LIBERTY UNIVERSITY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Book Review: The Great Commission to Worship
Submitted to Dr. Austin Tucker / Instructor of Practical Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
EVAN525 – D20
Contemporary Evangelism
by
Richard Dennis
November 17, 2014
In their book The Great Commission to Worship: Biblical Principles for Worship-Based Evangelism, authors David Wheeler and Vernon Whaley contribute their respective expertise in evangelism and worship in an attempt to synthesize the two categories by showing each fundamental imperative of the Christian disciple to be integral to and an outflow of the other. The impetus for evangelism par excellence is the “great commission”
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Loving and worshiping God began to be more and more part of my daily thinking, motives, actions, and decisions.
Years later in this process of growth, I was blessed with a summer internship at a larger congregation in Dallas, Texas. Although I grew from my relationships and from the mentorship I received, I also observed that the bulk of the ministry meetings focused on changing and adapting our church’s corporate worship to be more and more “seeker sensitive.” The thought was that corporate worship was something malleable that could be altered into something more like the culture of the surrounding neighborhood, so people would want to come. “After all,” so the thinking went, “scripture provided only a rough guideline as to what the church is to do when coming together and there is little-to-no reason to keep intact what past generations did or passed down.” In essence, we sought to form our corporate worship for the purpose of evangelism. I believed that the important thing to focus on is love of God, love of neighbor, and piety. Something in the line of reasoning that insisted on changing the community worship ritual to reflect the world didn’t feel right to me, yet I could not articulate what it was. Several months later I visited an Eastern Orthodox Church as part of a course on Christian spiritual development and after a didactic
I chose to do my religious ethnographic study at my home church, Tabernacle Baptist Church in Youngstown, Ohio on Sunday, May 8, 2016. Tabernacle is an 112-year-old historic Black Baptist church located on the lower Northside of Youngstown surrounded by a mixed income housing development, homeless shelter, Youngstown State University, and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. I would say the average age of a Tabernacle member is 55 years old. About 70% of the members at this church are “middle-class” families. Until about five years ago, its membership was almost exclusively middle class. There has seen an influx of membership in working class individuals and students since the arrival of Tabernacle’s young, vibrant pastor, Rev. Christopher McKee, Jr., three years ago. The church is attentive to the needs of this demographic but remains true to its historic Black Baptist church roots. The church previously struggled with this conundrum until it came to the reality that an exclusivist mindset around worship is detrimental to the body of Christ when it did not have a pastor for over three years. The church was dying because no one was welcome to it and it did not have a leader. Though it was difficult, this reassessment was beneficial in making Tabernacle more relevant and welcoming to the community it is blessed to serve.
Rochelle Vann, I generally agree with your assessment of how many churches have “commercialized” their worship services in an attempt to fill the pews. I wonder how much of this is simply due to the fact that the church – in many places - has conformed to the culture rather than the church impacting the culture? Pettit (2008) says that “Since salvation is holistic, one possibly obvious implication of the spiritual formation process is that the believer's life should ultimately affect the culture” (p. 48).
The author, John Piper, is a retired pastor, author, and theologian. Piper wants his readers to know that the goal of preaching is the glory of God (21). Piper also states that the ground of preaching is the cross of Christ, and the gift of preaching comes from the power of the Holy Spirit (23). Piper accomplishes his goal within both parts of the book. Part one is dedicated to why God should be supreme in preaching, and part two is how to make God supreme in preaching. This a great book for students, pastors, and those within the church. Piper reminds his audience that God is the focus of preaching and nothing else. This review will summarize, review, and critique the work while providing a conclusion.
Randy Newman’s book, Questioning Evangelism, is a book about on how evangelizing is to ask questions, and therefore, letting people communicate with questions about their own truths about God. Newman writes this book hoping that anyone who reads it will gain a better understanding of what evangelism is. Newman’s book is divided into three parts: why questioning evangelism is needed, considering what questions non-believers are asking, and observing why asking questions and knowing answers doesn’t mean a Christian’s own problem like cold-heartedness or anger. Throughout the book Newman brings readers right back to bible scriptures. Even though he appeals to accounts of people like Paul in Acts preaching on Mars Hill, he also shows how the wisdom literature is applied to our evangelistic attempts.
Chan, Simon. Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006.
Reflecting upon the readings of Torrance’s Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace and White’s Introduction to Christian Worship will deeply shape how I look at worship in the churches I now order worship for the congregations. I used one of the churches in which I serve to do the Order of Worship assignment. It is a blue collar, small membership church located in a rural, retirement/ vacation area of North Carolina, Lake Gaston. It is also predominately Caucasian. Torrance’s focus is on trinitarian worship, participating in Christ’s communion with God, the Father and Christ’s life, death, and resurrection through the power of the Holy Spirit. And White’s focus is to look at how the forms used in worship give worship its meaning. These forms include but are not exclusive of, time, space, music and art. There are implications for both focuses in the order of worship for the congregation used for my order of worship.
In conclusion, the interpretation of the Great Commission in the Christian context is to share the word of God through evangelism as defined outside the walls of the church and best understood before by discussing the nature of evangelism in Christianity. Building solid relational bridges based on trust and mutual respect will allow me to speak with love the truth of God in the life of a person without damaging the friendship. Relational evangelism begins with seeing people as Jesus does, spending time with them, having attitudes similar to Christ, and learning to communicate for people to understand. In the context of the authentic Christian community, everyday Christians experience the power of the Holy Spirit and bear fruit for the kingdom.
Ironically, the impetus for worship reform must originate from inside the Church, be directed by a priest, and percolate toward the mission constituency; however, the likelihood of this occurring is faint if love focuses
This past Sunday, Pastor Rich Wilkerson kicked off a collection of talks entitled, "The Church." He focused on our identity as a church, not just Vous Church, but “The Church.” We were urged not to get caught up “doing” church but instead to “be” the church. A timeless assembly of people gathering together under the name of Jesus, is the meaning of church or “Ekklesia” in Greek. Church is not a location, church is who we are and the way in which we will reach a lost and dying world.
Just recently within the last two years I have grown closer to God as well. Although not all people believe in the religion I believe in I have found when I dedicated my life to Jesus I have seen many changes in my life. Going to church and reading the bible has impacted my life in a major way I find myself calmer, happier and even positive. It has giving me a better lookout in life and helped me through a lot of troubled times.
When worship centers on style and experience driven practices, worship orders tend to focus on personal needs and wants. Consequently, the worship service will thrive not on God and the Gospel message, but on the trends and “novelties” of the time. There is
How is a community formed? I have attended many churches and it can be difficult at times to be included as the rest of the congregation already has latent knowledge about each other which puts you on the outside. It can be difficult traversing the multitude of societal rules in order to become part of the community. Although the early church was encouraged to continue to meet together as, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (New International Version 2011, Hebrews 10:25). However, it can be difficult to make those personal and deeper connections in order for members of the church to encourage one another. Over a period of seven weeks spanning the months of August to October, I undertook an ethnographic study of the evening meal called ‘dinner’ which took place before the Eventide service at St. Elphaba’s of the Vale. My ethnographic research was completed using the participant observation method during a Sunday evening from 6-6.30pm. By using this specific methodology I was able to engage in all the rituals involved with participating in the meal as well as observe the interactions of my informants around me. Each week I primarily studied one specific aspect of the meal service ritual, therefore, I have decided to write one account which is a combination of all of my weeks of participant observation. The primary theories which I will be using to interpret my observations are Bronislaw Malinowski and Marcel Mauss’ theories of exchange, specifically concerning the Kula ring as well as Emilie Durkheim's theory of the sacred-profane dichotomy.
When it comes to anything that has to do with my relationship with God and my love, worship, and praise for Him, I always take my direction from the Word which has all authority in my life and the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit. Some refer to this as “Experiential Worship.” Experiential worship in not just another ministry trend, not just another clever skill: it is nothing less than discovering again the “biblical worship,” worship according to the Greatest Commandment of Jesus (Rognlien, 2005).
Not too long ago, a Catholic lay minister, “John,” approached me to discuss a concern he has with his parish’s lay evangelization ministry. In addition to their parish’s weekly prayer service of fifty participants, this ministry organizes and facilitates a quarterly Catholic Evangelization Congress for their deanery that gathers between three to five hundred people. Consequently, some lay ministers have given greater importance to the major quarterly religious services they organize for their deanery than to their parish’s weekly prayer service, going to tremendous lengths to bring renowned speakers that would draw the greatest number of participants. This is frustrating to John because these lay ministers have expressed minimal interest in discovering how to engage many of these participants more effectively. Unfortunately, many of them do not attend the prayer services—and seldom attend the Sunday Mass as well—unless a popular Catholic (ordained) minister is participating. John wonders if the ministry is providing a disservice by ignoring this issue.
The role of Christ’s church as it relates to evangelism, institutional change, and its ministry to the general laity, is a continuously growing dynamic that demands resources from church, while expanding the opportunity to grow the church which inevitably impacts the culture of the secular institutions from which most of its laity are employed. I believe that the understanding and revelation of God’s word is all encompassing; so that in every season of our maturity in Christ, we can visit upon a word, a precept, with a fresh understanding and a new perspective that does not violate the integrity of it meaning and/or alter our doctrinal understanding. I believe that the role of evangelism is a prime example of how God has not only used the ministry of the gospel for the call to salvation, but also how he builds the body, institutionalizes the body, equips the body, empowers the body then dispatches the body back into the world from which it was called (Matthew 5:14). It is very difficult to dissect the anatomy of the body into its heterogeneous functions, then focus on one of them, when you know that the body of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit is really a single organism (1 Corinthians 12:12 ), with a single purpose, The Kingdom of God. However, it is one of the prime functions of the body to evangelize, which is the bringing of the good news, and the message of hope, that Gods people will become alive in him. This mission of evangelism (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:15) was