Shakespearean Chapel: A Liturgical Southern Baptist Worship Service

That’s not an oxymoron in the subtitle, it really does happen—Liturgical Southern Baptist Worship, that is. Drs. Autrey and Wood have given me permission to set the order of worship in chapel this coming Monday, so on Monday at SWBTS Houston we will have a chapel that will, I hope, be something like what the ancient church did when it met for worship. At least, I’m told that the order of worship that we’ve adapted (Richard Fields did most of the work) “bears resemblance to the Western Rite Liturgy.”

I’ve tried to describe what I refer to as Shakespearean Worship here, and if you want to read the process of planning such a worship service, you can do so here. I’ve suggested that this can be a healthy response to the impulse that has produced the Emergent Church here. We actually do this every Sunday at Baptist Church of the Redeemer, and you can see an example of our order of worship here.

If you're in the Houston area, I hope you’ll join us for worship on Monday, and if you want to read over and pray through the sermon text beforehand, asking God to prepare your heart (always a good thing to do), I’ll be preaching the book of Nahum.

So if you come to chapel on Monday, perhaps you’ll encounter two things that Southern Baptists don’t normally experience: (1) a sermon on Nahum, and (2) liturgical worship. Don’t misunderstand me, though, I’m not doing this to be cute. My hope and prayer is that everything about the worship service will be God focused, Christ exalting, and soul nourishing. After all, we’re preparing people to go out and die for the gospel, whether it be the death of a martyr or the long slow obedience of laying down one's life for the people of God. I hope you’ll come ready to worship the risen and reigning King.