This post is mainly in response to Bret's questions in his comments on my last post. He asked: How much does your order of worship change each week and how (and do you always) do you determine the order? At this point we haven't deviated much from the order that can be seen linked to …
Category Archives: Worship
A Liturgical Southern Baptist Church?
My last two posts have been on Shakespearean Worship, so I thought I would post Redeemer's order of worship from last Sunday, December 4, 2005 in case you are interested in seeing how we are trying to give this hands and feet. If you want to worship with us, we invite you to visit Baptist …
Shakespearean Worship and the Emergent Church
The Emergent Church’s creative and asthetic attempts to help people worship call us to ask how we can best enjoy God as gathered congregations. If we don’t learn anything else from the Emergent Church, I hope that many churches will be spurred to examine the service of worship that they have cultivated. Ultimately, the issue …
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Shakespearean Worship
Some churches thrive on a big personality, a trendsetter who draws crowds by sheer magnetic personality. The worship in most churches, however, is led by ordinary people from whose lips profound theology does not spontaneously fall. Is it possible to have a powerful worship experience that is not dependent upon big personality-trendsetting-celebrities? Can we have …
Thanksgiving Hymn: We Gather Together
The Wall Street Journal has a great piece on the history of a hymn that has come to be associated with Thanksgiving, We Gather Together. Those of us not blessed to have this melody woven into the fabric of our minds can remedy the deficiency by listening to it at the Cyber Hymnal. And, if …
Songs for Suffering Saints
Along with John Piper’s Advent Poems, some of the best poetry being written in our day is by Eric Schumacher, who is offering a great deal ($3.50!) on a collection of his newly written hyms (just in case you want the address, here it is: http://scripturealone.blogspot.com/2005/11/songs-for-suffering-saints.html). We have employed several of Eric’s hymns in worship …
Indelible Grace Worship Music
Everyone who loves profound theology presented in sublime poetry set to creative new tunes can praise God for the folks at Indelible Grace Music. They are reviving many hymns that lay in the dust of history by setting them to new music (though I would also be an advocate for many of the original tunes!). …
Sex and the Supremacy of Christ
Proverbs 25:11 states that "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver." John Piper and Justin Taylor have edited a volume that speaks apples of gold in a setting of silver to our culture. In the sin and misery we find ourselves in after the fall, it is all …
Poetry of Repentance and Revival
Eric Schumacher and I went to church together in Louisville while we were both students at SBTS, and he is one of the foremost theological poets of our day. Eric now pastors in Iowa, and he often writes poems that serve exceedingly well as hymns. He sets the meter so that the poetry fits many …
Reading the Bible as an Act of Worship in Church
Every second of the Christian life is living sacrifice, and all of life is worship (Rom 12:1–2). And yet when the redeemed gather together for the corporate worship of God, our collective energies are focused on seeking a heightened experience of the presence of God and ascribing to him the glory due his name (Ps …
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