Thinking through Our Order of Worship

This chapter’s review will only be one post.  It’ll be shorter, and there are hardly any Green Flags.

Barna and Viola have orderly worship down to a science (they think).  Here’s their conclusion about most all “Protestant”* worship:  “The order of worship… includes a three-fold structure: (1) singing, (2) the sermon, and (3) closing prayer or song.”  My, how sad and lame that order sounds; thankfully, that’s not my experience, at all!

What I have experienced in at least the past 10 years of worship (first in a non-denom church in the Reformed tradition called Holy Trinity, and later in the churches of the Anglican Mission in the Americas is what Robert Webber calls the historical “four-fold pattern” of the worshiping church.  That pattern is something I have modeled all worship experiences after (strangely, even before I knew it existed!), dating as far back as 1992!  That pattern is simple, and it has emerged in virtually every worship tradition, from high-church Anglo-Catholic-Orthodox to informal Pentecostal or Baptist traditions (I daresay, even the simplicity of a Quaker service echoes this pattern.

Enough preamble; here it is: Gathering together in God’s presence (this involves songs of procession and praise, and often prayers for forgiveness and words of invocation); the service of the Word (involving the reading of scripture, the teaching, and a response to the message, which can include the Creeds or a time of meditation); the time of Eucharist, or thanksgiving – a chance to respond to the goodness of God, primarily (but not always) through the celebrating of the Gospel in Holy Communion (also, a time for prayer and singing); and a Sending out into the world, in which a benediction is proclaimed and songs of mission and purpose are sung triumphantly – and we are sent out to love and serve Christ with gladness and singleness of heart!

I’m Less John Piper and More Lauren Winner

I’ve been reading Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner. She’s a convert from Judaism to Christianity, and a real brain. But, to boot, in this extremely open and honest memoir, she’s really got her heart on her sleeve. She shares about her journey through Orthodox Judaism to the Christian faith (in the Episcopal tradition), her failures and regrets along the way, her continual stumblings as she walks and grows, her struggles and even a few triumphs.

I’d recommend this book to everyone on planet earth.

Now, while, by my (extremely slow) standards, I have been racing through this book, I find that I have never, after several tries, been able to make it through a John Piper book. “Why?” I ask myself.

I’ve decided that theology comes best when it’s personal. Girl Meets God is jammed full with the theological and philosophical. In the midst of the threads of story-lines from Lauren’s slightly tragic/slightly joyous life, you find her teaching – teaching about how one converts to Judaism, teaching about the theology of the Resurrection, teaching about the sacraments of Communion and Confession, teaching about how Ruth relates to the Jew and the Christian and how the Jewish festival of Pentecost relates to the Christian celebration of the same name on the same day in history. It’s a theologically and historically rich little book.

But when I read Piper, I feel that – where Lauren Winner has sat me down to show me this cool thing she learned about God or religion – Piper comes to me, whips out his entire collection of Calvin’s writings, and slaps me in the face with them, saying, “I’m sorry; I’m doing this because I love you.” He’s heavy-handed, and harsh and sorely lacking in nuance.

Why am I writing this? What’s it got to do with worship? Plenty, I think.

Toward a definition…

The late Robert Webber, a professor at Wheaton College and a man passionate about biblical worship, wrote that all of our worship – what we think about worship, say about worship, and do in or as worship, flows from our definition of worship.

Is worship just teaching? Is it a few “preliminaries” (as Webber calls them) that lead to a great, 45 minute sermon?

Is worship primarily evangelism? Is it all designed to get us to the invitation?

Is worship primarily praising God through song?

Is worship primarily (dare I say it?) entertainment?

Or is it, as he says, “all this and more”?

I welcome comments on this topic. What is your definition of worship? I haven’t finished the chapter yet, so I will report back in when I have pondered this a bit more.