Worship leaders can be cool. Biblical worship can’t be.

From Bob Kauflin… By nature, “cool” describes something that the world esteems as hip, desirable, elitist, and perhaps elusive. Biblical worship is very un-hip, hated by the world’s value system, and a gracious gift from God to those he has redeemed. It involves magnifying the glory of Christ and minimizing our own glory. It means [...]

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Worship as Counter-cultural

From the Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture… 4.1. Jesus Christ came to transform all people and all cultures, and calls us not to conform to the world, but to be transformed with it (Romans 12:2). In the mystery of his passage from death to eternal life is the model for transformation, and thus for [...]

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Three Levels of Participation in Worship

Don Saliers (in Music in Christian Worship) presented the idea of three levels of participation in worship. The first level of participation is the actual doing of the liturgy (singing, praying, reading, etc.). The second level of participation is the same actions of the first level, but doing them as the church. This level implies [...]

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Len Sweet on the Arts in Church

from The Work of the People

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Ways to Hear the Word of God in Worship – Silence

Silence has long occupied an important role in both individual and corporate worship. Its presence implies the fulfillment of a biblical admonition: “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him” (Hab 2:20). In some current worship practices, however, silence has become all but lost. Many churches whose worship [...]

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Ways to Hear the Word of God in Worship – Sermon

The “scripting” of preaching can, like a bad play, be pre- dictable and dull. Even worse, it can be manipulative. A play is said to be “preachy” when it uses the medium of drama to coerce a certain (and unvarying) response. Good preaching is direct, understandable, and dynamic, but it also has a certain quality [...]

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Ways to Hear the Word of God in Worship – Music

For worshipers sensitive to the aesthetic dimensions of well- crafted music performed convincingly, experiencing such a moment in the context of worship can serve as a vivid reminder of God the Creator, who, in fashioning humankind in the divine image, graced persons with their own creative gifts. As Robert Mitchell noted in Ministry and Music, [...]

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Ways to Hear the Word of God in Worship – Scripture

Given the clear precedent for the reading of scripture in wor- ship, and given the importance attributed to scripture as the “Word of God,” it seems curious that in a number of evangelical churches the weekly reading of scripture is limited to a few verses heard immediately before the sermon. By contrast, in other wor- [...]

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Thoughts on Patriotic Music in Worship

from Bob Kauflin… In brief, since God’s kingdom is not of this world (Jn. 18:36), we don’t feel any obligation to draw attention to, highlight, or celebrate civil holidays as part of our Sunday gatherings. There are a number of reasons. Our country doesn’t set the agenda and priorities for the meetings of the church [...]

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Philosophy of Worship, part 4

4. Worship should employ a wide range of styles. There are as many styles of worship as there are tastes of music. Since we are the church [in a catholic sense - the universal church] we should use as many styles of music/art that we can. Of course this is all relative to the demographic [...]

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