Category Archives: worship

Return to Worship: Letters to the Church

Alex S. Leung has reviewed Ron Owens’ book, Return to Worship: A God-centered Approach (1999), on his blog, six steps + Victoria veritatis est caritas. I was not acquainted with Owens’ book, but it sounds like it might be worth picking up for its unique discussion format of both worship theology and practical application.
I found [...]

Feeling worship

Lingamish continues thinking about worship styles, asking a great question:
Is it OK to enjoy the feeling of a worship song?
He notes that we are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, which should leave the door open for an honest emotional reaction to worship through our physical [...]

Saying “I love you” without those three little words…

Lingamish has posed the question, “Are you in love with Jesus?”, in a recent post about “Jesus is my boyfriend” worship songs on his Lingamish Forum*. He cites “Let my words be few” as a representative example of this genre:
You are God in heaven
And here am I on earth
So I’ll let my words be few
Jesus, [...]

Who’s at the center of your worship?

HT: ECC Worship Blog
Craig A. Satterlee has written an article on Characteristics of Christian Worship for The Alban Institute, evidently an agent for change in American congregational life.
Christians and congregations bring a host of assumptions about what constitutes Christian worship with them to the service. Rather than allowing these assumptions to catch us in conversation [...]

Style and tradition in translation

Brian Fulthorp made the following comment in my post on translation errancy:
I often wonder too if the biggest difference is mostly just stylistic differences - a couple translations can use different words which are actually synonyms of each other (based on the same Greek word) that are chosen more for stylistic reasons more than anything.
In [...]

Wrapping up the weekend

I didn’t have a lot of time to keep up with blogging this past week, as our church had its Christmas concert this past Friday and Sunday. A little bit of everything for everyone: choir, orchestra, kids’ program, handbells, Christmas hymns, etc… I was playing trombone in the orchestra, which was a nice change of [...]

The difference between hymns and praise choruses

An old farmer went to the city one weekend and attended the big city church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was.
“Well,” said the farmer, “it was good. They did something different, however. They sang praise choruses instead of hymns.”
“Praise choruses?” said his wife. “What are those?”
“Oh, [...]

That’s My King, Do You Know Him?

We had an interesting sermon today on Ezekiel 1, the description of Ezekiel’s vision of the Lord’s glory. As part of the overall message, and specifically on Ezekiel 1:28, the pastor talked a bit on how the American mindset of “we bow to no one” makes it more difficult for American Christians to understand the [...]

Unceasing Worship, part 3

Preface: see Introduction, Part 1 and Part 2 for earlier posts in this “book review” series.
Chapter 3 of Harold Best’s “Unceasing Worship” is titled “Mutual Indwelling: The Final Geography of Worship” and moves the text from discussing the time and place of worship in Christ to mutual worship within the corporate body.
Best begins with ruminations [...]

The joy of worship: random Sunday thoughts

After missing last week due to varying degrees of illness among the Edwards tribe, we made it to church yesterday as a family. My wife was serving in the 18-24 month toddler room, so I was solo for the service.
Upon entering the worship center, I was pleasantly surprised to see Micah, the former senior high [...]