If we faithfully followed God’s example, there would no longer be the crassness and cynicism of the throwaway or the false pomp and pretense of art for the ages. Nor would the Holy Spirit be continually pestered to turn poor work into blessed work. The Christian...
Each musician must come to experience the dignity, rightness, and eventual joy of putting things aside, of emptying oneself and taking the form of a servant. Such musicians must be able to move back and forth, gracefully, servingly, and willingly, from the symphony to...
God is not Western; God is not Eastern; God is not exclusively the God of classical culture or primitive culture; God is the Lord of the plethora, the God of the diverse, the redeemer of the plural. Likewise, God calls for response in different languages, dialects,...
Pentecost is Babel turned right side up: all speech is unified because it is God, no longer people, who is building toward the heavens. The story of Pentecost goes further than its historical reality. It is also a parable that urges us into the knowledge that the...
The effectiveness of a liturgy lies in its humility, in the absence of self-proclamation—”I am the liturgy, notice me.” The Word of God is the gathering point for all the content and all the action. If there is a high point or seasonal emphasis in a liturgy, this is...
Corporate worship can become empty—it can turn into an abstraction—outside of each individual worship taking on full responsibility, for each person is the church, and it is the church that is to be at worship, individual by individual. In corporate worship, it is not...
The Scriptures include or allude to just about every approach to worship there is: organized, spontaneous, public, private, simple, complex, ornate or plain. Yet there is no comment anywhere about one way being preferred over another. Rather, it is the spiritual...