Reflection On The Order Of Worship In The Church

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.

The idea behind the book The Great Commission To Worship by David Wheeler and Vernon Whaley is the combining of worship and evangelism, “Thus evangelism and worship have a unique relationship. … many times in Scripture it appears that while God is always our object of worship, the concept of obtaining salvation (evangelism) appears to be the motivation” (11). As stated by the authors this book is the result of an argument between them as to which was more important, worship or evangelism.

Located in the heart of downtown Cedar Rapids this Historical brick building with its’ decorative molding and beautiful stain glass windows is the home of a subculture of biblically based Christians. This church family meets every Sunday like many churches who revere Sunday as being the Lord’s day, set aside for rest and worship of God. Biblically based Christianity is a vast culture of faith in God carried out by many subcultures called churches, made up of people who seek to worship God and to foster a personal relationship with him. One of the most important things that make a subculture is a question of what is it that brings these people together? This foundational question is not only the question of the subculture, but is also the defining

At the center of the Christian faith is a mystery. This mystery has everything to do with the identity of God, the nature of Christian community, the salvation history and our understanding of Christology. This is the mystery of the Trinity – how is the Godhead fully three persons, and yet one nature? Theophilus was the first to name the ‘triad’ nature of God in his letter To Autolycus in 170 A.D. Tertullian was the first to offer terminology to describe this mystery in Against Praxeas claiming “the Trinity” involved three ‘persons’ of one substance. This theology emerged from the Biblical witness, even though scripture offers no doctrine of the Trinity itself. Even more so, the development of the doctrine of the Trinity grew from the early church’s worship, witness and corporate experience. When faced with a mystery, heresies can’t help but emerge. Docetism and Arianism, Adoptionism and Monarchianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism are just a few of the heresies that emerged in attempts to explain away the mystery. And yet, theologians from the second century to the twenty-first century are faced with the challenge of witnessing to this mystery in both the theologia and the oikonomia of the Trinity. The church experiences the economic Trinity as new believers are drawn into Trinitarian community through an ongoing

For my Meet the Believers assignment, I focused on Catholicism and Nondenominational Christianity. My Catholic interviewee, who I’ll refer to as John, is middle aged and was raised Catholic. My Christian interviewee, who I’ll refer to as Jane, is a young adult and was similarly raised Christian. From my interviews and attendance of worship services of both groups, several themes and concepts came to the forefront: the tensions between fundamentalism and modernism, the important conversation of gender and ethnicity, and the “true” good understood by both believers through their respective religious groups.

In Maria Byrd’s second letter to her son she specifies the churches recent worship schedule: “Mr. Thomas Davis preached at our church on Sunday last & is to give us a sermon again Thursday & has published giving the Sacrament this month.” (Tinling 1977, 689). Mrs. Byrd also notes the church’s attempt to book attract other pastors to preach to the congregation. It is important to note that in spite of the new responsibilities taken by parishes, worship of the assembly was maintained as the primary function of the

Worship is the primary action of the church. Those who are part of it assemble together to sing, pray, remember Christ, listen to the Scriptures, and contribute to the Lord’s causes (Acts 2:42, 47; 1 Cor. 16:1-2). It is one of the church’s primary purposes, and it is crucial for its worship to be in harmony with the Scriptures. In Lutheranism, worship is a spiritual exercise that outwardly expresses itself as an acceptance of God’s gift to humans (Jacobs 551). Lutherans

Dulles states, “It picks up the biblical theme that God has fashioned for himself a people feely communicating his spirit and his gifts” (50). The Body of Christ as stated in Dulles is, “the main point of mutual union, concern and dependence of the members of the local community upon one another,” (43). The body of Christ will only function is the whole community is willing to work together to reach a personal growth in their relationship with God. Now that we have an idea of what Church as mystical communion consists of I will discuss the strengths and weakness of this model. The strength of this model is that emphasizes a shared life with the community instead of shutting them off. This is a strength because when people come together as a whole everything holds so much more meaning and people can form a stronger bond with God, now that it is much more personal and voluntary. Another strength is that this model improves people spirituality and prayer life now that they feel that personal connection that they formed. A weakness of this model is that it creates unsure relationship between the visible and invisible, since Grace allows people to get closer to God through the invisible such as communion while the visible structure like institutionalism tries to emphasize their power over the whole people. I have discussed what the models mean, their strength and weakness of each so now I will note the difference and

Community is a grounding principle of Black worship, understood by African-Americans as an encounter involving God, the worshiper, and the broader community. For them worship is not primarily the expression of one's private devotion to God, but is rather a community event. It is the "eschatological invasion of God into the gathered community of

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate how the Sacramental Life or Incarnational Tradition help me focus on my life as a harmonious unit and to illustrate how my life is impacted by my view of worship. In addition, I will give a theological analysis on how focusing on life as a harmonious unit is essential to the myself, the individuals I administer spiritual counseling to and my ministry constituents.

The Chinese Christian church in the United States often has ethnic characteristics, but different Chinese churches often have special concentration in the composition of the congregation, which reflects the tide of Chinese immigrants in different stages. For example, descendants of early immigrants from southern China usually have their fixed church. International students from the mainland of China have the church which they set up together. And other "informal immigrants" also formed Christian organizations. According to Aihui Lee, she divides American Chinese Christianity into four categories.

Wheeler and Whaley give regular confusions of evangelism and worship, giving a brief reaction for each. They then give a scriptural model of an evangelism-venerate

Worship in its etymology is the ascribing worth to something or someone. In worship of God, one finds himself in the position of giving God the praise due him. The text lays out some key aspects of worship. Whitney states that worship is focusing on and responding to God, in that when man focus on God he knows who God is and come to worship him as such. He continues in the idea that worship is done in spirit and in truth not just out of duty but in joy. Then the place that worship take place is examined. Man worships God both publicly and privately, and both are important. The public worship is done within the context of the local church, and the privet worship is in the believer’s own study and interaction with God. worship is a disciple

was a way of life; a set of principles she believed in and lived by.