devoted to the relationship between the physical and the virtual in the life of the church. The articles are available as pdfs from here.

Lina Toth

Editorial: Church, Virtual and Physical

From the Editorial: ‘As we continue to inhabit this not-quite-post-pandemic world, and grapple with the fact that, at least in some contexts and some forms, online participation is here to stay, questions around the relationship between the physical and the virtual in the life of the Church will need some sustained theological conversation. We hope that this issue of Theology in Scotland will contribute to a start of such conversation.’

Articles

Tom Shields

Virtual Assurance: Reflecting on the ‘Confident Prayer of the Church’ Through Online Worship

The author addresses two constant questions in Roman Catholic sacramental theology against the background of the broadcasting of online Mass, especially during the restrictions imposed on in-person attendance to inhibit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These are: what constitutes sacramental communion in the Roman Catholic Church and what is the role of the priest in celebrating the Eucharist? Looking at the first of those questions, he briefly examines the recent work of Katherine G. Schmidt and her use of the sacramental theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, which addresses both the idea and the experience of presence and absence in the celebration of the Eucharist. The author concludes that, while her work raises some important issues that need to be addressed, she does not entirely represent Chauvet’s thinking, and the fullest understanding of sacramental communion in the Roman Catholic tradition will always include the physical. It is in addressing the second question, that of the responsibility of the priest in celebrating the Mass with an online congregation, that the author believes a more satisfactory answer can be found as to the sacramental ‘value’ of virtual worship. Employing the ideas of authority, authenticity, and assurance, as they relate to the ordained ministry, he maintains that it is crucial the ‘confident prayer of the Church’ be visible and accessible.

Michael Hull

Why Not an ‘Online Eucharist’?: A Scottish-Episcopal Perspective on Presence

The experience of Covid-19’s lockdowns, especially living through a period without the Eucharist on Sunday lays behind this theological reflection from the perspective of a Scottish Episcopalian about so-called online Eucharists with remote consecrations. The question I set is simple: ‘Can the elements of bread and wine be consecrated outwith the gathered community?’ Simple too is my answer: ‘No, they cannot.’ The pandemic has tested the fault lines of God’s presence in our worship, our presence in community and those presences in the Eucharist. I argue that God’s presence with us was unchanged by lockdown. I also argue that although many of us began to use ‘onsite’, ‘online’ and a variety of related terms in unprecedented ways vis-à-vis liturgies, our presence to one another was changed during lockdown. When we could not gather as a community, even if we were able to communicate via the internet, we could neither celebrate the Eucharist nor consecrate the elements. Theological reflection will, I hope, hone our appreciation of the significance of our humanity, the Incarnation, and the Body and Blood of Christ in the sacramental economy.

Ruth Gouldbourne in conversation with Steve Holmes

From One Degree of Imperfection to Another: A Consideration of Gathering in Different Ways

This conversation focuses on issues raised during the recent pandemic, and in particular the theological as well as practical questions around gathering for worship when we could not be together in our buildings. We have known each other for several years, but have not met recently. However, to have a conversation reflecting on issues about different ways of meeting which have been brought to the fore by the last few years, it seemed good to meet and share food as well as conversation. This is a lightly edited version of our discussion. Unfortunately, we cannot share the delicious food with those of you who read this – and that fact proved central to our discussion.

Adam Hood

The Place of Buildings in the Mission of the Church of Scotland: The Need for a Theology of the Built Environment

Church sanctuaries are a vital asset in the work of the Church of Scotland, helping to initiate and sustain faith. A sanctuary helps define a congregation’s self-understanding and the features of a church building have a pedagogic function. Church buildings are significant too, in the spiritual life of the wider community. They are the material instantiation of the Kirk’s commitment to be present in each locality, providing a focal point for the expression of spiritual needs and the offering of care. They also testify to God’s presence in a location and to values that transcend those of everyday life.

Arts and Culture

Sorrel Shamel-Wood

Churches Will Open for Private Prayer

This poem describes the first time my husband (then fiancé) and I set foot inside a church following their closure as part of the UK lockdown which began in March 2020. Initially, churches opened for private prayer only, with social distancing measures such as one-way systems in place and the removal of soft furnishings and holy water to avoid contagion.

Gifford Lectures Corner

Jonathan C.P Birch

The Theological House that Jack (un)built: Halberstam on an Aesthetics of Collapse and Mushrooms Among the Ruins

Review Essay

Jonathan C.P. Birch

Three Lions, Divine Comedy and Making Jews Count: Baddiel and Skinner, Then and Now

Reviews

Didache 21, 2 (2022)

The latest issue of Didache (sponsored by the International Board of Education of the Church of the Nazarene) is now online. The summaries are adapated from Dean Blevins’ Introduction. It, and the individual essays, are available from here.

Dean G. Blevins

Introduction

Francisca Ireland

Wesley’s Aesthetic Practical Theology

Francisca Ireland offers a new vision for theological aesthetics, arguing that John Wesley’s practical theology provides an ‘engaged aesthetics’ of body and imagination, allowing practitioners to reflect theologically on one’s own and others’ experiences.

C.P. Troutman

John Wesley, Ethnodoxologist: Engaging Missionally with the Ethnodoxology Conversation

Troutman argues that Wesley provides a theology that motivates an embrace of various cultural forms of music and celebration, commensurate with Wesley’s own vision.

Vinicius Couto

Synod of Dordrecht: An Iconographic Analysis

Vinicius Couto utilises an aesthetic methodology and historic artwork to explicate the theological issues underlying the Synod of Dort and the division around Arminian and Calvinist discourse.

Jorge Alberto Baños Peña

What is Biblical Preaching? Its Importance and Purpose for the Church’s Work

Jorge Alberto Baños Peña offers a rationale for biblical preaching, providing a grounded presentation demonstrating the interplay between artistic expression, Scripture, and theological reflection.

Joseph Bankard

Forgiveness as Process and Virtue: How to Overcome Feelings of Anger and Resentment

Joseph Bankard revisits the multifaceted practice, and virtue, of forgiveness. Bankard notes that this is interpersonal and intrapersonal, with the process entailing three elements: omissions, actions, and emotions.

Sarah Legreid

Death and Life: Reading 2 Corinthians 4:7–12

Sarah Legreid introduces a trauma hermeneutic into a detailed study of Paul’s theology through his Corinthian correspondence, arguing that 2 Corinthians reveals a nuanced and balanced trauma dynamic within Paul’s life of suffering and resilience.

Hannah Jones-Nelson

Perichoresis and Missional Theology: Humanity’s Invitation into the Mission of God

Hannah Jones-Nelson’s treatise addresses the theological concept of perichoresis as the intimate relationship, or dance, of the Trinity – a relationship that allows humanity to both extend and fulfill the missio dei.

Ethics in Conversation on Work and Worship

The latest Ethics in Conversation (formerly Ethics in Brief), from the Kirby Laing Centre is a review by Jon Hyde and David McIlroy of the significant work of Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B Wilson, Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020). It’s available as a pdf here.

Where We Start

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service run by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

The builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD… With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the LORD: ‘He is good; his love towards Israel endures for ever.’ And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy.

Ezra 3:10–12

As moments in history go, this one was significant – unprecedented, even.

At long last, things were beginning to open up. New circumstances. New possibilities. Inevitably, there’d be risks involved. The experience had been draining. People would need space for lament and confession, for reconnection and reconstruction. There’d be some delayed grief going forwards. But none of that could detract from the fact that change was in the air.

Sound familiar?

It was 539 BC.

Persia had taken over from Babylon on the world stage. A new regime with new ideas. Cyrus, whose heart had been moved by the Lord, allowed captive peoples to go back to their own lands.

So it is that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell of the building projects – the temple and the walls of Jerusalem – that take place after God’s people return from exile. No less real, and no less hard graft, is the rebuilding of the people themselves – in relationship with God and each other. But at the heart of the restoration, that which comes first, is worship.

It’s where true restoration begins. And that’s because of who God is: ‘he is good; his love towards Israel endures for ever.’

The account is realistic enough about the conflicting emotions, the opposition they’d face, the delays involved (it would be another 20 years before the temple was finally rebuilt). Even so, the affirmation of God’s character and covenant commitment pave the way for a new start. Hope has been rekindled, faith has been stoked, memories have been stirred, markers of identity have been reinstated, promises have been reaffirmed, God has been praised.

As new beginnings go, it’s a great place to start.

For all the differences between their situation and ours, the need for worship is no less significant today than it was then. Not the sort of worship which provides a momentary retreat from the world, but worship that shapes us for life in the world, which paves the way for renewed witness on our frontlines.

Yes, as we head into this new season, there’ll be mixed emotions. Like God’s people of old, we shouldn’t be surprised if joyful happiness is tinged with regretful disappointment. But God is present with us and calls us to see his bigger purpose, to celebrate who he is and what he has done, and to be empowered to be his people in and for the world.

Safe Hands

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC). I originally wrote it a version of it for my own church community, coinciding with the anniversary of the first national lockdown in the UK, but it was ‘repurposed’ for this short series of reflections which ties in with the release of a set of Bible studies by members of the LICC team, to which I contributed, on some of David’s psalms – Worshipping the God of All in All of Life – published for Spring Harvest 2021.

In you, LORD, I have taken refuge;

let me never be put to shame;

deliver me in your righteousness…

Love the LORD, all his faithful people!

The LORD preserves those who are true to him,

but the proud he pays back in full.

Be strong and take heart,

all you who hope in the LORD.

Psalm 31:1, 23–24

‘My times are in your hands’, declares David. And for decades, David’s times were fraught with life-threatening danger. In 53 of his 75 psalms he mentions enemies. Time and again David turns to God. Time and again God is there for him. In this psalm he prays, ‘Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, LORD, my faithful God’ (Psalm 31:5). As the greater King, Jesus also prayed this prayer as he hung on the cross (Luke 23:46), committing himself into his Father’s hands.

But this isn’t just for David, or for Jesus. It’s for us, too.

‘Into your hands, Lord…’

It’s the prayer I felt compelled to pray last week, on the anniversary of our first national lockdown, designated as a ‘day of national reflection’ here in the UK.

I wonder, what did the anniversary bring to mind?

Perhaps it was queuing outside the supermarket only to find the shelves empty on the inside. Perhaps it was trying to capture the last time you saw your elderly parent, just in case. Perhaps it was the cancellation of planned celebrations or exams. Perhaps it was that as lockdowns ended and started again, with all the resulting uncertainty, you began to know more people who were impacted, and some of those closest to you were at the sharpest end of that pointy stick.

‘Into your hands, Lord…’

Or, perhaps you remember that you and your neighbours were suddenly so much more, well, neighbourly. Perhaps it was the rainbows in windows, which rightly applauded our frontline workers but also reminded us of the promises of God’s faithfulness embedded in Scripture as well as in nature. Perhaps you enjoyed the glorious Spring of last year, got out more, and rested more than you’ve done for ages.

‘Into your hands, Lord…’

Not just a prayer for kings, but a prayer for us.

The key is in the final two verses of the psalm in which David addresses God’s people. As those who’ve been on the receiving end of God’s love, he calls us to love and trust God, and wait for him in hope: ‘Love the LORD, all his faithful people! The LORD preserves those who are true to him... Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD.’

Those hands that have kept us so far will keep us still. They are the safest hands of all.

Evangelical Review of Theology 45, 1 (February 2021)

The latest Evangelical Review of Theology, published by The World Evangelical Alliance, is now online and available in its entirety as a pdf here.

Editor’s Introduction

The Young, the Not-So-Young and the Very Old

Efraim Tendero

As I Hand Off the Baton

Wesley Hill

When Christians Disagree

In this essay, a widely respected author, known for both his defence of traditional marriage and his irenic treatment of those who view the issue differently, probes the problem of sharp divisions amongst professing Christians and challenges some of the prevailing approaches to these divisions.

Frank Hinkelmann

The European Evangelical Alliance: An Historical Sketch

In the April 2020 ERT, Frank Hinkelmann, Austrian church historian and president of the European Evangelical Alliance, told the fascinating tale of how the EEA, now part of the World Evangelical Alliance, was originally founded as a counter-movement to it. In this sequel, Hinkelmann continues the story by describing the EEA’s evolution and significance up to the present.

Benjamin Isola Akano

Promoting Quality Worship Experience in Contemporary Nigeria

Many churches around the world struggle to recognize diversity in ways that overcome racial and ethnic barriers and unify the body of Christ. This article draws on concepts from communication studies to develop ways to intentionally improve intercultural relationships, with illustrations from Nigeria where the presence of hundreds of distinct ethnic groups makes virtually every congregation intercultural.

Francis Jr. S. Samdao

A Baptist Quadrilateral? A Filipino Outsider’s Perspective on Baptist Identity

Baptists are a particularly diverse stream of Christians, partly because their theological convictions empower individual decision making. This article discusses colourfully how the diversity of Baptists is reflected in the Philippines today. It seeks to articulate the core features of the Baptist identity and encourages Baptists both to enrich and to be open to learning from other parts of the body of Christ rather than isolating themselves.

Wayne Detzler

J.B. Phillips: From Paraphrase to Translation

Eighty years ago, there were few modern Bible translations. In the 1940s, J. B. Phillips initiated a modern translation of the New Testament. But his work gets little notice today. This article tells the story of Phillips and his project, offering important insights on the value and limitations of attempts to modernize the Bible message.

Mary Douglas

God and Humanity Brought Together: The Incarnation as Gospel

The Incarnation is celebrated at Christmas but do we really grasp its full import? This essay draws on the fourth-century church father Athanasius – one of the greatest defenders of the orthodox Christian conviction that Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man – to support its claim that evangelicals today impoverish their gospel witness by highlighting Jesus’ death and resurrection and overlooking the essential contribution of the Incarnation to our redemption.

Benjamin Marx

Clothing and Exchange of Garments in the Bible, as a Picture of God’s Dealings with His People

This article investigates the imagery of clothing and exchange of garments through the entire Christian canon (in nine books from Genesis to Revelation) to identify the redemptive analogies drawn by the biblical writers. From the beginning, God takes the initiative to clothe his people and thus restore our dignity, worth and relationship to him.

Jim Reiher

Did the Gospel of Matthew Come First? An Historian’s View

This essay takes us on an enlightening trip through numerous early church fathers to explain why the author believes Matthew was the first Gospel and why this issue is important. It provides a valuable introduction to and critical examination of what we know about the origin of the Gospels.

Book Reviews

On (Not) Meeting Together

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

As some of us have discovered, and as several well-researched pieces are telling us, meeting by Zoom (other video conferencing apps are available!) can be emotionally draining.

As you’d expect, it’s down to a mixture of reasons. The physical proximity of each other when we get together has a way of stirring all our senses, much of which is lost when we connect via screens. Then there’s the constant presence of our own image as we interact with others, which raises our self-awareness and affects how authentic and available we are in the conversation. Zoom works well for lectures, or for formal meetings with rules about who speaks, but is less suitable for more interactive meetings when more than a few people are present. Even on the fastest of internet connections, the slight delay in saying something and it being registered by others on the screen can play havoc with the natural rhythms of how we normally communicate with each other. Those who have studied this area draw attention to unwritten rules about eye gaze, turn taking, and our reliance on microsecond timing. We have to work harder to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language, and all this consumes a lot of emotional energy.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful to God every day for the provision of technology which allows us to connect during this time – as families, friends, and colleagues, as well as a church – and I still get a happy rush when I see all the windows opening on the screen of my laptop. Plus, we should probably think about putting some online provision in place when this period is over, for those who are housebound.

Even so, I’m missing our gatherings, and I hope you are too.

I’m missing the smell of freshly-baked lemon drizzle cake when we meet for housegroup, the sounds of chinking mugs as drinks are prepared in the kitchen, the hubbub of catching-up conversations between friends, the way someone is able to detect by the slightest flicker of a look in our eye that the day hasn’t gone so well...

From beginning to end, the Bible makes it clear that God designed us to be embodied creatures – and social creatures too! The blessings of the digital age aside, church isn’t meant to be an experience we consume, like the latest series on Netflix, from the comfort of our sofas. Our gathered worship is meant to involve our physical togetherness in one place alongside people with whom we experience the highs and lows of real relationship.

It’s reminded me that there’s an important ‘horizontal’ aspect to our worship which we sometimes miss in our concern to get the ‘vertical’ aspect right. Our moments of gathered worship are not merely a place for our individual expression of worship upwards to God, but the place for the Spirit’s transformation of us together as the body of Christ. And it’s our immersion in the life and relationships of the gathered church that forms us and equips us to be God’s people in everyday life.

Lovely though it has been to meet via Zoom on Sunday mornings and at other times during the week, I’m looking forward to when we’re next able to gather, and I hope you are too.

Foundations 76 (Spring 2019)

Issue 76 of Foundations: An International Journal of Evangelical Theology, published by Affinity, is now available (here in its entirety as a pdf), which includes the below papers on worship delivered at the study conference earlier in the year.

Stephen Clark

Editorial

Mark Johnston

A Biblical Theology of Worship

David R. Kirk

When You Come Together: Gathered Worship in the New Testament

Robert Letham

What is Sweeter to us is Clearer: The Aesthetics of Worship – A Historical Survey

Graham Beynon

Tuning the Heart: A Historical Survey of the Affections in Corporate Worship

Ray Evans

Worship Today: Maintaining Continuity with the Past and Across the World

Stephen Clark

Worship Today: Contemporary Expression of Worship in One’s Own Culture(s)

Mark Pickett

Review Article: Outside In - Margins of Islam: Ministry in Diverse Muslim Contexts

Book Reviews

Preach Magazine 14 (2018)

I had the privilege recently, on behalf of LICC, of commissioning and editing the main features for a themed issue of Preach magazine on ‘whole-life preaching’.

The Leaders of Worship and Preachers Trust who publish the magazine have kindly allowed LICC to make pdfs of the copy available online, from here (following a simple sign-up procedure).

The magazine nicely complements the online resource a few of us put together, which is available here.

Preaching and Worship Resources

Although currently in a Beta version, Preaching and Worship, billed as ‘curated resources for preachers’, looks helpful in providing links to exegetical notes, sermon outlines, suggested illustrations, etc. It’s a collaborative project of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and the Christian Classics Ethereal Library/Hymnary.org. From my scan, several of the links lead to articles which are also linked to at ‘The Text This Week’, which is also a valuable resource.

The Worship of God in the Whole of Life

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. It’s a lightly-edited rerun of one I wrote back in 2015.

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?

Deuteronomy 10:12-13

‘You are worthy, our Lord and God,

to receive glory and honour and power,

for you created all things,

and by your will they were created

and have their being...’

In a loud voice they were saying:

‘Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength

and honour and glory and praise!’

Revelation 4:11 and 5:12

It should come as no surprise that the Lord of the whole of life requires worship in the whole of life. In the Old Testament, we see it in regulations that touch on every aspect of daily existence, in psalms which embrace the highs and lows and everything in between, in prophets who call for justice and mercy as well as sacrifice and singing. As Deuteronomy 10:12-13 captures it, all of life was to be an expression of service to the Lord.

That’s completely in line with what Paul says in Romans 12:1-2 – where bodies, minds and wills are offered back to God – reminding us that the Old and New Testaments stand together on the necessity of whole-life worship. Across Scripture, acceptable worship is not simply a matter of praising God in music and singing, or of participating enthusiastically in rites and ceremonies; it involves honouring, serving, and revering God in every sphere of life.

And it all flows out of his grace towards us. The biblical story from beginning to end allows us to trace the acts of God on behalf of the people of God and our response to the Lord in worship.

In the book of Revelation, John sees a door standing open in heaven. He’s given a vision of reality from God’s perspective. For the small and weak communities of believers scattered around the Roman empire, John sees that the true account of the world is revealed not only in the Creator God who reigns over all things, but in the Christ crucified who redeems all things.

The worship that John witnesses nourishes our identity and mission as the body of Christ – because it’s focused above all on Christ himself, who is uniquely qualified to bring to pass God’s redemptive purposes in the world. The scope of what God might be pleased to do through us in our everyday lives, even this day, is rooted in what God has done, is doing, and will do for us and for all creation.

So, John’s vision of worship becomes a call to worship, an expression of allegiance in a world of competing allegiances, a way of declaring who’s really in charge, as we allow our worship of God and the Lamb to permeate everything we think and say and do, and invite others to do the same.

James K.A. Smith on Philosophy as/of Worship

The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship has made available from James K.A. Smith an ‘annotated research guide from the field of philosophy, focusing on the “liturgical turn” in Christian philosophy of religion. It’s designed ‘for students, teachers and scholars with interests in studying congregational worship practices, including fields of study that have not traditionally studied worship practices extensively’.

There’s more information here, and the document is available as a pdf here.

The Artistic Theologian 4 (2016)

The Artistic Theologian, published by the School of Church Music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, ‘focuses on issues of worship, church music, aesthetics,  and culture for Christian musicians, pastors, church music students, and worship leaders’.

Below are the essays and their introductory paragraphs published in volume 4. Individual essays are available from here; the whole volume is available as a pdf here.

Scott Aniol

Editorial: “Thus Says the Lord”: Biblical Worship in Contemporary Practice

God’s revelation is the basis and foundation of everything in Christian life and ministry. God’s inspired Word is the ultimate standard for what Christians believe, how they live their lives, and especially the manner in which they approach God in worship. Since worship is to God, for God, and about God, God alone has the prerogative to determine how he will be worshiped... This fourth volume of Artistic Theologian is not a themed issue, but providentially every article relates to this matter of the sufficiency and authority of God’s Word in worship.

T. David Gordon

Commentary: Partial Psalmody

Within the Reformed tradition, there has been considerable discussion of the question of exclusive psalmody (the belief that the Church of Jesus Christ should sing in worship only canonical psalms). There has been less discussion of the propriety of what I call “Partial Psalmody,” singing portions (or even snippets) of psalms but not in their entirety. I think we should discuss this question also, ideally with the same mutual respect and charity with which we discuss exclusive psalmody. I ordinarily object to Partial Psalmody, on grounds I will mention below. Let me say beforehand that contemporary worship music is the graver offender here. Exclusive Psalmist communions, such as The Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA), frequently sing partial psalms, breaking biblical psalms into several portions, and singing each of those as its own separate part of a service of worship, ordinarily to different tunes. But at least the parts of psalms they sing are larger parts, whereas in the contemporary worship music it is common to sing very small portions.

Paige Patterson

Ultimate Mystery: The Disappearance of Holy Scripture from Evangelical Worship

The Southern Baptist Convention, identified by most as the largest Protestant denomination in America, revised its confession known as The Baptist Faith and Message (BFM) in June of 2000. A blue-ribbon committee chaired by Adrian Rogers and including Richard Land, Chuck Kelley, Al Mohler, and Jerry Vines – among others – worked diligently to rid the 1963 revision of the old New Hampshire Confession of the neo-orthodox language that had infiltrated the document at several points. After one of the most interesting debates in Baptist history, lasting more than an hour, the convention approved the changes by a vote of better than 95% of the thousands of registered messengers.

Matthew Ward

Baptism as Worship: Revisiting the Kiffin/Bunyan Open-Communion Debate

Baptists in America have very strong feelings about the conditions for church membership. In this article, I want to focus on one: believer’s baptism by immersion. My current church constitution lists as a requirement for church membership baptism by immersion on repentance of sin and profession of faith. The same qualification appears in both the Philadelphia and New Hampshire confessions of faith, in Pendleton’s Baptist Church Manual, and in the Baptist Faith and Message. Indeed, many Baptists in America consider believer’s baptism by immersion to be a non-negotiable prerequisite for local church membership—but perhaps not as many as did a generation ago. Some significant Baptist churches have begun accepting members without that requirement, and that trend will certainly continue. Indeed, I broached this subject with some colleagues in Britain, and they were confused by my intention because they have nearly unanimously removed that condition from their constitutions. It is no longer a debate for them.

Scott Connell

Implications for Worship from the Mount of Transfiguration

The Mount of Transfiguration has long been considered one of the most mysterious events in the New Testament (Matt 17:1–13; Mark 9:2–13; Luke 9:28–36). Some source-critical scholars have considered it no more than a symbolic (non-historical) story created to demonstrate the Messiahship and deity of Christ. Others have believed it to be an ecstatic vision experienced either by Peter or even Christ himself. Still others have considered it a misplaced resurrection narrative out of chronological order in the synoptic gospels. The reasons for attempting to explain away the miraculous nature of this event are predictable, though still unnecessary.

Steven Winiarski

Music, Culture, and Vain Repetition: Matthew 6 in its Context

There are many different views on the relationship between church and culture. One extreme believes that the church should look nothing like culture and operate as a counter-cultural movement. This view tends to accuse recent worship music of being guilty of vain repetition, which Jesus condemns in Matthew 6:7. However, this view often does not want a counter-cultural church, but rather a church that preserves the culture of a previous generation instead of embracing the culture of the current one. What pastor hasn’t heard questions and statements such as “Why are we singing that 7/11 chorus (a chorus with 7 words sung 11 times)? Why are we singing this new song with these new instruments? It causes us to look like the world! What’s wrong with our old hymns?”

Abstracts of Recent SWBTS School of Church Music Doctoral Dissertations

Book Reviews

Worship For Life

This article was first published in the November 2016 edition of EG, the quarterly magazine of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

I’m not that old (no snickering at the back, please), but even I can remember when the big question about worship was what type of musical instruments were allowed to be played in church. Drums were a definite no-no, but were tambourines okay? Or guitars? Even now, when we think about worship, what often comes to mind is a particular style of what takes place when Christians meet. Or we talk about ‘having a time of worship’ where the ‘worship’ is the ‘singing’ part before the sermon.

This being the case, it might come as something of a surprise to hear what the Bible says about worship. What light does it shed? One place to begin is with the words used in the Bible to describe worship.

A vocabulary for worship

As David Peterson helpfully shows, it turns out that the words usually translated as ‘worship’ in our English Bibles have very little to do with music or singing. What, then, do they involve?

Worship as honouring God

One group of words means ‘to bow down’. It’s used for the gesture of homage people show to kings or others in authority. Applied to God, worship is an expression of submission to him, as in Psalm 95:6 – ‘Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker’.

Worship as serving God

A second term is the ordinary word for ‘serve’, which describes the relationship between a servant and a master, and which is applied by extension to our relationship with God. For example, echoing the language of ‘serving’ God used throughout Deuteronomy, Joshua challenges the people of Israel towards the end of his life: ‘choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve’ (Joshua 24:15).

Worship as revering God

Another set of words has to do with revering or fearing God. The motif of ‘the fear of the Lord’ is found throughout the Bible’s wisdom books and elsewhere too, describing a deep respect for God and his ways.

From a biblical perspective, then, acceptable worship is not primarily a matter of praising God in music and singing, or of taking part in particular ceremonies. It involves honouring, serving, and revering God – in every sphere of life.

A story of worship

Beyond the particular words used in the Bible is the story told in the Bible. To tell the story of the Bible is to tell a story of worship.

The first human beings enjoy the unmediated presence of God, walking with him in the sacred space of Eden. Because of sin, that relationship is marred and breaks down, with Adam and Eve banished from the garden. But God in his grace sets about restoring it. Men and women may still draw near to God’s presence and enjoy relationship with him, but only through priestly mediators and on the basis of sacrifices offered in a tabernacle or a temple.

In due course, as the story reaches its peak, Jesus comes and declares that he is the temple, the place where God dwells, the meeting-point between God and humans, the place where sacrifice is made. Worship is now centred on Jesus, the great High Priest, the one whose death inaugurates a new covenant with God’s people. In this new covenant, worshippers offer their bodies as ‘a living sacrifice’ (Romans 12:1) and bring ‘a sacrifice of praise’ to God (Hebrews 13:15). No longer does the glory of God fill bricks and mortar. The church, the whole body of Christ’s people, indwelt by God’s Spirit, is now the place of God’s presence.

Then, as we come to the final page, we discover there is no need for a temple in the New Jerusalem, for ‘the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple’ (Revelation 21:22). That’s where the story ends, with God’s people forever enjoying the glory of God’s presence.

Above all, the story of worship is a story of grace, as we trace the acts of God on behalf of the people of God and our response to God in lives of worship.

A life of worship

It should come as no surprise that the Lord of the whole of life requires worship in the whole of life. In the Old Testament, we see it in regulations that touch on every aspect of daily existence, in psalms which embrace the highs and lows and everything in between, in prophets who call for justice and mercy as well as sacrifice and singing. As Deuteronomy 10:12-13 captures it, all of life was to be an expression of service to the Lord:

‘And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?’

The Old and New Testament stand together on the necessity of whole-life worship, as Paul makes clear in Romans 12:1-2 – where bodies, minds and wills are offered in service back to God.

It thus becomes clear that worship embraces both what we do when we gather at set times with other Christians and what we do when we’re scattered the rest of the time on our everyday frontlines. Authentic worship takes place in a rhythm of gathering and scattering – like the regular breathing of a healthy body, like the back-and-forth movement of a well-played accordion.

Importantly, moments of gathered worship are not merely a platform for our individual expression of worship upwards to God, but the place for the Spirit’s downwards transformation of us. And it is our immersion in the life of the gathered church that forms us and equips us to be God’s people in everyday life.

So, singing is crucial after all! And so are the intercessions and the offering and the sermon. The very act of gathering expresses our identity as those called out of the world to be a people who serve God. Even the seemingly trivial and potentially awkward practice of greeting one another acknowledges that we are present not simply as individual worshippers but as the family of God. We sing God’s praise and give thanks for his work in the world. The preached word brings us face to face with Jesus and his power to equip us for everyday life. The taking of bread and wine nourishes us as we take our place in the story of his redemption of us and all things. We pray for the Spirit’s empowerment of each other in daily living and witness. It’s practices like these carried out faithfully and regularly that nurture our identity as God’s people and enable us to align ourselves more closely with his purposes for the world.

Here is where worship and mission flow into and out of one another. From the opening call to worship to the final blessing, God commissions us back into the world as stewards and disciples, equipped and shaped for the callings he has laid on us, in the various places we find ourselves, and in a way that the glory will belong to him alone.

Going Further

Rhythms of Grace: How the Church’s Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

Mike Cosper (Crossway, 2013)

Shows how the gospel story shapes the church, and how the rhythm of gathering and sending continues to tell the story as God’s people in the world.

Encountering God Together: Biblical Patterns for Ministry and Worship

David G. Peterson (IVP, 2013)

A helpful reinforcement of worship as an engagement with God on the terms he proposes and in the way he alone makes possible.

The Message of Worship

John Risbridger (IVP, 2015)

A rich and wide-ranging set of biblical expositions on ‘celebrating the glory of God in the whole of life’.

The Whole of Life for Christ: Enriching Everyday Discipleship

Antony Billington & Mark Greene (IVP, 2015)

Worship is one of several themes explored in this book. Produced in partnership with Keswick Ministries, the seven Bible studies offer individuals and groups the opportunity to explore whole-life discipleship more deeply.