It strikes me today that the liturgy of Ash Wednesday teaches something that nearly everyone can agree on. Whether you are part of a church or not, whether you believe today or your doubt, whether you are a Christian or an atheist or an agnostic or a so-called “none”...
Because God is the subject of worship, we must back up a step to recall that, before liturgy can involve the work of the people who offer their praise, it begins with the presence of God graciously inviting that response. It seems to me that some of the worship wars...
I have no doubt that many of the people who press for particular styles of music in worship are motivated by a desire to help us be more culturally relevant in the liturgical life of the church. They believe our musical expressions in worship needs to sound more like...
Music has the uncanny ability to burrow its way into our spiritual bones. When it comes to matters of spirituality and faith, we are what we sing. There is no need to overstate the case. Music is not all-powerful. Many things shape our souls, including our parents’...
We’ve made worship self-centered instead of God-centered. We lobby for what we want: “I don’t like the songs.” “I don’t like the volume.” It’s as if we’re worshiping worship instead of worshiping God. If worship is a decision, then the greatest worship happens when...
Good church musicians constantly ask whether the “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” of the church’s worship are sung “so that the Word of God may dwell in us richly” (the forgotten purpose clause of Col. 3:16). Good liturgical musicians worry about the link between...
Music and liturgy can assist or express a worshiping heart, but they cannot make a non-worshiping heart into a worshiping one. The danger is that they can give a non-worshiping heart the sense of having worshiped. So the crucial factor in worship in the church is not...
When people are trained to appreciate the art of music for its own sake, they also want the best music for sacred purposes because they know the sublime sense that grips them when they hear good compositions well rendered. Such music enables people, in fact, to...
One of the striking things about evangelical corporate worship in our times is the evident paucity of Scripture. There is relatively little Scripture read, prayed, or sung in our assemblies. While high liturgical traditions continue to infuse services with scriptural...
In an age when, through athletics and diet and the intensity of exercise, we have rediscovered our physical bodies, we have neglected the “body” of our Christianity. Liturgy is the sensuality of the Christian experience, and the muscle of our mysticism. And we have...